Hurrah for Prairie Plants

Illinois is pretty bleak this week as far as looking at the garden beds. It's cold walking around; I even painted the front porch stairs without getting very warm. But the tulips are opening as though it were a warmer spring, the muscari is kind of opening. I saw a tiny leaf yesterday of my pride and joy, the cimicifuga.

And wow! even in the dismal day, today that cimicifuga is taller than peonies, more than eighteen inches tall and with more than a dozen rising stalks, all well leafed. Unimaginable progress. Well, I should just call it cohosh, I guess; I'm just so stiflingly happy to have it; and I should admit there are two of them, and the "other" one, surrounded by daffodil leaves, is almost as tall, but much slimmer and not much leafed out. It'll catch up.

There's another prairie plant, that fake indigo, Baptisa, that hasn't even broken ground in the back garden, where this is its third year and last year again it didn't bloom. Just three stalks, leafed mildly. The other one, from the front garden, I moved to the oldest side bed last fall to see if it could do better because it wasn't even that far along. If the cohosh can do so well, maybe I should be praying more for the indigo?

And the other really nice guy, growing in the deep shadow of the north of the house, is the goatsbeard. Nicely up, leafed out, looking virile. Near it, that astrantia that didn't bloom last year, came up and leafed its little bit -- maybe this year I'll see it? Maybe the spot is too dark. The man that sold it felt that our Illinois summer demanded that it be in the dark, but I wonder. It's not a prairie dog.

But you should see black cohosh!