I found a river crossing,

but it got over my thighs deep, and i had to turn around a third of the way across. And the water was so pleasant surprisingly not too cold. It had traveled ...how do you measure a river that meanders, as the crow flies it came from a lake 70 km away , Dezadeash Lake.
Instead I walked the banks and found indeed, some elf he told me, that the Platanthera obtusata, an orchid, is almost blooming

 Cross my fingers let her live.

I do spend a lot of time, positively identifying flowers, call it an obsession. getting to know their names.

What it is all about for me, is that every flower is an unique being. Some flowers/plants thrive anywhere, but some not, they need moisture soil, light temperature and who know what else, to be just right.

Like this  bog orchid, it just needs everything to be just so, otherwise it won't grow.

And walking for hours along that river, i was fortunate to find just that place where she thrives.

What i am trying to say

lets me/us be conscious of my/our actions.

When i sit here behind the computer, this computer is made somewhere, places.  from something,that was taken from places. It had to travel here over places.

places places 

one of those places might just that particular place where that one particular flower could grow.

Doesn't  every flower have the right to bloom?

And just what if my existence depends on it?

Let's always be aware which river we want to cross.

summer birth

 a new born Canadian Tiger Swallowtail!

And all sorts of summer today

a hummingbird

windflowers blooming

and me

tripping over 

blues

 butterflies

cross foxes

How awesome to watch some cross foxes

 here it was doing a leap in the air

while watching them for probably a half an hour, the bigger one was hunting all the time and made several leaps in the air. 

 they were aware of us watching, but we kept our distance, and maybe as luck had it, some talking bicyclists passed above them the same time we arrived, as we stood motionless . the foxes visibly aware of both us and bicyclists, but no way to flee, we blocked one way and the bicyclist the other. The bicyclist had not seen the foxes and kept biking, they being gone and we standing still, the foxes resumed their activities.

They did leave when we moved. We know there are fox-sized animal made caves in the bank below, and i once flushed a fox while hiking on the hillside above. One went in the direction of the hillside, the other, i think, just stayed.

 Later close to home we saw the elk...A few days okay i was telling someone about my saskatoon berries...how i often get a good harvest, as long as the elk don't trim the bushes...we'll see. I don't mind.

Bears

She/he, what always gets my attention, moves so much like a human.

This is the fourth bear now that i know off ( and at least two different ones) this spring that visits my yard, and this one is NOT walking past, but obviously crossing right through it. Yesterday i did discover she did find my buried compost. So burying compost doesn't work obviously.
I am already eating more peels then ever, have little compost, and i am not willing to give up composting. I am a real advocate of looking after my own garbage, instead of giving it to the government to look after it.

I read Charlie Russel's work again this morning, after the encounter. He tells us to build trust, but also not to feed them garbage. hmmm

I do like the trust thing, this bear appeared very friendly

Although (looking at the path she took i assume she was here yesterday) In the photo the brownish new green is a willow tree, it had a ripped off branch,(two inches diameter) and bear paw prints underneath.

Why the willow? bees? who are non-stop buzzing around it's female flowers that are blooming. the new green? the flowers?

As you see in this picture, my yard could be more open, less  stuff.  ( openness is one of the things i believe in to keep wild animals from liking my yard too much.

???????
 Don ( my husband) is not too worried, he believes they will move on when Nature finally will explode into good  food to eat. And yes vegetation seems a little sparse for the time of year, possibly due to drought and cold nights.

But what do i do in the meantime? I DO NOT want to habituate bears in eating garbage. For my sake, theirs and my  human neighbours.

For today i keep the compost inside.
These bears here didn't  seem to have touched my dry heaps of compost...
I always do wet composting, maybe i change to drying it, draining it from all water, having it dried up a bit before i bring it outside.
and eating eating eating whatever i can myself instead of creating waste.... peels are mostly quite healthy!

Green leaves!

Yesterday and today we finally had some rain, and slightly warmer temperatures, meaning the highs are not much higher but the lows were higher,  above zero celsius the last few days...i think.

Here and there a wash of light green over the poplar trees, the leaves are coming out.

And  finally flowers!

Today May 13, 2017
the bluff cinquefoil, ( Potentilla arenosa)

beautiful jacob's ladder 

yesterday May 12, 2017 on the top of the mountain, she might already have been blooming for a while, the douglasia

lower down finally a Northern jasmine, very tiny ones

and on top again , we found one blackish oxytrope

Empetrum nigrum

Today i fell in love with Empetrum nigrum
an empress
of course i always loved her
her freshness, her darkness, her locale
recently she did reveal herself to me
but today meeting her
in the wild
in full regalia
i was swept of my feet
i tell you, you do have to kneel before her
deeply
because looking down on her, you won't see her

let me introduce to you
the tiniest of tiny
the moss berry flower

soapberry flower

and more

 bear berry

  a lichen

moisture

It rained once last month, when i look for the data of Whitehorse, it say 7 mm precipitation for April  2017. That sounds about right for here in Mendenhall.
My heart goes out to the people who have too much water now.

It did snow here this morning, it melted and made the surface slightly mosit
and i did find a flowering kinnikenick in that weather, i snacked on them.

and for lunch amazingly i found some coltsfoot flowers, they taste very good, i blanched them.

and yesterday i am happy to say, i finally found a blooming townsendia ( i don't eat those). I have been looking for it to bloom for a month, but with the weather maybe dry and sunny, the average temperature for April 2017  +3 C

I am also still winning birch sap.

When foraging i always do take care to take little of what there actually is.

and something else i don't eat but is blooming;

a cotton grass and juniper and a moss