The Purples of Spring

The first purple on spring’s palette always comes from the most delicate of flowers.  Weeks before the official arrival of spring, crocuses push their way up through the hard winter ground. Cheered on by a few days of false spring temperatures, tiny purple crocuses emerge with variegated arms outstretched and saffron tongues singing spring's praises.  They are a joyous chorus of purple throughout the early weeks of March. 

Next in the progression are the wild violets that make their winter bed amongst the sleeping hostas and yard at Boomerang Creek.  Purplish raspberry canes define the edge between meadow and woods--their color a promise of the sweet purple fruit that will follow in the early months of summer.  Purple hyacinths have begun to thrust up their heavily scented heads and mock the more cautious lilacs that hold back their show of purple perfume until spring has fully arrived.  Finally, in the last week of March, wild plums begin blooming along woods and fencerows in and around Boone County.

This year, April was a cool drama queen, temperamentally threatening to unleash high winds, tornadic wall clouds, and cool rain delivering hail from skies that remained gray much of the month.  On the rare days when the sun peeked through the clouds long enough for me to walk out to our meadow garden, I found that it had not waited for my attention but was already staging its own miraculous spring dramas. 

Purple and green asparagus spears were up and standing at attention.  Raspberry canes that had arched and re-rooted themselves were perfect for transplanting.  One single row of red and golden raspberries and thornless blackberries are now four rows. Brussels sprouts, red cabbage, lavender, thyme, onions, and golden fennel have already reemerged through last fall’s spent growth.

Throughout the shade gardens, purple columbine abounds. And nearby, a deep magenta peony tree has returned for another season. In the meadow rose bed that was a burn pit five years ago when we spent our first spring at Boomerang Creek, purple mountain sage and Russian sage have staged their perennial comeback. 

And everywhere, redbuds will rain purple blossoms that remind me of a jacaranda tree in flower.   Each spring, the redbuds re-emerge from the drab canvas of winter, delicate flecks of purple from an artist's brush, sprinkled across Missouri's wooded landscape. 

The jacaranda's crown is a solid mass of bluish-purple, bell-shaped flowers. I once imagined that if I wrapped my arms around the trunk of a tall jacaranda and stayed until the end of spring, I’d walk away wearing a skirt of purple blossoms in the shape of a sweeping circle, wide as the tree is tall.  That is how jacaranda blossoms fall.  Each tree casts a purple shadow in the shape of a perfect circle on the ground below.

In 1903, an Australian artist from Queensland painted a couple deep in conversation, sitting at a table under a purple jacaranda tree.  The woman, in an eggshell white, turn-of-the-century dress, is holding a red parasol over her head while purple rain falls on the ground around the couple as they share a cup of afternoon tea.

While jacaranda trees are not part of the world at Boomerang Creek, a name with Australian origins and spirit, spring brings a world of purple in other shades and forms to delight the heart.  Purple finches frequent the bird feeders and add their voices to the chorus of spring birdsong.  And every evening, spring peepers call for a mate from their bulbous throats of purplish skin, drowning out all other sounds but the family of tiny tree frogs that live at the edges of our porch

...all that seemed as dead
afresh doth live:
The croaking frogs, whom
nipping winter killed,
Like birds now chirp and hop
about the field.
- Anne Bradstreet "The Four Seasons of the Year"

Such is spring’s palette of purples and poetic verse as April slips finally into May.