A Mouse and a Walk in the Woods

Design - "Quiet as a Mouse"

Designer - Birds of a Feather

Fabric - 28 count R & R Liberty Gathering Gray

Fibers - GAST - 2 strands over 2 threads

Started - August 2012

Completed - August 2012

Mousie turned out to be quite cute - big pink ears, a long curved tail, and long twitchy whiskers!

Many of you have heard of Jill Rensell.  She makes wonderful mats for many of the Shepherd's Bush pieces.  She also frames anything and everything.  Her latest post show what she has done with some of the many items Karen Page stitched.  What is so amazing is that Karen does all her stitching OVER ONE!  I am especially taking with her take on Cedar Hill's "Bouquet of the Month" series.  Take a look!

I am ready to go back to Crater Lake National Park.  Let's take a walk in the woods there.

Today we will gently stroll along the portion of the Plaikni Falls Trail that winds through the forest.

The trail is less than a year old and wide and well graveled.  No special shoes or gear required.

A small creek runs through a portion of the forest.  The sound of running water is pleasant to my ear. 

I'm not sure what this is - something similar to the Pine-drops (eight photos below), but it has larger 'flowers'.

The trees are covered with the most vibrant lime-green lichen.  They glow in the late afternoon sun.

Originally I thought this was a Huckleberry, but the leaf shape turned out to be entirely wrong.  Upon further review, I've decided it is a Fuchsia Flowered Gooseberry (Ribes lobbii).  I sure would have liked to see it in bloom.

This plant I did figure out.  It is Menzies' pipsissewa (Chimophlia menziesii).  This plant grows in well drained places in dense forests with rotting wood or leaf mold.  The Cree Indians used the leaves to help dissolve kidney stones.  I don't know if that was effective or not, but it sure is a pretty little thing.

The forest floor is littered with cones.

With the creek running nearby there are even some stands of ferns. 

Ocean Spray (Holodiscus discolor) is native that grows in moist woods.  It is 'Lewis and Clark Expedition Plant' - the explorers studied and documented the plant during their travels from Missouri to Oregon (1804-1806).

Pacific Bleeding Heart (Dicentra formosa) is happy in the deep forest.  It grows in damp, shaded places or near large rocks.   

Pine-drops (Pterospora andromedea) is a very cool plant that grows in the humus of the forest floor of mixed forests.  It is a saprophyte - an organism which obtain nutrients from dead organic matter.  Pine-drops live in association with conifer trees and Manzatina.  

Kinnickinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-uris) is a low creeping shrub no more than 8" tall.  Kinnickkinnick was used by Native American to create a smoking product, typically made of mixture of various leaves or barks with other plant materials. Sounds yucky to me, but I do love the name of the plant.

Let's take a rest by the stand of young trees.  We will continue our hike tomorrow.