Trout lily

This one's very pretty. I like the variegated leaves, and the flower looks like a little lily. But I don't know what it is. Shouldn't be hard to figure out, though. These pictures were taken April 20th. I should go back and look to see what happened with these. The leaves are sticking up all over the place, but there were only a couple with flowers.



UPDATE: It's a "trout lily", or "adder's tongue". I believe in giving credit where credit is due, so let me mention that I found it here (via Google, of course).

Unknown 4

Yet another little daisy-like flower. Don't know what it is. [I've been writing that a lot lately, but here's the thing: I have a book at home, "native plants of michigan", or something like that, and once I have all these pictures online ("posted", as the kids say), then I can go back through the book and say, ha, there it is!, then edit the post. Really, folks, I'm not as dumb as I sound. I almost couldn't be.*]


*My girlfriend once accused me of "acting dumb", to which I responded, "Baby, you give me too much credit --I don't know how to act."

Unknown 3

Once again, here's a plant, I don't know what it is. Embarrassing. Nice, little white flowers. Kind of cute. Hope this isn't one of those that grows up to be nasty. (Picture taken 4-20-08)

Unknown 2

What are these? I do not know. There are a bunch of them in my raspberry patch. I tried pulling them last year, but it was too late in the year, so it was quite a pain, what with the bugs and thorns, so I gave up. But this spring when they came up again, I very diligently pulled them all, and dug down to get out the roots. These things spread by their roots, I believe. Hopefully I'll get more berries this year if they're not competing for water and nutrients with these things.

Unknown 1

I don't know what this is. It's quite common in my back yard (the wooded part). It looks like it should flower, but I don't recall seeing this a bunch of flowers back there last year. (Pictures taken 4-20-08)

Daffodils

Here's some daffodils. These ones were growing in the backyard, down a hill. They're wild, but there are some identical planted ones in the front yard. (Pictures taken 4-20-08)

What happened

So, I had big plans for this blog... well not big plans, but plans. I had plans for this blog, where I thought, if I take a bunch of pictures of plants and stuff I can't identify, then later, like in the winter when I obviously can't photograph living plants in my back yard [I know this isn't technically true], or green leafy ones at any rate because of all the snow, later, as I was saying, i could look them up and write blog entries when I figured out what's what.
But I accidentally formatted the card in my camera. [This also is not technically true; I formatted it intentionally, but I accidentally forgot that pictures I 'd taken were still on that card.] So winter goes by, I don't have no pictures to look at. Too bad, because I did identify a couple of things before I lost the photos.
But spring's here, and I've taken a bunch of pictures again, and I'm gonna try really hard to post them now. Sort of "this blog, take 2".
I've already missed a couple things, too, because I haven't had time to take pictures, they were too early or too ephemeral, but I'll try writing about them anyway.

One more thing I want to do, is tell a little story. My daughter and I were in our front yard last week, picking some fresh grass for her guinea pig Zima, and I showed her, "see honey, this is grass, and it has long skinny leaves, but this other one, is clover, and it looks different, with round leafs, but Zima will like it." Then Magdalena --a one-in-a-million cool kid-- asks, "what's this one?" (she'll turn 3 later this month, and she talks really, really well, like a kindergartener). Too which I responded, "I don't know."
Then she says, "But why don't you know?!" Hmmm. Well honey, I grew up taking this stuff for granted and not paying attention, so I just don't know. But I should, and I want you to know; so I have to figure it out myself, and then I'll teach you. Because that's what daddies are supposed to do.