Yellow is the first color of spring around the farm. The golden blossoms of glacier lily, balsamroot, dandelion, Oregon grape, flowering currant, desert parsley, and buttercup bend in the strong spring winds.

Yellow the first color of spring is visited, or, perhaps, one could say is courted by the stumpy-bodied native bee, the perfectly symmetrical honeybee, and by the comical Oregon bumblebee. My favorite.

Spring singing frogs have quieted down now, but replacing their exuberance is the bright sun of yellow in big clumps dotting the perimeter of our six ponds.  It’s wild dandelion, which I’ll never rip out or mow down.  The so-called weed is the earliest and richest nectar and pollen available to all the farm’s buzzy-bees.