A walk in the woods –Northeastern Washington State.

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Early spring here brings buttercups first…sorry, this year those were covered with snow. Then there are usually shooting stars and dancing fairies, bluebells, yellow bells…sorry, those froze. Then come the camas and wild lupine, usually a sea of blue…sorry, we got nearly 90 degrees with 25 mile an hour winds that fried the blossoms when they were setting on. You are probably beginning to understand this narrative.
But, all is not lost. Nope. Come on with me. March and April were a dismal failure this year but consider May.

Wild Sunflowers, (Arrowleaf Balsamroot) everywhere. My mother used to tell us not to pick them cause they had ticks on them, but truth be known they were too stinky for the vase she always kept full of wild flowers we picked for her.

Wild hyacinth, just like tame ones only smaller. (They call them ‘wild’ but I have never been bitten by one.)

Kinnikinnik. I love this name, kinnikkinnik, kinnikinnik, kind of rolls off your tongue. Or if you want to bore all your gardening friends to tears, you can call them bearberries.

They are evergreen and have red berries in the fall. I have transplanted these very successfully around my rocks.

Meadow, various grasses, snowberries and weeds. The grass and weeds will turn a soft tan color by midsummer.

Oregon Grape. Barberry family, except the thorns are on the leaves instead of the branches. This is evergreen even here where it gets very cold. And Violets. A pretty combination. Whoever is ‘in charge’ of planting the wild flowers did a good job with this ‘arrangement.’

More wild phlox, these come in lavender, blue, pink and white and will grow anywhere…except in my yard.

I like pine cones; these are last years cones, with this year’s growth candle. Pondersosa pine.

These are called Prairie Star, Saxifrage family. The flowers are only about 3/4 in. across. Kind of cheery.

Thimbleberry, rose family. This was planted along with my alpine fir. The berries are ‘mealy, and insipid’ according to my wildflower book but the birds and I both like them. They’re a lot like a raspberry, only seedier.

This is looks like a serviceberry, sorry I don’t know for sure, the leaves are right but the petals are over long. These are little different than the ones we had farther north. We used to pick the berries for jelly. The Native Americans used to make Pemmican out of them, which was one of their staple foods.

Wild Strawberries are like tame strawberries, except sweeter and not bigger than a half inch. They make great strawberry shortcake if you have enough patience to pick them for hours and hours. My sister did. Here, the birds eat them without whipped cream, before they get ripe.

Fir trees and snowberry bushes. Snowberries have small pink blossoms and white berries in the late summer (duh, hence the name,) that stay through the winter. The birds and beasts eat them, but they are not recommended for human consumption. Eat a couple to cure an upset stomach but too many will make you wish you hadn’t.

“The Woods” belong to a family who live on the far side across this alfalfa field. We have his permission to walk and ride our horses there, but the area has recently been abused by people on four wheel bikes so the gates have been closed and locked. Yesterday lighting struck a pine tree down there and started a fire; we went down this morning to see what damage was done. The lightning peeled a three inch swath of bark from the top to the bottom of the tree. It burned about a half acre before the fire department put it down. It’s still smoldering a little this morning put they dug a fire break around it so it won’t spread, and we are getting some light rain.

• 14 Jun, 2009
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