Evening Prairie Primrose

The primrose is a delicate pink, sometimes pure white with a yellow center. It is one of my favorite wildflowers. Primrose grows in ditches and along fencelines and pathways where grass is mown and it can get plenty of water. I have seen it fill in a whole ditch so that when the wind blew, it looked like the the ditch was overflowing with foamy pink tissue paper.

The name, of course, is one of the attractions. Evening Prairie Primrose- what a sweet name. There is nothing so mysteriously beautiful as an evening coming on the prairie with choruses of tree frogs and the hoot of owls from the creek beds. The wind beginning to lie still for the night, brings a peaceful calm and the coolness steals in with the fading day. Coyotes howl and yip out in the orchard and a rustle in the garden tells me a rabbit is seeking  his burrow. A cow may bawl at its calf or a horse whinny.

This patch of primrose is young. It will grow and fill so no green shows- just the pink waving in the warm wind, bowing at us as we pass like little girls in pink dresses curtsying at the end of their dance.