We greet it with joy once again: Draba verna, that wee little weed that Aldo Leopold praised in memorable words that bear repeating each year on the day I first find it. Which was today, "searching for spring with my knees in the mud" on a sandy bank overlooking Moreau Lake.
Within
a few weeks now, Draba, the smallest flower that blooms, will sprinkle
every sandy place with small blooms. He who hopes for spring with
upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of
spring with downcast eyes steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for
spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.
Draba
asks, and gets but scant allowance of warmth and comfort; it subsists
on the leavings of unwanted time and space. Botany books give it two or
three lines, but never a plate or portrait. Sand too poor and sun too
weak for bigger better blooms are good enough for Draba. After all, it
is no spring flower, but only a postscript to a hope.
Draba
plucks no heartstrings. Its perfume, if there is any, is lost in the
gusty winds. Its color is plain white. Its leaves wear a sensible
wooly coat. Nothing eats it; it is too small. No poets sing of it.
Some botanist once gave it a Latin name, and then forgot it. Altogether
it is of no importance -- just a small creature that does a small job
quickly and well.
-- Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1949
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