Anette,
I posted a response to this earlier today, but once again, my computer acted up and I lost it. I'm so sorry. It was a good post! :)
Anyway, DH fixed it when he got home tonight, so will try to respond again...
But not now. My back is killing me for some reason. It is making me feel sick it hurts so much. What the what the?
~Annie

Good Morning Annette,

I just love these pictures! I think you did a terrific job naming them. Seems correct to me.

I love the Oxeye Daisies. Daisies are among my favorite flowers. They were in my 1st bridle bouquet a l-o-n-g time ago. :) The Prairie Oxeyes are short little daisies and have tiny blooms, but lovely in their own right. I saw them in the Carolina mountains when we drove the scenic route one time. They were taller like yours. They just light up the forests with their friendly faces.

Lupines are Mother's favorite flower, as you know. They grew all over the arid foothills of the Santa Margarita Mts above our home in South Calif. There were Indian paintbrush, Shooting Stars, Mission Bells, yellow Johnny-Jump-Ups, Calif. Poppies, Red Sage (red native to So. Cal and N. Mexico) and Red Monkey Flowers, to name a few. The Yellow Monkey Flowers grew in the canyon with the tall ferns and Miner's Lettuce and Johnny-Jump-ups. The Shooting Stars grew at the base of the hills just at the edge of the Live Oaks near the canyon floor. I cannot recall all the flower's names. We kids called the Red Monkey flower Monkey's Blood flowers - we had all sorts of pet names names for the wildflowers. The Shooting Stars where we lived looked like a pretty lilac flower with a Bumblebee getting nectar, so I called them Bumblebee flowers. Your pictures brings back fond memories of my childhood home. Mother will enjoy looking at your photos.

Mother's entire family were wildlife and wildflower enthusiasts, as well as Rock Hounds. We would ALL go for treks up on the hills every spring. Grannie and her elder sisters and their families and all of us would hike up the hills taking only a little sandwich and a canteen of water. The older ladies all carried walking sticks or canes, and God help anyone who "accidentally" picked one of those pretty flowers. You would get a sharp thump for breaking "The Family Rules". I don't know how those old English ladies managed those steep and rocky trails (They looked like they could be sisters of Queen Elizabeth, especially my grannie). They would not allow anyone to help them either. "I can do it myself, thank you very much!", with a dour face that meant business. The incline was very steep, having to climb on hands and feet part of the way to get up to the trail. Grannie usually wore jeans, but her sisters usually wore light cotton dresses. They all wore big straw hats, tied securely under their chins. Cotton gardening gloves were also part of their hiking ensemble. You had to be on the lookout for rattlers, especially around the granite boulders where they liked to hide during the heat of the day. The trail was made by rabbits and other wild creatures, but used by the family, especially us kids...my Grand Aunt lived on top of the mountain and a few cousins and we lived in the canyon, so that was how we went up to visit her. It took 3/4 of an hour to climb to the top. (It would take me a day to do it now!) It was a narrow little trail, that sometimes zigzagged a lot, but we never stepped off of it or took a shortcut. That was against the The Family Rules.
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I got sidetracked....sorry.

The Common Camas is sure a beautiful flower! My goodness! Not so common looking though is it? The Death Camas - I remember those!

Oh, and those Columbines! What a beautiful orangey color! They are their best in the wild, aren't they? Look how tall and lush.

That little wild rose looks much like the one in my meadow, except it is pink. These here are thornless - has a few tiny prickles, but not anything that hurts to touch or grab you when you walk by them. Sweet little rose in every way.

I so enjoyed your trek out into the wilds.

Do you ever go out to pick the wild blackberries in July-August? Those in the piney forests taste so good to me. Of course, you do have to watch out for the bears who also happen to like them. But we never had any trouble with them. Those are the biggest, juiciest, most delectable blackberries. Just wondering if they grow there. Surely they do.

Thanks Annette.
~Annie

Annie, the spot where the flowers and mosses are is a large area of bedrock covered in mosses, right now it's very wet but in the summer will be crispy dry.
It depends on what kind of weather we've had as to what will be blooming. I would have taken some longer shots but there was garbage strewn all over, I was cursing mankind in a not very ladylike manner, DH said he thought it was worse last year, I thought it was worse this year. So sad to see such natural beauty treated with so much disrespect.
There was no sign of spent Shooting Stars so I'm thinking maybe they haven't bloomed yet. If that little rose was growing in a different situation it would get quite big but growing on bedrock has bonsai'd it.

There are only a few Death Camas left some idiot drove through where there was quite a large patch of them, all that's there now are tire ruts.
I'm afraid the way it's going this spot is going to be history in the next few years.

Wild blackberries, are you talking about those delicious very tiny little black berries that creep along the ground? We call them wild black berries here but I think they are actually something else. I think it was Glenda who identified what they really were but can't think of the name at the moment. We've got two other types of blackberries that grow wild here, one is very similar to the cultivated types and the other has sort of palmate type leaves, the berries on this one are not quite as nice so don't bother with them.

The tiny creeping type makes the most delicious pies but it takes forever to pick enough for one pie. The other one I refer to as the tame ones DH picks for me every August, last year I made blackberry vinegar with them and one blackberry and apple pie.

I just love hearing stories about your family, to have such a loving and close family is something to cherish and hopefully you have written these stories down for future generations.

Annette

That is a good idea Annette. I wish I had had my folks record some of the family stories...and I suppose I should too, at least the ones I remember. My mother told me that my great grandmother was tiny, considerably shorter than 5 feet tall, and my great grandfather was a very tall man, especially for his time as he was 6'4" tall.

When Great Grandmother would get angry (which might not have been too rare), she would go and crawl up into the corn crib and and hide there and until my great grandfather or the children came came looking for her, or until she got over her bad mood.

I always pictured this tiny lady crawling up and over and into the corn crib.
kay