Evening Walk

Just the thing to clear one's head of the day's haze-----an evening walk----- and this one I enjoyed just a couple days ago, after the calf chores were done.

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First of all, this enchanting dappling of shadows caught my eye, prompting a quick dash to the house to get the camera. That goldish stuff in the tree branches is bunches of those helicopter-like maple seeds; there seems to be an overabundance of them this year.

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Evening light turned out to be the best for catching a clear photo of this columbine in the flower bed. I usually save plant tags and after a bit of rummaging, this one's was found, showing its variety name to be "Aquilegia", the color being "clementine red".

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I walked along our gravel road for a ways, scanning the ditch for the latest blooming wildflowers, one of which is Prairie Phlox, shown below. Their color varies from white to light pink to deep pink to lavendar. This one seems to be a mixture, and has some interesting companion plants alongside. On the right, in front of the phlox.......what is that?? Can anyone tell me? We have scads of them around here.......we call it "snake grass", but I've never yet found its official name in a plant book.

In a prairie wildflower book I have, the entry for "Prairie Phlox" includes this info: "The Meskwaki made a tea of the leaves and used it as a wash for treating eczema. Also, the root was used with several other unspecified plants as part of a love potion!...........Several garden varieties have been adapted from these native phlox species."

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Oh, my......getting way down in the ditch was required to capture this "Solomon's Seal" from this particular angle, with the end-of-day sunlight glowing in the background. The dogs had to join me there in the ditch, excitedly sniffing around.......they must have thought I'd found a critter they could chase! The consequence of my foray into the undergrowth was itchy arms for the rest of the evening!

The dangling Solomon's Seal blooms are just beginning to form. Last year, I took a look inside one of the flowers and found out where the name of the plant evidently comes from........the innards of the flower forms a very tiny Star of David or Solomon's Seal - like design! I would need a better camera with a macro-lens to be able to photograph it clearly, however.

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Well, I managed to climb out of the weedy ditch, dust myself off, and glance around in time to be amazed by this very colorful sunset! I didn't retouch the colors in this photo at all. (And, a bird flew into the scene just in time to be included in the top left corner of the picture........I could've cropped him out, but lacked ambition to do so.)

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I hope you, too, get the chance to indulge in an evening walk sometime very soon!!