Archive for July, 2008
I spent the last week, from July 7 to 14, photographing gardens in Bend, Oregon and wildflowers in the Western Cascades. It was a very productive 8 days with repeat visits to some gardens I’d photographed last August and several new gardens that I’d been told about since then. On the days I was shooting gardens I started work at 5:30 am to take advantage of the soft early morning light before the sun rose above the trees. I took a mid-day break for breakfast and scouting locations, and then worked from about 5:30 pm until nearly dark. After returning to the place I was staying I had to copy all the day’s work over to my computer and back it up, so I didn’t get to bed until after 11 pm most days. That made for very long work days.
On Thursday I didn’t have more gardens to scout so I drove west to Black Butte and hiked to the top to see what was blooming. The photo here was made from the summit, with Penstemon davidsonii (Davidson’s Penstemon) nestled among the volcanic rocks and Mount Jefferson in the background. The view from the top of the butte is spectacular, with the three Sisters, Mt. Washington, Mt. Jefferson, Mt. Hood, and Mt. Adams all visible on a clear day. I photographed a number of wildflowers on the 4-mile hike, including two species that were new to me. One is a regional endemic, Penstemon peckii, that was fairly common along the trail. The other is a member of the nightshade family that I spied while sitting down to key out a lupine. I’d never heard of Leucophysalis nana, Dwarf Chamaesaracha, but recognized the flower as being characteristic of nightshades and was able to key it out under the former name Chamaesaracha nana. I’ve seen and photographed a lot of flowers so it’s always exciting to find something new.
Over the weekend I participated in the Native Plant Society of Oregon annual meeting in Eugene. We visited the native plant nursery at Mount Pisgah Arboretum on Friday afternoon, botanized on the trail to Moon Point on Saturday, and on Patterson Mountain on Sunday. Monday I stopped for a full day of hiking and photography on Iron Mountain.
It’s going to take several days of office work to get everything captioned and uploaded so people can see the images. But that’s going to have to wait as I prepare to head east to Christina Lake, BC for another garden shoot on Friday.
July 16 2008 | Native Plants and Photography | No Comments »
Our front yard garden put on its own fireworks display on July 4 with a riot of color and lush blooms spilling out over the sidewalk. We get a lot of foot traffic by our house, and the view of our garden above is part of what we share with our neighbors. While we aim to have something in bloom most of the year, early summer is definitely one of the peak periods.
I head out today for Bend, Oregon to visit and photograph gardens there for the East of the Rain, West of the Cold book for east-side gardeners. My contact list includes 25 gardeners so it’s going to be a busy week. That’s to be followed by a full weekend of botanizing with the Native Plant Society of Oregon around Eugene.
July 07 2008 | Gardens | 1 Comment »
A couple of days ago I went out to Lopez Island with a couple of friends to see what might be blooming on the open rocky bluffs along the shore at the south end of the island. There are a couple of public parcels managed by BLM, Iceberg Point and Point Colville.
We went to Point Colville, where there’s a trail through the forest from the road down to the bluffs. The woods are fairly mature second-growth Douglas-fir with a little Sitka Spruce. Woodland Tarweed and Twinflower were blooming profusely along the way. It’s not a long walk, and the area doesn’t get a lot of use. The photo is of a clump of Grindelia integrifolia, Puget Sound Gumweed perched on the edge of a bluff with Castle Island peeking through the morning fog in the background. We were blessed with this nice soft light filtered through thin clouds and coastal fog for most of the day.
The San Juan Islands are in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains so they are quite dry. It was warm and hadn’t rained for some time when we visited so the meadows were crispy with maturing grasses when they weren’t carpeted with the rather fragile Reindeer Lichens (mostly Cladonia portentosa ssp. pacifica). The most interesting plants were blooming in cracks in the rocks where their roots could reach down to cooler soil and little pockets of moisture. In addition to large quantities of Gumweed, I found a few nice clumps of Scotch Bluebells, a mass of Yerba Buena, and lots of Nootka Roses in their prime. The roses were growing mostly in deeper soil, often where they were a little bit protected by Douglas-firs.
We spent all day at Point Colville, never making it down to Iceberg. My friends were concentrating on the lichens while I sought out the flowering plants. I had hoped to find Opuntia fragilis which is on the island, but apparently not at Point Colville. My Pacific Northwest Wildflowers website has two galleries for the day — one for the wildflowers and another for the lichens. Browse the photos for July 2, 2008 to see them.
July 04 2008 | Native Plants and Photography | No Comments »
