Photo of the Day: Cattails in Spring

Cattails in Spring, originally uploaded by JeremyT.

I head out to the same nature area every Saturday and Sunday morning lately. Things are slowly turning green here. Tiny leaves adorn the tips of the branches of trees, and the grass is flourishing. It's been dry, but moist enough to wake the sleeping life.

The cattails sleep longer than most everything else. It occurs to me that I've never noticed the moment when cattails grow anew. Do they arrive in spring, or is it summer? How do they push up from the old growth that remains all winter, captured here? Life for a new cattail plant must be a harsh one, living so packed and close to your dead ancestors. I imagine it would be like living in the Catacombs of Paris.