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Today, we took a short excursion up to the continental divide. Macdonald, Priest, and Mullan Passes. Picked up nine new flower species for the year. Blue Camas, and a white flowered version, Western Pasqueflower, Long-leaf Evening Primrose, Smallflower Penstemon, Slender Phlox, Streamside Bluebells, Western Meadowrue, and a few that the images were lousy. Still, very…

Silvery Blue (shown), Hoary Comma, California Ringlet, and Painted Lady. Sixteen butterfly species IDed so far. The wind has been making it hard to find many butterflies lately. These finds are from Mount Helena and Mount Ascension. The divide is liekly even windier- I’ll head up there soon, but not today.

This morning is off to a very nice start.  SMR, the Lab and I did a beautiful 60 minutes across the face of Mount Helena- lots of birds, flowers, peace and quiet, a couple of neighbors out early walking on the hill. Great way to start June.  I’ve been trying to get a decent image…

By finding this lovely flower, I have 56 flowering species in May, and 90 for the 2024 Wildflowering Season. Not a bad bit of wildflowering!  I have put in 137 miles of hiking across the hills in the Helena Valley in May- not too shabby all things considered. So that puts me at 346 miles…

The Scratchgravels continue coming to life as Spring unfolds slowly across the area. I’ve been waiting for the Rock and Canyon Wrens to return and today, I was able to find a lovely Little Rock Wren singing its lungs out. Lark Sparrow are everywhere along the Tumbleweed Trail and the Bitterroots are starting to open.…

Lovely early morning walk up to Wakina Sky. Happy birthday to my best friend and spouse, SMR! We found/heard/saw eighteen species of birds and twenty-two species of wildflowers- including this lovely Hairy Clematis, or Sugar Bowl. It was a terrific way to start the day.

Amazing early walk up Mini-ridge to the Helena Ridge Trail and down Emmets this morning. Loads and loads of flowers and two new birds for the year. Starry False Solomons Seal (shown), Blue Violet, Kinnikinnick, Sticky Geranium, Aster, Cutleaf Anemone, Monument Plant, and Ballhead Ipomopsis. Nearly every flower species we have seen since March is…

I love this flower and I have never seen it on the north side of Mount Helena. I usually make several trips to Mini-ridge over a two week period in mid- to late May to find this flower in bloom. I was slightly shocked when I found it on a lunchtime walk with a Lab…

I always chuckle when I hear this statement. Wildflowers thrive in the rocky, dry “soil” that fills in the cracks in the bedrock all aroudn the state. Then it snows on them. Then they bake in the sun and get windblown by our (often in excess of) 20 to 30mph winds. We should all be…

Forget-me-nots are popping up all over right now. This is one of my favorite wildflowers- it’s such a happy shade of blue. These beauties will start being harder to find over the course of the next few weeks, but for a while, I’ll find them from the lower slopes all the way up the Ridge…