Overlapping Seasons

One of the places where I love to hang out and put pressure on the seasons to move forward - as if I could! - is the Greenville Y.  I always start poking around in early March, hoping to catch the first flower species to bloom, and the first invertebrates to crawl.  Once again, the dandelions win the wildflower race.  No sign yet of the Stream Orchid, nor of the Elegant Rockcress, the latter usually one of the first native species to bloom in this area.  Dandelions are non-native, of course, but I love them anyway.  As I look for the first leaves of a number of species of wildflowers, I also enjoy seeing the remnants of last fall, represented here by last fall's blackberry leaves, empty milkweed pods, and an about-to-explode cat-o-nine-tail head.