Flora and Fauna

This post could also be titled "my field guide to wildflowers" as I love this time of the year when all of the first wildflowers start to appear. I'd love to sketch them all and put together my own little field guide to flowers of the North Shore along with my own footnotes about when and where they like to grow and other measurable facts based on my observations. Someday maybe. For now, this post will have to suffice.
{unidentified flower - do you know? - grows near my little garden in the woods}

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I have a few different wildflower books for identification purposes. Mum gave me this new one (below) for my birthday this year that I just love... I love the illustrations and the quirky information about the flowers. For instance, how certain native american indian tribes would use the flowers for remedies, in courtship rituals, to help with labor pains, to brew for tea, etc. etc...very interesting! There is also a mushroom book by these same folks that I'd love to have too!

I took heaps of photos over the long holiday weekend of flowers and plants. Perhaps in preparation for my wildflower guide? I just can't seem to help myself.
Above is "Spring Beauty"...a small little flower that grows low to the ground and sprawls all around the wooded parts of our property. Isn't it a pretty name?
Also last weekend, we took a lovely hike through the forest in search of flowers and morel mushrooms. No such luck on the mushrooms but I did notice many more beautiful wildflowers...Nodding Trillium, Wild Columbine, Starflower, Sessile Bellwort (a new flower to me)...and these pretty pink and yellow Tall Corydalis (below). And lots of Marsh Marigolds everywhere along the little streams we'd cross over...a plant that is also growing all over the wetter parts of our own property. I love how it sprinkles the ground with bright spots of yellow. The hike could have only been better if we'd found some morels. We once had a taste of fresh morel mushrooms a few years back when Hub amazingly found 2 of them while we were out on a walk when we lived down in the Cities. You would have thought we'd struck gold when we found them. And they were quite possibly the best thing I've ever eaten. So the elusive hunt goes on.
But we did have a feast for the eyes with gorgeous green ferns sprouting up everywhere during the more wooded parts of our hike.
Oh, and remember this sweet old flower book my mum gave to me last Spring? Well, she recently found a golden guide bird book for me too. She has her own little collection of these books going but whenever she spots one of them, she'll buy it for me so I can start my own collection. How sweet and thoughtful. And just look how neat the back cover alone is too?

And finally, the landscaping project is finished! We're having my folks up this coming weekend to see it...so I'm reserving any photos until they come up because I want them to see it in person first, for the whole "wow" factor thing. I know, I'm slightly nutty. But I'll leave you with this tiny little glimpse of part of it for now. You see, that's the big rock that Hub was finally able to dig up...it looks kinda smallish in this photo but it was so heavy we both had to roll it up the yard and into position. Ahh, so glad that's done.

~More Soon Friends!~