Coming home through wild gardens...

Hazel Run is way out in the boonies.
Most of the surrounding roads are gravel.

This, for example, is our "major collector" :rolleyes:--the route that takes most of the traffic between our area and the closest "major" metropolitan area about 45 miles away:

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My favorite stretch! The bird song here in the early morning will knock your socks off--this time of year it's inhabited by multiple species of thrush :cloud9: :

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Hazel, it looks like heaven!

Debbie

Coming home to Hazel Run is like driving through a garden...you have to take it slow and stop frequently to enjoy it.

Yarrow--it's not native, but it's still quite pretty.
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Native lupine.
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This is the host plant for the Karner Blue Butterfly--federally endangered, although locally quite common.
'Taking' (destroying) habitat or butterfly without permission can mean huge fines,
so the Town maintains a License with the Federal Fish & Wildlife Service that covers us in case we accidentally 'take' while doing routine road maintenance...
The local power company and the County are also Partners in the conservation of the species--
the lupine habitat along the roads is managed by both.

Bird's-foot trefoil
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Another non-native that was (and probably still is) used to stabilize disturbed soil along sections of road construction. It's pretty, and persists, but doesn't seem to be particularly invasive...
at least it doesn't seem to spread much. :o

I'm guessing this is in the campanula family, but I'm not sure which species...
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They're so pretty...and so subtle. You don't really see them till you stop--
you just catch a hint of purplish-blue in the grass as you drive by.

One of hazel's favorite native plants: Butterfly weed

Right now, most of it looks like this:
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But in areas that catch a lot of sun, it's already in full bloom :cloud9:
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Some days there's more traffic on the road than others :laughing:
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We were both stopping to smell the roses, I guess. :D
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The road seems to go on forever.
As you travel, an Honor Guard of wildflowers stands at attention on both sides of the road...
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Eventually, you arrive at Hazel Run...




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...where you are greeted by an Honor Guard of a different variety. :D

Be prepared for slobber!

:laughing:

If you lived at Hazel Run,
You'd be home! :thumbs up

Love the drive to HazelRun :lovestruck: looks so peaceful & the gravel road makes it all the more inviting to slow down & enjoy the view.

The lupine & campanula are so pretty :cloud9: but the absolute best is the Pack :lovestruck:

Hazel, it looks like heaven!

Debbie

I have to admit that when I hit the gravel road, I'm thrilled to be there! After a day in town, the gravel road feels...right...and comfortable--sort of like turning onto my own driveway. When I hear the tires crunch over the stone, I know I'm getting close to home.

Living out here has it's challenges...no cell, no cable, no DSL, barely any phone service :rolleyes:, and we won't mention the ticks, deerflies and blackflies, but the beauty more than makes up for any of that minor stuff. :D Even if hazel were blind, the sounds out here are heavenly enough to keep her mesmerized... :cloud9:

Love the drive to HazelRun :lovestruck: looks so peaceful & the gravel road makes it all the more inviting to slow down & enjoy the view.

The lupine & campanula are so pretty :cloud9: but the absolute best is the Pack :lovestruck:
Yep, the Pack is the best part of homecoming! :flirt:

:D

Hazel,you live in Paradise,I am green with envy:laughing:
The Blue"Campanula"brings back memories,we called them Blue-Bells in Sweden.
I used to pick them for my mom,but they did not survive in a vase:sad:

picture prefect!!

to see a road like that with it lined with all those flowers and trees it would take me forever to get home :cloud9::lovestruck:

Very Nice!!!! Love a nice peacefull drive and The Honor Guard Is PERFECT!!!! :lovestruck:

Aww so nice. We have a lot of those flowers too. Haven't seen the Butterfly Weed though. The Campanula is in abundance here. I keep asking hubby not to whippersnip it. He keeps whippersnipping it. :frustrated: The wild rose smell so nice. :cloud9:
Love your drive home. Especially the end of it.

Butterfly weed thrives in sandy soil--something this area has a lot of. So it grows well out along the road. I have some in the backyard garden, but it only flowers every three years or so. :shrug: I think the soil is too rich for it. :o

chico, it doesn't surprise me that campanula doesn't do well in a vase. They just have a fragile look to them, don't they? So delicate! :cloud9:

And breeze...sometimes it does take me hours to travel that last 10 miles or so. :o

Hazel, Gary and I both love listening to the birds. We have several bird feeders and bird houses so we get lots of gold finches and some thrushes and morning doves that we love to listen to!

I love laying in bed at 5 a.m. listening to the bird songs outside. I find it peaceful; my part of heaven.

Debbie

TQ,the same here,I wake up every morning to bird-song,a great way to wake up...I just love summer:thumbs up

I keep coming back to the picture with the tree covered gravel road

:cloud9::lovestruck::cloud9:

so peaceful!!!!!!!!

Hazel what is thrush??

We've got a spring symphony here, too! :cloud9: I finally went out and bought CD sets of bird songs so that, even if it leafs out too fast to see most of them, I can at least tell what sorts of birds are around! :D We have 7 different kinds of warblers nesting within ear shot of the house this summer...and scarlet tanagers :flirt: I love them! Grosbeaks, buntings, orioles, the list goes on. Some year, mid-May, you should come on down for birdwatching. These days I do most of it from the deck, with coffee in hand! :laughing:

Today it's cloudy and when I just went out to hang a full nectar feeder, the veery was singing from the hazelnut thicket. :cloud9:

I keep coming back to the picture with the tree covered gravel road

:cloud9::lovestruck::cloud9:

so peaceful!!!!!!!!

Hazel what is thrush??
That is my absolutely favorite stretch of CF, breeze. It's a rustic road, but that's the only place on it where the maples still meet over the road. :cloud9: It really is heavenly...

:cloud9::cloud9::cloud9:

I can't blame you, I think I would stop and just stay there.

Oh, thrushes...

Most of them are brown-backed with spotted white breasts and flutey voices. I can't imitate or describe their voices except to say that they're heavenly. You have to hear them to believe them. :D One of my favorites is the veery. The bird can sing melody and harmony at the same time and the song spirals around itself....

Some thrush song spirals up the scale, some cascades down. Some are flute-like, some are more wiry-sounding. But all thrushes seem to be songsters. :D

Robins are a member of the thrush family--they sing nice, too. :thumbs up

Wow! Your pictures of the back country roads remind me of my travels to the family farm--so peaceful. :angel:

Great snaps Hazel. :lovestruck:

Thanks, klm! How far is the family farm from you? Do you get there often? :fingerscr

July

In July, the whole countryside blooms.

The goldenrods are just getting started...
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...and these beauties are in full swing.

A late-blooming lupine crouches beside the road:
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The right-of-way is speckled with wild bergamot.
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Skippers seem to make the most of the bergamot bonanza, but other butterflies frequent them, too,
as well as hazel's buddies, the hummingbirds. :D

The wild rose is still in bloom...
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...now accompanied by stiff-haired sunflowers.
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Flowering spurge gleams whitely...
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...against vibrant patches of butterfly weed, now seemingly in full bloom everywhere.

Harebell is still blooming strongly...
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...mingling with wild primroses...
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...and the first of the autumn asters.

Tyrol knapweed, nonnative, but still beautiful, adds another purple accent to the July landscape...
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...as does common milkweed...
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...while rough blazing star (sometimes called button blazing star for obvious reasons) promises a purple-hued August.
Within the week, the promise will be fulfilled and the blazing stars will be...well...blazing. :D

The harebell are my favorite :cloud9:

So many purty flowers Hazel :)

I seemed to have missed this thread the first time around. :o

You sure so have some pretty wildflowers down there :lovestruck: .....but you know, of course, that the Honor Guard is my absolute favourite. :cloud9:

Is your knapweed the invasive kind? :eek:

Love your last bunch of pics! It seems like we share quite a few. Love them as long as they stay out of my yards. :cloud9: Beautiful pics as usual.

WOW Hazel,all those beautiful wild-flowers :thumbs upMother Nature is definitely the best gardener of all and you don't need to do anything,just enjoy:thumbs up

WOW Hazel,all those beautiful wild-flowers :thumbs upMother Nature is definitely the best gardener of all and you don't need to do anything,just enjoy:thumbs up

Agree 100%

Nature also is a superb artist, providing color and beauty in all the right spots.

The harebell are my favorite :cloud9:

So many purty flowers Hazel :)

I love the harebell, too. I'm thinking of buying a flat of them to put out in my front yard...I gotta find out if deer like them, though. The local herd will be taste-testing anything I put out there... :o

.....but you know, of course, that the Honor Guard is my absolute favourite. :cloud9:

Is your knapweed the invasive kind? :eek:

I'm kinda partial to the 4-footed Honor Guard, too. :D

Not sure if the knapweed is invasive or not. It's scattered out along the road but doesn't seem exceptionally overwhelming. :shrug: I never knew what it was before I finally identified it the night I took the picture. :o

Love your last bunch of pics! It seems like we share quite a few. Love them as long as they stay out of my yards. :cloud9: Beautiful pics as usual.

I don't mind if they're in my yard...in fact, some of them are in my gardens. :cloud9: But then, we aren't very fussy about the lawn, either. :o There's a whole bunch of it that we don't even mow--and I'm moving wildflowers out there year by year...trying to figure out what will grow...and is deer-resistent.

WOW Hazel,all those beautiful wild-flowers :thumbs upMother Nature is definitely the best gardener of all and you don't need to do anything,just enjoy:thumbs up

My favorite kind of gardening! Hands-off! :laughing:

I can't take any credit for all the pretty flowers...they grow much better without hazel's moldy thumb, than with it! :D

Here ya' go hazel. Knapweed seems to be deer resistant.

http://www.gardenerscorner.org/subject051644.htm

My copy of the _Gardener's Desk Reference_ list the following as being deer
resistant: yarrow, baneberry, monkshood, agave, flossflower, alliums, aloe,
anemone, snapdragon, artemesia, butterfly weed, false indigo, marigold,
knapweed, lily of the valley, datura, chrysanthemum, foxglove, globe thistle,
joe-pie weed, spurge, ferns, blanketflower, heliotrope, lantana, lavender,
snowflake, lupine, mints, bee balm, forget-me-not, daffodil, primrose, poppy,
russian sage, flax, feverfew, yucca, hardy fuschia, zinnia, goutweed,
bugleweed, strawberry tree, barberry, boxwood, Mexican orange, rock rose,
smokebush, hawthorn, Russian olive, beech, inkberry, jasmine, mountain
laurel, Japanese kerria, bayberry, oleander, spruce, pine, rosemary,
germander, and periwinkle.

It also has a list of plants deer like.

I don't mind if they're in my yard...in fact, some of them are in my gardens. :cloud9: But then, we aren't very fussy about the lawn, either. :o There's a whole bunch of it that we don't even mow--and I'm moving wildflowers out there year by year...trying to figure out what will grow...and is deer-resistent.

Guess I should have said I don't mind if some get into my flower beds. Just don't really want them on the parts of the lawn where there is actually grass growing. :o Hubby has a habit of not mowing for a couple of weeks and it gets pretty decorative when he doesn't. :shrug: Believe me, there's still lots of weeds to enjoy. :thumbs up

The only knapweed I've seen growing here is alien. :o I'm looking for natives. :D

Butterfly weed, false indigo, Joe-Pye-weed, lupine, bee balm, and primrose! :thumbs up I can get those! :highfive: Harebell is also supposed to be untasty to deer. :D I've heard that coneflowers are only occasionally nibbled by deer. Anyone know if that's true? I'm hoping to transfer some seed from the kennel garden coneflowers to the front yard this fall :fingerscr

I am looking at my encyclopedia right now. It doesn't say coneflower at all in the deer resistant plants. But I have had mine planted for three or four years and the deer have never touched them. In fact they haven't touched any of the plants I have. They love the apple trees though. :lightbulb: Maybe that's what you need to plant. :D They come right onto the side yard and eat the apples off the ground. :cloud9:

Our deer love to munch mushrooms and eat acorns while watching the dogs carry on on the other side of the fence. You know: the whole "dinner and a movie" thing... :laughing:

Your mystery plant here:

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...and these beauties are in full swing.

looks like a variation of Spiraea aka meadowsweet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiraea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spiraea_japonica.jpg

This is one from my mum's yard:

This is the invasive knapweed we get in B.C. ......

http://www.invasiveplantcouncilbc.ca/invasive-plants-bc/invasive-plant-watch/spotted-knapweed

My favorite stretch! The bird song here in the early morning will knock your socks off--this time of year it's inhabited by multiple species of thrush :cloud9: :

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omg :cloud9: this is what I want , a road like this to get home , but with an enormous gate so no one could get through :laughing:

it's beautiful Hazel :cloud9:

Oh, crap! You're right! That's spotted knapweed, so I'll have to give the county a call. They seem to have missed that stretch of road. :o Spotted knapweed is an invasive variety that they poison to preserve the Karner Blue Butterfly habitat--that and the leafy spurge are the two main invasives that they come out to treat each year. I should have recognized it by the leaves... :o My bad... :rolleyes:

And growler, I think you nailed the mystery plant. I just looked up meadowsweet in my book and it's spot on! :thumbs up Thanks!

Frenchy, I've thought about that gate...and armed guardsmen...many times! :laughing: Oh, to win a huge lottery and buy a township! :cloud9: :p