When Life Gives You Orange

When life gives you orange, well... you have orange!

Orange is not my favorite color, but it's sort of interesting because there aren't very many flowers, and very few wildflowers, that are orange. Most of the ones that are orange are lilies.

The common "Ditch Lily" is always orange. It is not native, and a lot of people are trying to get us all to get rid of it, but it's so naturalized, I don't see that happening. All the day lilies are imports from Asia.

However, there are a lot of orange butterflies. This is a Northern Crescent. Google tried to tell me it was a Pearl Crescent, but my good butterfly book says Northern. They don't look THAT much alike. It's enjoying some Joe-Pye Weed.

Did you know that some kinds of baby carrots grow on tall stems?

You know I'm kidding, right? But I've never had Tiger Lilies before, so watching them color up and take days to open was sort of mysterious. These are also ornamental plants, imported from Asia about 200 years ago for gardens. There are some native orange lilies.

Here's a view looking up into the flower.

For one of the native orange flowers, here is Spotted Jewelweed or Touch-me-not. It likes to have damp feet.

I tried to make today be more calm. I did a good amount of editing, finished my LDN column for the month, started the third weed-through of the season on the rock garden, dug a little dirt in the moon garden where it was shadier- but there were biting gnats. If I can get my butt in gear to go get gas, I think I'll mow a little yet this evening.

See PFS 2019- Orange

1,3,5,5, and More

I showed you the yellow lily when the first blossom opened on June 19.

Then two more opened to make 3.

I forgot to get a picture of 4, but then there were 5 all at the same time.

I wondered if all 6 would open together. But the first one faded as the 6th one opened today, so only 5 at a time. Last year, it had 5 total. So this is the best year ever. Not bad for a flower that appeared in my garden and I have no idea how. Someone must have given it to me, or maybe even snuck it into the ground to surprise me.

I promised the Mason County Multi-Use Trail Committee that I'd do some scouting for a small section of potential trail route. Cathy went with me. Except for some pieces of what might be old logging roads, we saw a lot of this sort of thing. We didn't actually connect where we wanted to because there was an unexpected fence through the M-DOT property. From the other direction we gave up at a solid thicket of buckthorn and autumn olive, and possibly another fence. I might try again on a cooler day with a pair of loppers. Anyway, we bushwhacked for 1.6 miles and it took 1.5 hours. But I did collect some useful information, I think. Quite a bit of evidence of homeless encampments, although we didn't encounter anyone.

We went back to Cathy's for cold drinks and crunchy carrots. She also had a 300-piece puzzle set up. That was perfect! We easily finished it in one sitting, and I had been sort of hankering for a puzzle. It's called "Kitchen Garden." Such a fun, plant-rich picture!

In other news, I edited and did projects. Managed to get in the gardens a bit in the morning, and again late in the afternoon. This coming week is going to be a test to have time to work or do anything outside with the coming heat and humidity. But they say it may be the hottest of the summer. I won't mind being done with that.

Miles walked in 2026: 188.2

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