Friday, May 5, 2017

Adventure on the Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary Trail, April 30, 2017


Tom usually drives in front of me when we walk on the boardwalk.  On Sunday, I was soon far behind him.  There were flowers to see and pictures to take.

The boardwalk was damp and slippery because we had had four or five days of rain.  The soggy spots in the sanctuary were soggier than usual.


I hurried to catch up with Tom.  Rounding a curve, I saw him talking to a couple from Fletcher, a nearby town.  His tire was off the boardwalk, stuck in the mud.

This was a big problem.  While we were discussing options, another couple walked up.  They had come all the way to Garbry from the town of West Liberty.

Tom sent me back to the parking lot to get his walker so he could stand up.  That took me twenty minutes. But the walker wasn't a help because the boards were so slippery that his feet slipped when he tried to stand.  By then my legs were worn out so I handed our van keys to the man from West Liberty.  He went back to the van again and returned with the two floor mats from the back seat.  He was faster than I would have been.

Tom managed to stand and the two men, Jack and Scott, lifted the power chair high enough to get the wheel back on the boardwalk.  All told, the couples gave up at least an hour of their walking time to rescue us.  We were extremely grateful.

Despite the "adventure" the walk was a good one.  We saw new flowers blooming as well as some of the flowers we saw the last time we walked here.


Throughout the woods were large patches of Wild Hyacinths.


The trilliums were still blooming...Large-flowered Trillium and also Drooping Trillium and Sessile Trillium.

The Wild Blue Phlox were still showy, too.


A very few Blue Cohosh flowers were still hanging on.

 

The Solomon's Seals are blooming but a person has to know to look under the leaves to find them.


The dozens of Mayapples were easier to see.


It took a bit of looking but there were Jack-in-the-Pulpits sprinkled throughout the woods.


The Rattlesnake ferns were easier to see.  The fronds contrasted with the more usual leaves.


What appealed to me most were the blooming Sweet Cecily.


One cluster is not especially showy.  But there were clusters throughout the woods.  They were accents among the wild Hyacinths and Large-flowered Trillium and Wild Phlox.

One of the joys of having a macro lens on my camera is that I can see tiny flowers in great detail.




1 comment:

  1. You will have to take rescue supplies with you! I am glad you had some help! You captured some beautiful flowers! :)

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