Sunday, July 3, 2011

Taking a Walk on the Wild Side...


We went up to our cabin on the lake for a couple of days, before the Fourth of July crowds hit the campgrounds there. June is the most beautiful month there and, tho' it was technically July, the summer is so late in coming this year, we hit it in it's 'mid-June' mode. The wildflowers were all around, the lake is full, and the fish were biting so eagerly I think we could have caught what we wanted without bait! Booker got to go swimming several times, and he is less cautious about it this year, and seems to enjoy it more. He also loved running through the tall grass and wildflowers, scaring up grasshoppers or whatever he could scare up.

Just around the bend from our drive was this Deer Tongue. I had tried to transplant one to my home garden last year, with no success. I had never seen one in bloom. They are amazing! This one was 6 1/2 feet tall (taller than my 6'4" husband). The flowers are a subtle white and green. They remind me somewhat of small orchids.




I remember taking a walk almost 30 years ago at the cabin with my mother-in-law. She was so amazed at the number and variety of wildflowers. She carefully picked one of each variety that we saw (except the columbines, as it is illegal to pick them in the wild in Colorado), and she pressed them to take home to Kansas with her. I thought of that walk with her and other walks with my young sons a number of times as I 'collected' the wildflowers with my camera the other day. I frequently felt her presence and the presence of the young boys my sons once were as I walked in the woods, with flowers spreading like a carpet at my feet wherever I looked.

1 comment:

ColoradoDreamingHandcrafts said...

We just got back last night from a few days in the mountains above Blue Mesa. We took a dirt road over to Lake City and the flowers were exquisite. We stopped the car many times as we came to fields full of wild roses with such heavenly smell. I'm going to go searching now on our property to see if I can find some.

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