May 10

The mowed fields of Anna Maria are dotted now with bluets, and seen from a distance they look like small white islands amid the yellow green of the close-cropped grass.

Seen up close, the bluets are a delicate clone of small pale blue flowers of four petals with a distinctive yellow center. They grow in clumps of up to 50 or so in arid fields and waste lots. They remind me of forget-me-nots, and each year I mistakenly assign one for the other.

The field right now is awash in these little islands of bluets, and it is particularly beautiful to look across the field from the entrance to Anna Maria up the hill to where the crab apples, standing as sentinels, are also resplendent with their own tiny white flowers. When the midday is clear, it is a sensational contrast of greens and whites, with the blue sky overhead peppered occasionally with its own clumps of spring white clouds.

Notes:

Cowbirds in mating by the feeder

Bluets arrive