Wildflowers

We have this patch of land on our property that isn't really ours. It officially belongs to the town, but it's been here forever with its beautiful stone wall and its graves. Oh yes, it's a family graveyard. Not our family. The one that originally settled this area as their farm. It's long since been broken up and sold off. 2 or so acres is ours, some of it is our neighbor's, and the vast majority is state land. Though you can go hiking and hunting and the like on it, we don't have many people do that. There aren't any paths that I am aware of through it.

Anyway, our piece includes the old graveyard. There's a civil war veteran and well as adults and children. All of them passed away in the mid to late 1800's. More than a decade ago, a fierce windstorm came through the valley and knocked all the tall pines in the graveyard over and onto the apartments/garage on our property. Plenty of the headstones were damaged, and the tree roots ripped up great swathes of land as they fell.

No, we didn't see any bodies or coffins.

Because this property technically isn't ours, the town takes care of it. By 'takes care of it' I mean someone comes maybe three times a year and mows it. They've mowed it once so far this year. It's back to being overgrown, but that's fine by me. There are lots of wildflowers in it this year which has made having a fresh bouquet much easier! I'm having a great time trying to identify these flowers. So far we have mostly hawkweed, what I've always been told is Indian Paintbrush, but lookes nothing like the pictures online. In fact it looks a lot like red hawkweed with just one head, and blue-eyed grass, which I'd never seen before this year. I grabbed some daises from behind the building at work and some orchard grass for its tallness in a vase. It's been a nice challenge keeping the pitcher/vase full.

Sunday June 15th firsts:

Garlic Scape

Wild Strawberry

Cultivated Strawberry

Today I'm grateful that growing season has been in swing for a month or so now, but harvesting has finally begun!