The Great Thing About Not Posting Much

The great thing about not posting much at all this whole year is that now, when I most need blog topics, there are so many things I didn't post about! And I can post about them now!

So, for example, this was a stellar year for lupine blooms in the Bald Hills. The Bald Hills are gorgeous open mountain sides in the southernish part of Redwood National and State Parks. Some springs, they are dotted by lupines. This year, they were carpeted in them:

 That bit of red is me, for scale. So dense. So lovely. (The flowers, not me.)

 Our little imp almost blends in.

Nearby Pleasures

Crescent City and surrounds have lots to offer, but we do go further afield at times. One of my favorite places to look for wildflowers in the spring and early summer is a trail along the Rough and Ready River near Cave Junction, Oregon. We stop there occasionally on our way to Grants Pass, Medford, and other parts of Oregon on I-5.

Here are a few pictures of this year's blooms:

The other plant-of-interest at the Rough and Ready are a handful of Ponderosa pines. We learned last year during our first trip to Bend that Ponderosa pines smell nothing like what you'd (or I'd) expect a pine to smell like. They smell something like the intersection of vanilla, dried orange peel, cinnamon, and something else. If you ever find yourself near a sun-warmed Ponderosa, act like Darcy and stick your nose in a crack in the bark to sniff deeply:

In Which I Bring The Pretty

I got chastised this evening for not updating the blog more regularly. It's a fair criticism. Life has been busy and the blog has suffered. But because recent posts have featured such lovely creatures as slugs and sharks (which I actually love -- the sharks, not the slugs) and because I know I'm going to post pictures of the slug buffet that is our front yard these days, I thought I'd throw in some pretty pictures.

I used to think of fuschias as potted plants. Really, I thought of them as hanging basket material and not much more. But in Crescent City, they become trees. I've had one blooming since before we bought the house and it is currently loaded down with flowers. I have at least three different kinds growing in the yard, but the white-centerd ones are the most prolific. They hardly look real:

I also inherited three or four more fuschias that are in large pots. They were waiting to be transplanted into the ground, but the previous owner never did it. She said that she always took end-of-season hanging planters and put them into larger pots for a while before putting them in the ground. So I just need to figure out where I want them and I'll have a whole fuschia forest!

Teutonia Peak

Rocks. To climb.

Rocks. To sit under and snack.

Yes, if there are rocks, Darcy and Michael will climb them. Always. We took a morning hike on the Teutonia Peak trail a couple weeks ago. Part of the motivation was a recent mountain lion sighting about half-way up the peak. It's a rocky, wonderful habitat for mountain lions and it's exciting that one has been seen up there. Not by us, of course. We saw some wildflowers and some cacti thinking about producing some flowers. We had a good time scrambling around rocks and hiking.

And when we got home, we were back with our own carpet of teeny tiny flowers. They really are visible in the picture. Or, they were before I uploaded it to Blogger. You can get a bigger picture by clicking on it and then you're looking for itty bitty purple blooms. They're everywhere, but not actually native. They were introduced a few hundred years ago by those dang traveling Europeans.

And, just in case you missed the wonderful news today -- the EPA has suspended almost all mountain-top mining permits while they study the damage the practice does to the surroudning environment and watersheds!! Our new president might not be doing everything absolutely right, but he's doing some good, good things. Also suspended today? The Bush rules allowing concealed guns in national parks.

The Flower Search Continues

Flower season, while not as spectacular as last year's so far, is upon us in force now. A couple weeks ago, we had reason to be in Baker and took advantage of the proximity to Rasor Road for some flower hunting. We didn't find many exciting displays, but the lupine out there were just about to pop into bloom.

Michael and Darcy climbed rocks, of course, as they do when rocks are there to be climbed. They didn't find any flowers up there, but Michael spied some flowers on rocks on the other side of the road and I scrambled up to take a closer look because they didn't look like something we'd seen before. Michael is in uniform because he had just given a talk about Mojave National Preserve in Baker earlier in the morning.

As, indeed, they were not. These are beautiful Mojave asters, which we did not see at all last year except in our flower guides. They are a really beautiful flower and this bunch was situated in a little rock crevice at full bloom.


I get to go do our taxes now, so y'all will have to wait for the next flower installation. It is Flower Hunt: Teutonia Peak. Your sneak preview: we really, really wanted to find the recently-spotted resident mountain lion, but didn't.

Flower Season Begins!

Welcome to Flower Season 2009! Darcy and I hiked from the post office back to our house the other day and our rewards were a fox or coyote jaw complete with teeth and a little fur on the chinny-chinny-chin and the first flowers of spring! These purple lovelies are a carrot family member called purple cymopterus. Apparently, there's no common name for them. There are two plants hanging out together, but I can't find more, even though I've tried.

Darcy and Michael took their own hike a week ago to the "Quiet Canyon" (Darcy's name), aka Banshee Canyon (the name that appears on maps). This is the land of holes in rocks and the place where the echoes live, so Darcy loves it. Anywhere she can play with rocks and dirt is a good place for her.

Stay tuned for more spring pictures of Darcy exploring the Mojave and flowers popping up everywhere!

Flowers, Everywhere We Look, Flowers

Ok, so there has been some prodding recently for some new photos and an update. We've been silent because we spend all our free time (well, I do, Michael sometimes thinks it's more of the stuff he does at work) looking at flowers. And hosting guests and doing some traveling, I should add, but flowers really have taken over our lives (and our hard drive).

So here are some lovely flowers. (Clicking on a picture gets you a larger image.)



Michael received an email a few weeks back saying that Devil's Playground was in a once in a lifetime state of bloom. We were lucky enough to get out there a few days later -- it was breathtaking! Dune evening primroses as far as the eye could see in all directions, with lots of prickly poppies, sunflower-family yellow flowers, hairy sand verbena, desert needles, and so many other flowers mixed in. The primroses, however, were the stars of this show, flowering in enormous mounds and double rings (top photo).


After a lot of driving (we might have bitten off a little more than we should have) we stopped for a picnic lunch at some well-known (to us) rocks. Darcy is all smiles because she's eating her very first PB and J. She also loves rocks, so was happy even before she discovered the glorious presence of jelly.

The flower season moves from lower to higher elevations here, and different flowers show up in the varied ecosystems that make up the Preserve. The following pictures are of the yucca and cactus family blooms, which are spectacular.

Joshua Trees in bloom

Up close and personal with a banana yucca

Beavertail cactus on Zyzzyx road

Claret cup cactus among the Joshua trees

Darcy will do anything for some more flower sightings...her first solo* rock climb.

And she's rewarded! With cliff roses, Palmer's penstemon, and rattlesnake weed (in that order). The rattlesnake weed fooled us -- it looks huge in the pictures in the guidebooks; we were expecting something ten times that size at least!




All that flower hunting and rock climbing and walking does wear a girl out, though. Even the coolest shades in the world can't keep this one awake...

*Solo as in, Daddy's hand is just out of the picture by an inch. Don't call child protective services just yet!

Flowers! Flowers! Flowers!

Coming into Baker on Interstate 15 now means passing through corridors of yellow flowers. What are they? Various species of sunflower and daisy relatives, mostly. But off the highway, there are more colors...
Lots of purples and whites abound in and around Mojave National Preserve. We had abundant rains over the winter, continuing into this spring, and the desert is coming to life. This is just one of many places with fields of interspersed hairy sand verbena (the lavender), dune evening primrose (the large white), and brown-eyed primrose.

The dune evening primrose merits a picture all by itself. This photo was taken just outside the Preserve boundaries.

I really love all the small flowers that are appearing. These brilliant purple ones are called, appropriately enough, purple mat. I don't know what the small succulents are. They don't appear in our flower guide; we have a list of almost a dozen now that aren't, so it's time to look for a better guide! The flowers on the purple mat are a little smaller than a dime.

These beauties are lilac sunbonnets. They are tiny, spiny, and low to the ground. They're not all that easy to spot, but it's hard to turn away once you've found them. I'll share more flower photos over the next month or so. I'm hoping that the Joshua tree bloom will be spectacular once it starts. Maybe even more than that, though, I'm excited for the cactus blossoms if and when they arrive.