Of Birds and Wild Flowers

Have you missed me? I've missed you!
We were on a mini vacation: birding in the Smoky Mountains with our favorite guide, Simon Thompson. Of course, we took a few detours and managed to find some outstanding wildflowers, mainly in the Joyce Kilmer Forest. I'll share a few pics with you:

I love the gracefulness of the ferns' fiddleheads:

Here is a lovely Jack-in-the-Pulpit:
Escargots, anyone?
We take this trip every Spring, but normally the Painted Trillium have just about gone by. Our Spring has been on the coolish side this year, so the Painted Trillium greeted us:
The bark of the Silverbell tree is lovely and inspirational:
This is the Trillium Grandiflora:
The only Bloodroot blossom I found......all of the rest had gone by:
Two Barred Owls:
This tree must have had a happy life:

I'll be back with fiberart tomorrow!

PEACE!!!!

Home Again, Home Again

C and I have been off on a pretty fabulous little birding trip to western North Carolina for the past several days. The trip was led by our good friend Simon Thompson of Ventures Birding Tours, Asheville, NC and we had the pleasure of once again staying at Snowbird Mountain Lodge in Robbinsville, NC. Here is the view out of the livingroom windows on Sunday evening when we arrived:

you may click on all of the photos for enlarged views! Yay Blogger!!!!

The weather was chillier than usual, and we had a bit of drizzle on Monday, but that didn't stop us, or the birds!


Simon is an incredible birder and also a very knowledgeable, giving and caring guide. We were mainly interested in seeing the migrating warblers, but of course there are all of the lovely wildflowers blooming this time of year in the Smokies, like this trillium:



Here you can see the forest floor just covered with Trillium Grandiflora:




Here's a closeup of the lovely grandiflora with a buttercup thrown in for good measure:



We had some good friends accompanying us on this trip, and we met a lot of great folks while we were there! As always our accomodations at Snowbird were fabulous and the food was incredible! I was never able to get online with my laptop, so no blogging and only sporadic email checking on their computer. It's amazing how attached I've become to the internet!

more pics tomorrow.............I hope!

PEACE