Very late Corydalis

There's a game that naturalists play when we put together our phenologies, our version of nature's "pilgrim's progress." It might be called "beginnings and endings," and it involves trying to record the first appearance of some aspect of plant or animal life, be it a bud or a migratory departure, and the last gasp of an organism, from its outright demise to its decision to head for winter safety. First flowers are always important entries in the phenology notebook, and so are the last blossoms of the year. Today, just before midnight, marks the start of the winter solstice, and by rights, flowers should be a fairly distant memory. But in the climate-change version of late autumn and the beginning of winter, blooms, albeit few and far between, remain worth seeking out. This yellow, tube-shaped flower, is a member of the Corydalis clan. The native Connecticut species is a rare, early-spring-flowering ephemeral, but this one's an escapee from my garden. It blossoms whenever the spirit moves, even to honor the solstice, which surely must mark the end of the bloom season.