Your local wild plants

many of the ash trees in my vicinity are decorated with little signs that say “this ash is covered” or “be a smart ash” with info on the borer situation, and i don’t wanna tone police or nothing because it’s part of a really great local program to get ahead of the tree plague but the signs remind me of the joke about sean connery asking a lady to sit on his face. the trees are mostly looking okay though, hooray for trees!

one of the trails near here has a path that cuts along a hillside and crosses all these scruffy little gullies, and for a few weeks each year the gullies are crowded with mountain lupine blossoms, pink and blue and white and purple, up and down the hillside like flower waterfalls.