Over the river and through the bog

It's not every day that I get a chance to engage in lively debate about the proper way to form the plural of "Jack-in-the-Pulpit." Jacks-in-the-Pulpits? Jack-in-the-Pulpits? We rarely have need for the plural at my house, but a walk through a park near my daughter's house demanded the plural form.

I took the long way north today just so I could get a chance to visit Brown's Lake Bog near Shreve, Ohio, right in the heart of Amish country. It was perfect driving weather, featuring the kind of blue sky and fluffy clouds that made the whole place look like a tourist brochure, with temperatures in the mid-to-upper 70s, just warm enough to make me welcome the shade in the cool wet woods.

Brown's Lake Bog is small and was probably more impressive earlier in the season, but even today the boardwalk led past thick stands of ferns unfurling their fiddleheads and bright red, yellow, and orange pitcher plants reaching their mouths toward the sky. Later, with my daughter and son-in-law and grandkids, we hiked at River Styx park, where the trilliums are still triumphant and the yellow warblers call and faithful Jack keeps standing in green, white, and purple pulpits. 

I'm sure all those Jacks in their pulpits will keep standing through the storms in the forecast for the next couple of days, but I won't be back to visit them in the rain. And even if I did, I wouldn't know what to call them.

Fiddleheads

Pitcher plants

running into the sunset at River Styx

towhee

time to stop and smell the...dogwood

a picture of contentment

here's Jack!

a whole forest full of white trilliums but only two red ones

what is this?