As regular readers of this blog know, I refer to our home as “the little house in the big woods,” a nod, of course, to Laura Ingalls Wilder. (As a child, I loved her books.) Yes, we have neighbors, and yes, a road goes right by our house.  Nevertheless, our home is tucked into the the woods at the edge of a watershed that protects the Upper Narrows Pond, which is used as a source of drinking water.

Many years ago, a college friend of my daughter’s came here to visit. Because he arrived at night, he really didn’t get a sense of the lay of the land. The next morning, my daughter found him looking out the dining-room window into our backyard.

“I have never seen so many trees in my life,” he said. As he is from Long Island, from a tight neighborhood, I’m sure he wasn’t exaggerating.

Because we are so much in the woods, my flower gardens are a constant challenge, and when you add dry shade to this, it is easy to understand why I frequently grumble that I have the worst yard in Winthrop in which to garden.

However, nature often compensates. What it lacks in one way, it provides in another. For the shady yard at the little house in the big woods, this means spring wild flowers, which bloom in modest profusion on the lawn and by the edges of the woods. These flowers are not bright and showy but are nonetheless lovely, and I look forward to them every spring.

There is Jack-in-the-Pulpit, the pride of the backyard.

Violets, of course.

Yellow Clintonia, or the much prettier name, blue bead lily.

A closer look.

Dandelions also pop up here and there,  They are considered a weed, I know, but the bees love them. And if bees love them, then so do I.

We also have a small patch of wild blueberries. I hope they spread.

More wild flowers are on the way, and as they bloom, I’ll feature them along with my garden flowers.