Time to stop and smell the wildflowers (but not the poison hemlock)

Note to self: it is a mistake to try to identify roadside wildflowers while driving past at 55 mph. Better to walk up at a leisurely pace, or at least pull the car over and snap a picture and enlarge it later to identify the unknown species.

Nothing terribly special: just a bunch of patches of white mullein blooming along the state highway. I love yellow mullein, which I will happily mow around whenever it pops up beside our driveway, but I don't recall seeing white mullein before. This year it's all over the place, its sturdy stalks hoisting white blossoms above roadside weeds. Really quite lovely up close, but not so easy to get close to on a road with an insufficient shoulder.

It's the season of tall wildflowers, from the gangly Queen Anne's Lace to the spindly chicory to the invasive and poisonous wild hemlock. Ironweed and Joe Pye weed stalks are poking up everywhere but not yet blossoming, and it's a banner year for daisies. I haven't been up the hill this week to see how the milkweed is doing--too wet and muddy--but my bottlebrush buckeye is getting ready to bloom and then there will be pollinators.

At home and on campus I'd dealing with various types of claptrap related to the project I'm working on for the provost (writing a manual and designing workshops for academic department chairs)  as well as the new role I'm taking over in August (chair of the Art Department, which will work fine as long as they don't ask me to produce any art). I could spend 25 hours a day writing notes to myself, revising drafts, sending emails about workshops, or fiddling with paperwork, but going outside and taking a look at what's blooming helps clear my head and straighten out my priorities.

Taking the camera along calms me and helps me notice details, but my Nikon is exhibiting signs of age or moisture or too many tumbles or overuse in marginal circumstances--or maybe it's inhabited by gremlins. At any rate it took me two days to find a way to download photos this week and then they weren't very good. Maybe time to start looking for a new camera? 

So I drive past tall stands of wildflowers alongside the highway and wonder whether I ought to stop and take a closer look and snap some pix, but the shoulder's too narrow and I don't trust the camera and then I've gone too far to feel like turning around. 

It's better, anyway, to walk slowly up to the wildflowers. Otherwise, all this beauty passes in a blur.

 

New hummy feeder--a Christmas gift--working well!