Flowers

A little cheer ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 4 Comments

 

Profusion
Celosia Asian Garden
Osteospermum Zion Purple Sun
Verbena Obsession Cascade Twister Violet
unidentified yellow flowers
Osteospermum Tradewinds Light Purple

It’s snowing here yet again, and not much has started blooming—mostly grape hyacinths and daffodils. For a burst of color, here are some more photos from last September. Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, maintains a trial garden where it tests hundreds of varieties of flowers developed by breeders. These, or most of them, are trademarked but probably not yet commercialized. My favorite name among these: Verbena Obsession Cascade Twister Violet.

A day at Pawnee Buttes ~

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Pawnee National Grassland
Pawnee Buttes
Number 658
Prairie flower
Prickly pear
Pawnee Buttes trail
Custom road sign
Bottlecaps, Pawnee Station Café

Last week a friend and I drove out to Pawnee Buttes, in the Pawnee National Grassland. This is on the prairie in northeast Colorado, not far south of Wyoming and Nebraska. It was a warm but lovely day. The grassland is beautiful: lots of miles on dirt roads; beautiful undulating hills; and the isolated buttes themselves. The only downside is the sheer number of oil and gas facilities out here, along with the accompanying truck traffic. In a time when it’s imperative that we phase out fossil fuels, I was discouraged to see the amount of fracking and other fossil-fuel extraction on this, one of our national treasures.

Gardens of Light ~

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Snowflake gate
Praying mantis
Puffballs and trees
Hollyhocks
Corn, pumpkins, and grapes
Tree with stars
Saguaros
Lily pond
Christmas gifts

In Fort Collins there is a small botanic garden, the Gardens of Spring Creek, that turns on the holiday cheer and becomes the “Gardens of Light” for a few weeks. This Christmas Eve I joined dozens of other people who were walking through the display, where of course plants are the main theme. Here you’ll find giant coneflowers and daffodils and hollyhocks, vegetable plots with pumpkins and chilies and carrots, grapevines, a lily pond, and even Christmas cactuses (though not Christmas cactus). Little kids were running and giggling and adults were snapping photos. It was a bit nippy—exactly 32 degrees—and I was glad to warm up my hands afterward with the car heater. Happy holidays!

A garden side note ~

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Verbena

Verbena

Balloon flower

Balloon flower

African blue-eyed daisy

African blue-eyed daisy

Purple dalmatian foxglove

Purple dalmatian foxglove

On October 13 in Loveland, Colo., the day before a hard freeze and a six-inch snowfall, the flowers I’d planted on the west side of my house were still going pretty strong. That was no thanks to me, since I’m a novice gardener and not strong enough or educated enough to do the proper things, like amending the soil and fertilizing. (All I know how to do is buy the plants at Lowe’s and plop them into the dirt.) But these flowers have been very forgiving of me for the past few months. I was especially surprised to see foxglove blooming in October. And even now, on October 24, after the snow and the cold, the verbena still has blossoms. Even if the perennials among these don’t overwinter, I’ve gotten my money’s worth of enjoyment out of them.

Nasturtium up close and personal ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 2 Comments
Nasturtium

Nasturtium

This nasturtium graced my breakfast plate at the Regis Café in Red Lodge, Montana. I don’t recall ever having been served a flower before. A fellow diner told me that nasturtiums are delicious, but I just photographed mine with my iPhone and then took it in the car with me.

Not scenery ~

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Some non-scenic sights from my recent road trip to Wyoming/Montana.

Bathroom mural and selfie, Regis Café, Red Lodge, Montana
Poison Spider Road, Casper, Wyoming. I wonder if there’s a lurid story behind this sign.
The crab rangoon at Bangkok Thai, Thermopolis, Wyoming, looked like stars
A nasturtium was served with breakfast at the Regis Café in Red Lodge, Montana
Cold grasshopper on sage outside the Wyoming Dinosaur Center
The Regis Café is located in the old Regis Grocery building in Red Lodge, Montana
The human need for decoration can turn almost pathological: cf. this wastebasket in the Paintbrush Inn, Thermopolis, Wyoming
Yellowstone crow. It kept moving around nervously, so it was hard to get a good shot.

 

 

Guanella Pass ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 2 Comments

 

Unidentified plant
Unidentified plant
South-facing slope
South end of Guanella Pass Scenic Byway
Foreground aspen
Asters
Aspen in sunlight

For this year’s aspen photos I drove the 24-mile Guanella Pass Scenic Byway from Highway 285 north to Georgetown. The road starts out gently on the south side of the pass and gradually ascends. The aspens were at their peak, and flowers were still blooming here and there.

Square Top Mountain, Guanella Pass
Looking northwest from Guanella Pass
Gray Wolf Mountain, Guanella Pass
Slope north of Guanella Pass

It was a beautiful Friday. These photographs show no hint of the sizable crowds at the Summit Overlook (elev. 11,669 feet); this is definitely “curated” reality. Something I’m learning about Colorado in 2018: There are now so many people driving the drives and hiking the trails that you must be a very fit person to find solitude in the mountains. Every trailhead I passed in eight hours of driving, from Highway 285 up through Clear Creek Canyon, had a pretty full complement of cars. A number of people were hiking the Square Top Mountain trail (below), which originates at Summit Overlook on Guanella Pass. It was an unusually warm day, probably at least 70 degrees at the pass and breezy.

Square Top Mountain and trail

Square Top Mountain and trail

Solitude on the high plains ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 2 Comments

 

Hairy golden aster and other flowers
Western milkweed longhorn beetle
Moon and hills south of Soapstone Prairie
Near Lindenmeier Overview
Rabbitbrush
Rocks atop fenceposts south of Soapstone Prairie
Mountain mahogany (mid-ground)
Unidentified flowers
Unidentified plant
Windmill and clouds south of Soapstone Prairie
Blanketflower

This afternoon I drove up to Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, located about 15 miles north of Fort Collins and about 10 miles south of the Wyoming border. The last several miles are on a very well graded dirt-and-pea-gravel road. I went to the north parking lot, where there was only one other car, and walked a short trail to a site that overlooks a former archaeological dig, now restored to prairie. This is some of what I saw. I’m still working on an identification for a couple of the plants. I’m also a bit puzzled by the rocks atop the fenceposts—are they decorative, or do they have some sort of significance I can’t read?

The sense of remoteness and the solitude were gratifying, very different from the isolation of being at home. It was a beautiful, unusually cool day for August and it was windy; my ears actually got cold. I was fine in a T-shirt but began thinking longingly of earmuffs; what a strange sight that combination would make! A hat or scarf would have done the trick. I want to return to this area soon with my Olympus and my binoculars.

Note: I have since learned that the purpose of the rocks is to divert water, thus preventing deterioration of the tops of the posts. Thanks to Michael Bliss for telling me this.

Some perspective ~

/ Marilyn Davis / 1 Comment
Mammatus clouds to the east, Loveland, Colo.
Duet, by Jeff K. Laing, Benson Sculpture Garden
Columbine
Salmon bowl at Tokyo Joe’s
North of Alma, Colo.
Cumulonimbus cloud building over Fort Collins, Colo.
Storm’s Brewing, by Jeannine Young, Benson Sculpture Garden

I’m keenly missing many things from Southern Illinois—besides my friends, I mean, whom I miss constantly. Maybe it’s time to tally up a few things I like about Colorado and Loveland, to allay a sort of disoriented feeling I’ve been getting lately when I ponder that I really live out here now:

  • Cool nights even on hot days.
  • Lilacs. The lilacs out here grow much larger and bloom much longer than they do in Southern Illinois. (I guess the cold nights agree with them.) The large lilac in my yard bloomed for a full month this May. And in Loveland there are enough lilac bushes to perfume the air for several weeks.
  • Rocky Mountain National Park. Now that U.S. 34 is once again open through Big Thompson Canyon, it’s less than an hour away. Also: The Peak-to-Peak Highway, which runs from Black Hawk to Estes Park, and the drive from Fairplay over the mountains to Breckinridge. I’m itching to do some mountain drives that are new to me.
  • The sky. Although I don’t see as much of it as I’d like to, I see enough to appreciate that the clouds are very interesting out here. If it weren’t for the fact that winters and summers are both more extreme out on the open plains, and everything so remote, I’d like to live out there. Since my house has no mountain view, I wish it at least had a good view of the sky. Fortunately, things open out just a block or two from home.
  • Benson Sculpture Garden in Loveland, which has more than 100 works of art, mostly bronzes, in a very pretty pond setting.
  • Aspens, of course, and columbines, with their lovely molded five-cupped centers.
  • Tokyo Joe’s, a “fast-casual” chain where I can get a big bowl of udon noodles, veggies, and wild salmon for $11.65. Oh, and New York–style pizza bought by the slice. Yeah, they have that here! I wouldn’t be my mother’s daughter if I didn’t mention food in some fashion.
  • No chiggers! As Calvin Trillin knows, this is never the least consideration in any list of  positive attributes.

That’s a start. More later, I hope.