The Wednesday Report

I had set "Free Bird" to the side, and not worked on it for a while...no particular reason, as I am enjoying it.  So last night I picked it up again - stitched several letters and motifs.  Here's my progress.

It's the first Wednesday in August - let's take a walk and see what we might find...

The delicate white flowers are Pacific Water Parsley (Oenanthe sarmentosa).  This native grows in marshes, ditches, pond edges, seasonally wet places, from near coastline to mid elevations.  

This is a Cut-Leaf Geranium (Geranium dissectum).  This tiny flower has been blooming since early May.  A non-native, it grows in disturbed soil. 

Giant Horsetails (Equisetum telmatiea) - you've got to love 'em.  They are so odd, they are cool!  Many species have separate reproductive and vegetative systems. The stems break away from the rhizomes making nearly impossible to eradicate the plants. They grow along creeks and streams other moist places.  These are old, old plants geologically speaking.  Equisetum are "living fossils", as they are the only living genus of the entire class Equisetopsida, which for over one hundred million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests.  Some Equisetopsida were large trees reaching to 30 meters tall.

Ah, Poison Oak - the bane of hikers, campers and all outdoors folk on the West Coast.  When we first moved to the country a bizillion years ago, we all got horrible cases of Poison Oak year after year.  Big itchy rashes - my mother would get it so bad she'd need medical treatment.  Thankfully, we've become some what immune to it over the years.  In the fall the leaves are vivid red and the berries are lovely.  I was always a bit in awe of my Shetland-Welsh pony - she'd plow through Poison Oak thickets without harm and even ate the plant with impunity.   

I found a nice clump of Field Mint (Mentha arvensis) growing in a ditch on our property.  My photo is not the greatest - the mint has rather interesting circular "balls" of blossoms along the stems.

Here's a bit better picture of Elegant Brodiaea - I posted last week or the week before (can't remember) and the photos left something to be desired.

The wild Honeysuckle continues to bloom...

Score!  I finally indentified these exhuberant pink flowers!  They are Slender Centaury (Centaurium x tenuiflorum). 

This forb/herb (a forb/herb is a non-woody plant that is not a grass) grows throughout our sunny meadows and with the daisies are the robust bloomers of late July / early August. 

That's it for our walk today!  Get outside and enjoy the day!