A February Visit to the Bloedel Reserve

It’s been a strange winter here in the Puget Sound area. The mountains have lots of snow, but we’ve only had light snow here in Tacoma. On a particularly sunny day last week we decided to return to The Bloedel Reserve to see what was happening.

Judging from the number of flowers we saw, Spring is about to happen, even though they were shut down for snow a few days before. We had barely begun our walk when we encountered these white flowers blooming.

A few yards further along we saw two young deer nibbling on the flowers.

Although I brought my birding lens because I’d seen so many birds on my last visit, all I saw this trip was this male Bufflehead and two females.

Mostly, though, we saw flowers that I half-recognize but can’t quite remember their name.

I promise that in my next lifetime I will memorize the names of plants and flowers. Until then, I’m stuck just admiring their beauty wherever I find them.

It’s not surprising that I don’t know the name of this flower because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.

We see this flower often enough that Leslie actually told me its name, but since I’ve resigned myself to not knowing flowers’ names I’ve managed to forget it already.

Luckily I’m a firm believer in Shakespeare’s “A rose by any other name would still be a rose.”