A Year of Gratitude – May 9, 2024

I found my gratitude in tiny wildflowers planted by the wind. For the first time this spring, these little flowers have popped up in the shady, low spots in our yard this spring.

I wasn’t sure what they were, but I knew that they were dainty, pretty flowers. They have popped up over the last week or so in little mounds around the yard.

After a bit of looking, I discovered that they have many names. They are called Quaker ladies, bluets, and azure bluet. They are a member of the Rubiaceae family of plants. That group is large with over 13,000 species including coffee and gardenias.

These flowers are white to pale blue with yellow centers. They tend to grow in mossy areas at the base of trees, in forests, or on the shores of lakes or rivers. We don’t have a pond, lake, or river on the farm, but it has been particularly wet the last two years. We have plenty of mossy spaces beneath our old trees for these little flowers to grow.

These flowers are early spring bloomers, giving pollinators a needed source of food. We’ll leave them be as they bloom in the hopes that they can do just that. I hope that they will.

Nature continues to amaze me. We’ve lived on this patch of earth for almost nineteen years. While the weather and climate have certainly evolved in that time, we haven’t changed anything about the space where these flowers have decided to grow this spring.

Because they did, I was able to learn something new. I had the chance to see something I’ve never seen and then seek out the information to learn more about it. How lucky I was to do that today. I feel even more thankful that I was able to share it with you.

It’s easy to find gratitude in beautiful things in bloom. What’s blooming and giving you a reason to be grateful in your yard and garden this week?

This post is part of our A Year of Gratitude Series. You can find the introduction, inspiration, and entire year’s gratitude’s posts here.