Wildflowers on Skyline Drive

While I was on the mountain last week, tuning in to the woods and outdoors, I started noticing the profusion of late summer wildflowers. There are the vibrant yellows of coreopsis and others, the reds of staghorn sumac...but I didn't get any photos of those.

What I did capture was this lavender bee balm variant back in the woods near an old apple orchard on Calf Mountain. We have the bright red ones at the Hawksbill Cabin, (past post for reference: http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2009/07/summer-surprise-2.html) but these were much more subtle and the were everywhere in this section of the trail. I lingered for a while to see if there were hummingbirds around - ours attract quite a few - but didn't see any in the few minutes I had.

Throughout the Park I noticed the thistles in bloom. I've always thought of it as a scraggly plant with two or three blooms. These were nearly shrubs, typically taller than me and often as high as eight feet, with dozens of blooms. They haven't gone to seed or I might have caught a gold finch or two; instead, there were butterflies - monarchs and swallowtails, as well as a constant buzz from bumblebees.

The thistle patch photos were taken near the trail head for Fox Hollow, up at the Dickey Ridge Visitor Center.