Blooming at Thomas Mitchell Park

Here are some flower pictures from my camera, taken at Thomas Mitchell Park last Friday. I don't have good control over where the pictures are displayed on this page. I think you can figure them out: cutleaf toothwort (white with four petals), yellow violet (it's yellow), blue violet (I say it's violet, not blue), jack in the pulpit (the leaf that is bent over), a few fields of many mayapples (no flowers yet, but you can see the "lily pads on stems"). The picture of blue phlox/Sweet Williams and a morel mushroom are in my post from April 27, 2007. There were other flowers that were unopened, too. I am getting frustrated with the photo placement here, so I won't post those photos. Everyone ought to go to a park to see the spring wildflowers. They come but once a year, and your life will be richer because you saw them.

A favorite place for spring blooms is Brown's Woods. By the waterfall, we usually find trout lily (also called dogtooth violet) and squirrel corn, and sometimes Dutchmen's breeches.

Oh yes -- I am closer to having 100 finds. I found GC12B6M Fat Men Can't Jump and GC12D9AIf I Were a Carpenter today, for a total of 90 finds. I think the race to 100 finds will be a slow one, because my life centers around the ball park these days, and will continue to be that way until the middle of June. Hopefully, the weather will keep up the pleasant conditions for us as the ball season progresses. Nice weather also helps for geocaching.

I get my first delivery from Turtle Farm, our CSA, on Thursday - YAY! Asparagus (I have no time or patience for raising this on my own) and two baby tomato plants, Sungold cherry, and one basil plant, too. The tomatoes will go into EarthBoxes, purchased my first summer here, 2000.

The Race to 100 Finds

Finally the sky is clear! I found an easy geocache last night before a meeting. That was my quick fix. PhotoV5 recently said that she was at 99 finds. After I hung up the phone with her, I realized that I am not too far from 100 -- after finding two caches today, I have 88 finds.

For me, part of geocaching is about just being in God's natural world. So today, we spent about five hours in Thomas Mitchell Park just being. We tried to introduce a friend to geocaching at the park, but we found stage one of a multi-stage cache instead of a regular cache, so no immediate treasure. Rather anti-climactic.

My favorite spring time flowers are beginning to emerge. Spring flowers always remind me of my grandmother. She and I hiked in our woods and looked at flowers when I was young. I remember her talking about searching for mushrooms, but I don't recall ever looking for mushrooms with her or seeing any on our property. Here is a photo of what my grandmother called "sweet williams." In books, I see it listed as phlox.

We also saw a man with a lingerie bag half-full of morel mushrooms. We looked once last year for the fun of it, and were unsuccessful in finding any. The man let us hold and feel a couple of them. He said that he had looked for about two hours, and that he and his wife use morels in the same way that I would use button mushrooms.

We also saw frogs, tadpoles, birds, squirrels, and more flowers, some in bloom, some not. I was finally able to make my first report on Project Budburst for two Jack-in-the-pulpits (To use the project's terms, "first flower" -- ha! More like "only flower." I don't know that I have ever seen a patch) that my older daughter found, and for numerous patches of mayapple ("full leaf"). I've been waiting all month to use my gps-r for this.

I also made a track log a la _Fun with GPS_. I hope to work more on the track log next week. I just found out that student portfolios are due next weekend, so that means I need to arrange materials nicely this weekend in order to have the mail delivered to our portfolio assessor next weekend. As usual, business first.