Category: Special Places

Anniversary

As I walked Nisqually yesterday, pterodactyl-like Great Blue Herons soared overhead, bringing with them a sense of deja-vu.

Suddenly the refuge had returned to its “original� state, at least to the state it was when I started visiting July 30th of last year.

Looking back at last year’s entries, the refuge was dominated yesterday by similar species, by Great Blue Heron,

Canadian Geese,

by numerous small shorebirds like these Lesser Yellowlegs.

I was surprised how right these changes felt though it wasn’t until I got home and checked this web journal that I realized it had been almost a year to the day I first visited Nisqually.

Last year it was the newness of Nisqually that thrilled me. Perhaps, then, it’s fitting that I didn’t see a single new species yesterday. Instead, it was knowing I had become attuned enough to the changes here that I recognized the completion of a cycle, a cycle that is older than the calendar itself, that thrilled me.

Of course, as one of the volunteers matter-of-factly pointed out, the reason the Great Blues had returned was that the water in the wetlands was low enough that they could easily find the small fish and polywogs that had flourished in the waters fed by fall and spring rain.

Sunrise at Mt.Rainier

Since Leslie had yesterday off we decided to go to Mt. Rainier. Naturally it was unusually cloudy when we left and it appeared questionable if we’d even be able to see the mountain, much less get a picture of it. Leslie wanted to go to Sunrise, though I would have preferred to go to the main park entrance. It turned out to be the right choice as the clouds seemed to part just as we entered the park entrance.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Mountain from Sunrise before but it certainly offers some close-up views of the mountain.

It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise, but it always does when I find glaciers

meeting flowers, competing to cover more ground than the other

and you wonder if the orange butterflies

were painted with orange Indian Paintbrush.

Defining Dahlia

I took it as a high compliment yesterday when Kenju said, “Now that photo defines dahlia!�

It did seem like a classic dahlia, even resembling the picture on the sign that greets the visitor to the dahlia garden.

What first appealed to me about dahlias was the geometric repetition of the petals as they open, a symmetry that’s found in most flowers but is carried to new heights in dahlias.

This white and purple dahlia seemed so delicately perfect in its structure that I couldn’t even imagine a way to enhance its beauty:

I loved this purple and white one just as much, but it seemed to better lend itself to an “artistic� enhancement that emphasizes its symmetry:

I’ll have to admit, though, a definite fondness for this less classical dahlia, one that also seems have a compelling appeal to bees and other insects:

Too Hot To Handle

Considering the kind of weather the rest of the nation has been having, I’m not about to complain about the weather here in the Pacific Northwest, but it reached 90 degrees again today and that’s too hot for me to think of doing much but trying to avoid getting any hotter than absolutely necessary.

So, after taking Skye for an early morning walk I decided to limit myself to taking pictures of the Pt Defiance Rose Garden. I know I said weeks ago that the roses were at their peak, and some early roses were absent flowers, but it’s clear that unlike many flowers here in the PNW, roses like the heat, as they looked radiant today, nearly flawless in their beauty:

Heretic that I am, though, I still spent most of the time photographing everything but roses. Perhaps my favorite flower was this beautiful form of a Tiger Lily

that stood nearly five feet high.

Now that the dahlias are out, though, it’s almost as impossible for me to ignore them as it is for the bees: