The flower of my youth

Pasque flowers grow best in fields where
cows kick up the soil and spread them
around, not to mention provide some fertilizer.

We walked to grade school down a hill, through a field and around a slough to get to the white two-story schoolhouse on the top of a hill. The swing set was large and made of heavy metal poles. There was not grass to mow, only natural prairie. The second story wasn't utilized at the time I attended grades one through five and the basement - dark, dusty and concrete - was used for play time during the cold winter months of my childhood.
My brother would walk me to school before he was transferred to high school in Kulm. I called him grasshopper because I couldn't keep up with his long legs. Not to mention he was six years older than myself and well, I don't think big brothers really like their little sisters tagging along after them.
We took the gravel road when the fields were still to wet to cross... but when spring finally arrived we flew kites and tramped around the hay bales in a era before television became such an attraction.
I'm the kind of person that walks with my head down. I liked to find rocks and other found objects laying around on the ground. It was particularly enjoyable to go out after a long winter and see what the ground coughed up when the frost melted. Old marbles and army men lost the summer before. Maybe an old rusty nail or piece of jewelry - fodder for sure for my vivid imagination. And there were the pasque. We called them crocus and it didn't matter at all to us as we just loved to see those little buds opening to the warm sunshine and fresh air. Symbolic of the earth waking up after a long winter nap.
Picking them was tempting, but they don't last long in a vase. Now I make my yearly trek to the pasture to shoot photos. I have many many photos of the pasque in the early morning light and the evening sun. Passing by the field on Easter Sunday there were no blooms, but by Monday noon they were everywhere. You can spot them by the white ghostly glow they give in the sun because of their very hairy stems. We had to go Monday evening to shoot photos because the forecast called for rain. And sure enough, it has not stopped. They are delicate flowers, various shades of purple with a yellow center. Not only do we love them - and perhaps it was from this early flower that we derived the colors of Easter (purple and yellow) - but bugs love them also. So, if you want really good photos you have to catch them almost immediately. Last year it snowed the day after they appeared and I got a photo of one flower holding an armload of snow, I'm sure thinking about the same thing we were - whens it going to end.
Let's blame Easter. It was late this year and so is spring, but there are indications of warmer days to come... just not fast enough for some of us...