Pleasant Surprises

Buttonweed

Peppermint

Swamp Mallow

Graffiti artist

Ditch Stonecrop

On Monday I visited The Ridges in Athens and then stopped by Clear Creek Metro Park on the way home.  The theme for the day was surprises.  My first surprise was this beautiful graffiti drawn on a concrete pillar that was holding up an ancient water tank.  I am not normally an artsy person.  My idea of art is normally the shapes of the cut-outs on the outhouse door.  But what was drawn on this concrete pillar made me pause.  My hope is that this artist will find a forum to display their work in a more well traveled place than a remote rusty water tank.

My next surprise was a large mass of Buttonweed.  I didn't realize that it was such a butterfly magnet and that it was a native.  There were several Cabbage White and sulphur butterflies enjoying the nectar of this pink ground cover.

I also made it a point to visit the wetland area at The Ridges that parallels Dairy Lane.  Among the several things I found there was Peppermint and Swamp Mallow.  I remember the Peppermint from when I did my floristic inventory of The Ridges in 1994.  I do not remember the mallow being there.  I guess things change over time.

On the trip home I stopped in at Clear Creek Metro Park.  It had been awhile since I had spent any time there, even though I live only four miles from it and drive through it every Sunday on my way to church.  While I found several things blooming that were new to the One Thousand Flowers project, the one that I was most pleased about was the Ditch Stonecrop.  I sincerely thought I had missed out on this one.  The only place I knew for sure to find it was at Hope Furnace, and on my last visit there this wetland species was nowhere to be found.  To find it growing along Clear Creek was a special blessing.