June 03rd, 2022

June clearly is a time of Floral Bounty as Joy and I found out yesterday on our Photo Safari!  That's Joy in the photo above displaying yet another gorgeous field of posies!  There has been just the perfect combination or sun and rain lately to make even wildflowers go crazy!  I love it!
Because most of my photos this time around ended up being of flowers, I am going to call this the Wild about Wildflowers Hike. Mostly because I honestly am.
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I like all flowers, don't get me wrong.  Gorgeous cultivated gardens, annuals, perennials, potted gardens, be they flowers, veggies or herbs, I adore them all.  But there is something about the resilience and unexpected beauty of a wildflower.  Something that isn't tended to at all that still thrives and is beautiful, that just speaks to me.

We went back to Carlton, one of our local favourites that is so huge and has so many different trail options.  But now that we have entered the rainy seasons, more and more of it will be flooded and therefore untrekable, except perhaps by boat. And since we don't care to boat our hike, who knows how many more good hikes there we will have this year!  We take the opportunity when we can.

Of course we saw lots of things besides flowers. Of course!   But I'll show you a sampling of the many and varied flowers first. Sometimes it was just one errant bloomer in a bunch of grasses but there were also full fields of flowers!  I cannot begin to tell you how that lifts my heart and soul:

We had one unexpected party in our hiking group.  Joy and I were off in a whole other preserve that runs alongside the first and I was taking a photo in one direction, Joy in another when she whispers to me very softly, "stop". I froze (we are both well trained and trust each other).  I ever so slowly turned in the same direction she was facing only to see:

To our great surprise, instead of bounding away, as one would expect, she looked genuinely curious about us and very friendly.  We starred at each other not moving for a few moments and then we were shocked to see her take a tentative step toward us.  I think we both held our breath. After the second step forward, I made the mistake of raising my camera too quickly and it frightened her. Of course she bounded away quickly. But wow!  What an awesome moment.

What other critters did we see?  Well some birds of course.  Joy got far more and much better bird photos than I did.  There was a kite, a hawk, a warbler, a cardinal and some gnat catcher thing that I saw but did not capture.  But I did get a few photos.   We saw soooo many woodpeckers, y'all. Oh my Goodness!  I could easily have named this the woodpecker hike!  Please note, every dang bird you will see here is some sort of wood pecker:

And a few other creatures, all gorgeous in their own way:

And I suppose it's fitting to end with my favourite of all photo categories, the Rando Files:

So I reckon that's it.  The Wild for Wildflowers Photo Safari was pretty awesome.  I know Joy and I had a blast.  Let's see what happens next week!

It would be awesome if you guys could literally join us on a hike sometime!  For now though, this will have to do.  Hope you enjoyed!