Wildflower bonanza

Now that we seem to have broken the back of winter (this has been, what, the second-coldest June on record or something?)...

...we're seeing wildflowers blooming in abundance. I took advantage of a rare sunny day last week and photographed some.

Here's my inventory.

Last-gasp holdouts of arrowleaf balsam root. These are definitely early spring flowers, so their time has come and gone.

Also a few last-gasp arnica, another early spring wildflower.

Daisies. Early summer is daisy season around here. I love this flower so much I had it in my wedding bouquet.

Clover.

Lots of clover.

Sheep sorrel (genus Rumex).

Ninebark. This time of year we have frothy bushes everywhere. Very lovely.

Triteleia, sometimes called Fool's Onion.

Wild roses. They smell as sweet as they look.

Honeysuckle.

Tufted elk weed.

This is neither groundsel (note the leaves) nor St. John's wort (note the flowers). My flower ID books are packed away. Thoughts?

Stonecrop.

Orange hawkweed, prettier cousin to the much-loathed invasive yellow hawkweed.

Snowberry.

Salsify.

Nine-leafed biscuit root.

Pearly everlasting, not quite fully bloomed yet.

(Its leaves.)

Lupine.

Wild strawberry.

Big-leaf avens.

Thimbleberry. This relative of the raspberry is perfectly edible, but very bland.

Wild mustard.

Vetch.

Yarrow.

Western blue flax.

Phlox.

Creeping buttercup. Lovely to look at in the forest, but NOT something I like in the garden. It can be very aggressive.

So that's our wildflower bonanza so far. Next to bloom will be the beautiful oceanspray. Yep, we're living in paradise.

At least it wasn't us

The other morning a sound woke me up very very early. It's something I'm conditioned to hear and worry about, even though (at least for now) it's no longer necessary, kinda like how I still snap to attention when a kid yells "Mom!"

I refer to a "moo."

You see, whenever I hear a cow "moo" -- especially around dawn -- I snap awake and wonder what's wrong. What cows got out, and how?

Sure enough, my instincts were correct. Behold, a cow where she shouldn't be.

Actually, behold many cows (and calves) where they shouldn't be.

These cows belong to one neighbor, and they escaped to graze on another neighbor's property.

I called the first neighbor, just in case he wasn't aware, but he knew about it and was getting ready to repair to breached fence.

Which, sure enough, he did.

At least this time, it wasn't our cows who escaped (since we currently don't have any).

But that instinct. It just doesn't go away. "Moo!"

C-c-c-cold

We're coming up on the first day of summer, and the weather around here has been nothing short of c-c-c-cold.

As I write this (5:30 am), it's 39F outside. Or is it 38F? You decide.

Yesterday and the day before, it was so chilly we lit the woodstove. In June. And boy did it feel good.

With daytime temperatures topping out at 49F, can you blame us?

Couple this scenery with a high wind, and you'll get a better (colder) picture.

The barn cat has been spending a lot of time in his cozy cat box in the shop.

Even the robins look chilly.

The garden isn't too happy. Despite all the peppy suggestions that certain seeds shouldn't be planted "until soil temps reach 70F" or whatever, I can't wait until late June for that to happen.

We have a couple warm days coming up this week, but the temperature swings are all over the place. I mean, look at the graph below. Between today and tomorrow, we'll climb 20 degrees. Between Friday and Saturday, we'll drop 20 degrees.

It just goes to show ya, you never know how a season will unfold. Life on a homestead. Roll with the punches.