This morning, before the temperature got close to 30 degrees, we drove out to White Butte Trails and wandered around for an hour or so. We listened to house wrens and clay-coloured sparrows and I took photographs of wildflowers: northern bedstraw; Canada anemone; smooth blue beardtongue; and some western red lily, the provincial flower, surrounded by leafy spurge. I was happy to see the western red lily, but I was a little concerned about its future prospects, since leafy spurge, a noxious and invasive weed, will take over if it’s allowed to spread, and it doesn’t look like anybody is monitoring its progress.
One surprise: I saw a lot of June grass, something I didn’t think would be there. Cool season grasses like June grass tend to be outcompeted by cool season sod-forming grasses, like Kentucky bluegrass, which is everywhere at White Butte Trails and, despite its name, not a native grass species. I saw quite a bit of beaked sedge, too. Its dark green stands out among the slightly paler grasses, even though most of the flowers have been mown off.
When we returned to the city, we had coffee and shared a donut at Everyday Kitchen. It was a pleasant way to spend the morning.
