Wildflowers #20 + Drought

Because of the impending heat, Blue and I walked this morning before the sun rose from behind the mountain.


Here's what we saw:

the valley gets light before we do

mullein, Verbascum thapsus (the grosbeaks have been picking at the flowers)

arrowleaf balsam root makes for noisy walking now that it is drying

Pictures of Softness

The new leaves of the scrub oak and the maples are as soft as a baby's bottom. Walking through them this morning, touching and marveling at their tenderness, I wondered if I could photograph softness. So I tried.

scrub oak

maple

maple

our little meadow with arrowleaf balsamroot blossoming

Wildflowers #6: An Explosion of New Blossoms

Hydrophyllum capitatum/ballhead waterleaf

Balsamorhiza sagittata arrowleaf balsamroot

not sure about this one

Quercus gambelii/scrub oak catkins

maple greening up in the scrub oak

tasty breakfast for the deer

Astragalus, but what genus? milk vetch

not sure about this one either

Change, Constancy

Wind and rain in the night. Flowerblanketing snow in the early morning. Hummingbirds swarmed our feeders in lieu of nature's nectar. By late this afternoon the snow was gone and the yellow flowers of arrowleaf balsamroot were turned greedily toward the sun sinking in the west.


Down the hill, arrowleaf flowers glow yellow against springgreen grass on the rough spit of foothill that thrusts between two alfalfa fields . One by one, 14 longnecked elk leave the alfalfa for the safety of as yet leafless scruboak and the already green maples. They pass darkly across arrowleaf studded openings into more brush, whitepatch tails signaling their presence and passage.

Still scruffy muledeer cross the elk's paths and, tawny forms in the last rays of sun, slip from the brushy spit onto the Irishgreen fields, spread out with exuberant sprints, highspirited replacement grazers taking the evening shift.