It Got Wet
Such a pretty morning. Yeah, pretty foggy and pretty cold.
We'd had a couple of inches of rain here and then in the mountains several inches of snow.
Not really an auspicious start to the first week of summer.
But yeah, it definitely was pretty.
And as the mantra goes, we need the moisture.
Even though it was a very un-summer-like 4 degrees when I was taking these pictures,
the fog was dissipating quite quickly.
And this slough that was dry just two weeks ago, well, now it had water in it.
Things were pretty a little closer to the mountains too.
And actually a bit warmer and strangely drier.
The bugs were all wide awake and crawling around the roses.
The leaf miners were working their way through the aspens.
Fascinating little bugs these things.
And the wood lilies are in bloom.
When I was last up this way about 10 days ago, they were nowhere to be found.
Now they're everywhere.
Even though the roads were dusty and the forest floor barely damp,
looking at Jumping Pound Creek it was pretty easy to see there'd been some heavy precipitation up this way.
Flowers down here in the foothills, well, they seemed to be thriving.
Obviously the moisture had helped.
But I wondered how much snow there was, so I headed further up into the mountains.
And it didn't take long to find some.
A lot of it had obviously melted in the last couple of days,
but the ditches, the roadsides, the mountain slopes, they were all covered with it.
But vegetation finds a way to push through.
And with the help of the radiant heat from the sun,
they were popping through the snow banks fairly quickly.
Pretty sure that snow did them more good than harm.
I went up as far as the Jumping Pound Summit where I met this little guy.
That's not a chipmunk, that's a golden-mantled ground squirrel.
He was watching for cars.
Okay little buddy, I think we'll head back down the mountain now.
Yeah, that snow was melting pretty quickly.
And the water that had soaked into the ground from the rain was making it through to every little side stream.
They were running cold and running loud.
Back down on the valley floor I ran into this mama whitetail.
Pretty sure she had a baby nearby because she took off in a literal huff.
And not far from her, the highlight of my day.
This is my favorite little waterfall.
It's only about waist high, but it's been dry most of the spring.
Now it's running right full to the top.
I love this little mini Niagara.
And I love the bubbles that form in the plunge pool.
The spherical surfaces catch the reflection of the sky and the trees overhead.
Yeah, pretty cool.
And of course all that extra moisture really helps the flowers that grow right beside the stream.
And that moisture helped things like this coral root too.
It's a kind of parasitic orchid.
And bunchberry.
These guys are just gorgeous, they grow all over the forest floor.
And driving back out of the foothills and passing, well what was literally a damp ditch.
Frogs. Both chorus frogs and wood frogs.
Little bit hard to see among all those sedges, but yeah, they were singing away.
So even though the first week of summer started off pretty cold and pretty wet and pretty snowy.
Well, that's fine.
Because the mantra is true.
We really do need the moisture.
So for me at least, I'm kind of glad that it got wet.