Devil's Lake Trip

There are places that define us.

There are landscapes whose hills and valleys are the fissures in our brains... each one a memory, each one a story.  And the changes and the added parking lots and improved trails don't even matter.  

There are places that are old friends... friends that, no matter how many months or years we are apart, when we see each other again, we fall easily into a comfortable conversation, a familiar pattern... the serenity and the ease of something we know and that knows us as we have always been.  

There are landscapes that are part of our personalities, that shape us just as our families shape us.

This is one of those places to me.

* * *

Hoary puccoon.  I love this plant.  The color is so pure, like a pool of yellow orange, you could just dive into it.  I have never been able to acquire one, but they probably couldn't survive in my yard, anyhow.  The places I've seen them in the wild are outside the shack (in the sand counties) and at IL Beach state park... both places with sandy soil, which is not a characteristic in my yard.

(Also noted at the shack -- the largest clump of bloodroot I have EVER seen, right in the foundation of the old homestead.)

False Solomon's seal blooming.  Smooth Solomon's seal was almost, but not quite, open.

Pussytoes in the wild. 

 

Shooting star with interesting coloration --

 look at that pink and yellow!

Horsetail.  

Cool non-photosynthetic plant or possible fungi.

Green bug on geranium.

This is a window at the Leopold Foundation's Platinum LEED building.  Bot phenological, I understand that, but a very cool example of the marriage of nature and architecture.  

Sketches of Jack-in-the-pulpit and Canada mayflower leaves (I think.)

Other cool sightings:

In the bird world... goodness, so many birds.  Chickadees, chipping sparrows and other little guys all over.  But the most notable sightings were a bald eagle, sitting on a sandbar in the WI River, and a pileated woodpecker.  Also enjoyed watching the herons fly in and out of the heron rookery and listening to all the babies warble, and looking down upon the turkey vultures.

In the flower world...  Mayapples opened (at Devil's Lake and here), baneberry, 4 types of violets -- purple, white, yellow, and purple-and-white, blue-eyed grass, cream wild indigo, lupine, trillium, columbine is in peak bloom (here and in WI), and oh-so-many-others.  Dutchman's breeches leaves are turning yellow.

In the tree world... maple seeds were falling like helicopters and oaks were flowering (my car is covered in pollen).

In the non-flowering plant world... SOOO many ferns... cinnamon and sensitive and lady and others I don't know.

So much to write about................