First pickerelweed

Old habits die hard, and even though my long-traveled route downhill brings me past the increasingly abominable development at the foot of my road—as it shapes up, it looks incomprehensibly ill-considered, in additional to being flat-out ugly—I've taken to just sucking it up and walking faster to put it behind me. I loathe the insult to the land, but I rather love getting to the millpond, and the old path is the only way to do it quickly. Well, on foot, anyway. At the edge of the millpond dam, life is returning to water's edge, and, now that the Yellow-flag Irises are past their blooming prime, it's time for the Pickerel Weed to begin its blossoming show. This exquisite plant put out its first intricate petals today, and there'll be more and more flowers in the coming weeks. These are odonate and lepidopteran magnets, and I'll be down here often, the temporary twinge of walk-by pain notwithstanding, to chronicle new arrivals and old friends. There's a measure of healing in both.