A Wildflower Walk in South Woods

I was looking through my pictures and trying to decide which to keep and which to delete.  I take way too many, and it isn't possible to keep them all.  I save them on thumb drives organizing by person or subject.  I have an external hard drive that doesn't work anymore so I have tons of pictures I can't access.  I don't understand the cloud.  There are photos there but you have to pay if you store too many.  I used to save them on CD's but I don't have a computer with a CD drive any longer and some computers don't have USB ports so the thumb drives will be obsolete very soon.  Oh well, I'm getting to the age where accessing the pictures will soon be someone else's problem just like we were left with movie camera film which turns brittle and needs an operating movie projector.  We have recordings on Beta and VHS tape also that will never be looked at again.

This is the reason I blog and make hard cover books of the blog.  At least there is a hard copy of my life which includes a few pictures.  My daughter makes beautiful scrapbooks with her family memories that will also be there for the future.

Last weekend my daughter, her mother in law, our grandson and I attended a Wildflower walk through South Woods in Ripon Wisconsin.  It was sponsored by the South Woods Park Association and led by a former biology professor from Ripon College.  Before I delete any of the pictures I took, I will put some of them into this blog.

It was a beautiful day and we spent over two hours walking the trails in the woods and learning about plants that are often overlooked.  Many people showed up.  This walk is done yearly but this was our first time.  Its amazing what appears in the woods early in the Spring.

I have written about our grandson Ewan many times, and even though I may be prejudice, he is the most interesting kid.  It doesn't matter what it is, he goes all in.  He showed up with his walking stick (which he made himself), his rubber boots, a water bottle and his canvas bag which contained everything he needed.   He had a journal, a pencil and various items which may be needed for survival in the woods.

We started out learning about the bloodroot plant.  Dr. Wittler explained about the structure of flowers and how different plants survive and are pollinated.

Bloodroot

Ewan kept very good notes.  The instructor picked several of the plants to pass around.  Ewan somehow ended up being the last one to look at the plant and would then stash it in his book to press and preserve.  He told me that he didn't want to get in trouble for picking the flowers but as long as the professor had already picked them, it was alright to keep them.

Ewan with his mom and his other grandma.

We saw a lot of different plants and heard stories about all of them.  Dr. Wittler was a college professor for many many years, so he had a lot of anecdotes and stories taken from his experiences.

We saw skunk cabbage, hepatica, trillium, wild leeks, Dutchman's breeches, trout lily and spring beauty to name a few.

  Dutchman's breeches 

 

Skunk Cabbage

 

Wild Leeks (Ramps) 

 

Spring Beauty 

 

Trillium 

 

It was a great day.  We ended the tour with some information on some invasive species.  Someone found some Morel mushrooms which are a delicacy to some people.  Ewan even managed to go home with them.

There were a couple logs to climb and steep hills, but we managed just fine.  I have to admit, I was a little tired by the end of the day, but that kind of tired is good.  Fresh air, sunshine and exercise is a great combination.