Wildflower Safari!

It's that time of year again. Wildflowers are coming out. Everything's about two weeks late. It's kind of disorienting. Red-eyed vireos singing in leafless trees. But the wildflowers are coming along nicely.

I love, love, love taking friends out on wildflower safaris. 

From left: Sara, Kelly, Murr and moi. Cackling. 

Murr, holding a chickadee nest. For her take on chickadee sex, go to her fabulous blog. 

Bluets. Honesty. Quaker Ladies. Call them what you will, I love them. There is a man who lives down our county road who weedwhacks the bluets that grow on a bare bank in front of his house. He will get his just reward in Purgatory, for bluets hurt no one. Neither does honesty, properly and kindly administered. 

There is blue, and then there is BLUE. Blue-eyed Mary is BLUE. Oh, what a blue, the kind of blue that home gardeners lust after but almost never achieve. Only delphiniums approach this blue, and those are hard to grow in Ohio. I know, because I've probably bought two dozen delphiniums over the years, only to have them rot in our rainy winters. 

Blue-eyed Mary is an annual that grows in misty blue drifts down rich slopes, spilling like smoke into pastures.

I never tire of oohing over it.

Blue phlox blooms at the same time. But there's blue, and then there's blue, and I'm sorry, Phlox, but you're only almost blue.

Blue larkspur, same deal. You're royal purple. Chet Baker for scale. 

The Bacon loves a good wildflower safari as much as the next guy. He just likes to come along and sniff out new places, harass new squirtles and chiptymunks. 

Jacob's Ladder.

Another kingly larkspur. There was more of it this year than ever. We were thrilled to see it had spread so widely.

I couldn't resist shooting this gorgeous bank of Trillium grandiflorum, with some idiot's old mattress flumped down on it. Around these parts, a steep slope is just an invitation to pitch the big stuff you're too lazy to take to the dump.

If I could have hauled it away I would have, but rain-soaked mattresses are more than I can handle. I tried not to think of the trillium trying to come up beneath it. Dang it!!

 Back home, my zygocactus is going absolutely bu-freakin'-onkers. After an initial winter bud drop, it has decided it loves, loves, loves the greenhouse. I brought it up to the kitchen table for a little house vacation, because I didn't want to miss a minute of its fuchsia perfection. Just FYI it is in a great big pot with dense moist soil. Seemed like what it wanted.

 I like this dreamy off-kilter shot of the wildflowers of Newell's Run.

Yes, it is a fine thing to meet them when and where they're blooming. I recommend it. Get out there, now!

More Dogtography

Chet, pensive, in the blue-eyed Mary. I'm happy with this shot because, although Chet looks a bit dark, the color of the flowers comes through. It's really difficult to photograph a black dog in sunlit surrounds. The same thing happens when I turn my camera to black Angus cattle. They look kind of ghostlike and the background gets blasted out to almost white. I hit the same obstacle when photographing hippos and rhinos in Africa. Large, very dark objects fool the light meter into opening way up, which blows out the background. So this photosafari was an exercise in fiddling with aperture and ISO. I got it right a few times.

The Bacon purely loves wildflower safaris. So do I. To take a couple of friends with the express purpose of admiring flowers...well, that's one of life's greatest luxuries. 

Chet Baker gazes up, looking for squirtles. Looking as happy as he feels. 

Pensive again. The boy knows how to relax.

If I look just one more time, there may be a rodent.

Meanwhile, Shila's focusing on wild larkspur, a real rarity around here.

We find the King of all Larkspur.

and a very nice toadshade (Trillium erectum)

What looks like grass growing around it is actually wild camas, a kind of lily.

I can't stop shooting pictures of Chet. Knowing him as I do, I know he's going to want to explore the pool below a gorgeous little waterfall on Newell's run. So I set up and pre-expose and pre-focus on the rock I know he'll use to enter the pool. Bingo. If only he were a bobcat...

He stops to take a drink, my little Narcissus looking at his reflection.

He meanders through the pool. And, unexpectedly, leaps. And the Canon 70-300 L series telephoto lens, with the nimble Canon 7D body, saves that shining moment. For me, it's the shot of the day, of the week, maybe of the month. 

He is the perfect dog.  Except when he rolls in coyote poo on a perfect spring day in this perfect spring place. He comes creeping up to me, ears back and eyes saying I'm so sorry Mether! I couldn't help myself! and I know even before the smell hits me that he's found something deathly bad to roll in. 

I play my part and give him a round scolding before scrubbing him with leaves and dirt and taking him back down to the creek for a cold bath, which is the best I can do under the circumstances.

Diane, who I suspect is here to visit Chet Baker as much as me, feels very sorry for the crestfallen Bacon, who only moments before was my Olympian ideal of dog perfection. Well, that's what living with a Boston terrier can be like. You're gazing down fondly, maybe embracing this sweet animal, cuddling him close and pbbbbbt! and you drop him like a hot potato and wave your arms around like there's a swarm of African killer bees buzzing around your head. Smells. With Bostons, it's all about smells. Some they make themselves, and some they outsource. All are bad.

Sara says that emanatory capacity is all that stands between her and a Boston terrier puppy. Imagine. Well, I can imagine. This is my life.

It is good to have friends who love you no matter what. Miss Diane loves me no matter what. She is nicer to me than you are, Mether. Someday you will be sorry you wrote such things about me. If you have nothing nice to say you should just not say it.

Chet Baker you know I love you.