EACH SPRING THEY EMERGE, poking through a layer of dried leaves mulching my front flowerbed.
When I spot the tender green shoots of crocuses, I feel a surge of optimism that winter is winding down. However, as a life-long Minnesotan, I also tamp my excitement. Snow falls in April here and sometimes in May. And these crocuses were bursting already in late March.
Days after I removed the leaves, exposing the crocuses to sunshine and air, they grew quickly. Soon purple blossoms spread wide, revealing golden centers like spots of sunshine.
I delight in the shades of purple, notice the lines tracing the petals, the way the flowers hug the ground as if also tentative about the season.
This first flower of spring seems to me courageous. Braving the cold of Minnesota, determined to reach the sunshine, to make a strong statement of hope that the cold and dark of winter will give way to warmth and light.
TELL ME: I’d like to hear your first flower of spring story.
© Copyright 2026 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
Your crocuses are so pretty. And I love purple flowers. We have no blossoms poking out of the ground yet, here. The first brave flowers to poke through are usually my daylilies. My husband did buy me a bouquet of purple tulips last week. 🌷🪻
That was so sweet of your husband to buy tulips for you. You’ve had more snow than us and being further north, I expect you’re a few weeks behind us in spring flower eruption.
Yea for all the brave spring flowers!
I meant more than just brave flowers when I wrote this piece. Maybe you caught that???
What a beautiful hopeful photo. It just plain made me smile!!
Good! I’m happy to bring smiles.
I am reminded of much Tang poetry. We are all flowers.
Sigh. Despite several hikes in the woods, I have yet to be rewarded with a blossom. 🌻Just moss and grass thus far. But hope springs eternal. Maybe blossoms will burst forth after this weekend’s warm, wet deluge?
Perhaps. Probably. Stay hopeful. Spring always comes. Eventually.
these are beauties and the first flowers always bring me so much hope. I have a teeeeeeeeny tiny little wildviolet that opened and I have to admire its gumption, opening in the middle of all the dirt and cold, can’t keep it down, and the warmth is coming this week –
Oh, good, I’m glad you have that wild violet to appreciate. Yes, the weekend is supposed to bring warmth and rain, which should green up the landscape.
We were looking after our friend’s house and collecting their mail, etc., while they were on vacation. She told me to take a picture of her daffodil if it bloomed. It did bloom. I took a picture last weekend. We went to bring her the mail last night and a daffodil is still blooming. That surprised me. But fun to see.
That’s amazing that the daffodils bloomed a full week. Thank you for sharing that delightful story.