Category: Special Places

A Walk in the Garden

Most of today was quite cloudy and after nearly three hours of strenuous exercise I don’t think I would have been up to a serious walk today, so I spent an hour this afternoon at the Point Defiance Rose Garden once the sun broke out from behind the clouds.

As usual, I devoted most of my time to everything but the roses. I don’t know what this flower is but there were several of them in the bed by the front gate. Somehow it has a “wild” look to it that appeals to me, a little like fireweed, though more delicate than that:

Unidentified flower

Of course, there’s certainly nothing delicate about these lilies,

Orange Lily

much less these Tiger Lilies many which were at least seven feet tall and the size of my fist,

Tiger Lily

and this florescent red rose seemed to call me from a hundred yards away.

Red Rose

Ain’t it grand Beauty takes so many different forms?

Buggy

Today’s trip to Nisqually began with a shot of this Western Pondhawk,

Western Pondhawk

a real close-up of this little guy who seem as surprised to see me as I was to see him less than three feet from my shins, too close for my taste, and probably for his, too, as he backed up as soon as he realized I was there.

Raccoon

a shot of this female Common Whitetail,

Common Whitetail

a shot of this Cardinal Meadowhawk pair reproducing,

Cardinal Meadowhawk Pair

which was probably a good thing since the rest of the day’s shots were of rather large bullfrogs who seemed more interested in catching a meal than reproducing,

Bullfrog

and lots of swallows who seemed preoccupied with feeding the kids who’ve just left the nest.

Swallow feeding Chick

It’s definitely summer at the refuge with more swallows, robins, and, starlings visible than any other birds, at least while I was there.

Angel’s Rest

Although the view of the Columbia River from Angel’s Rest is legendary, the haze from California fires obscured it, forcing me to focus instead on Angel’s Rest itself. As a result, I focused my lens on the immediate beauty of this promontory,

Angel's Rest

rugged cliffs,

Climbers descending

twisted trees clinging,

Twisted Tree on Cliff

real-life bonsai,

bright splashes of color sheltered from shredding winds by rock slabs.

Yellow and White Daisies

To

Usually when you hike the 2.6 miles that connects Wahkeena Falls to Angel’s Rest you can count on solitude and an almost hypnotic shift from deep shade to brilliant sunshine, that and the comfort of relatively flat terrain, a welcome relief after the 1.6 mile climb up the Wahkeena trail.

Old-Growth Forest

Tuesday, though, I was also greeted by an outburst of flowers, apparently caused by our unusually wet Spring and last winter’s snowpack. Most of the flowers were ones you would expect to see in early Spring.

My favorite would have to be this Tough-Leaved Iris, a flower I’d only seen once or twice before in my many hikes here.

Tough-Leaved Iris

But there was a huge variety of other flowers competing for the hiker’s attention, too many to show. Here’s a brilliant yellow flower that I can’t remember ever seeing before.

Yellow Flower

There were even more purple flowers, the most abundant being this variety of Penstemon,

Penstemon

followed closely by the Columbine,

Columbine

and the far fewer Columbia Tiger Lilies were impossible to overlook.

Columbia Tiger Lily

Did I mention that I saw more Tough-Leaved Irises in this 2.6 miles than I’ve seen in my entire lifetime?

a bunch of Tough-Leaved Iris

On this day at least, the hike reminded me of the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon. At times the trail was obscured by the taller flowers, and I was forced to wade my way through flowers to keep going. If I still lived in Vancouver, I would be back up there today rather than sitting here looking into a computer screen.