The Chocolate Lily is Blooming!

For years, lily looking leaves have popped up in one place in the woods but always get eaten off before I can figure out what they are going to be... if they survive. This year I put a cage on the little just emerging plant... and then smelly dog hair that I know deer don't like. And it seems to be working! Every few days I go down and check. It survived long enough to form a bud. And today, April 5, 2020, the bud had opened! The first ever Fritillaria lanceolata, Chocolate Lily, to have survived deer and slugs and bloomed in our woods! The thanks goes, apparently, to the smelly dog hair I draped around it.

 Another lily is begining to send up buds: False Lily of the Valley... There are lots of those, apparently not as delectable to critters as Chocolate Lilies.

The Sessile Trillium are beginning to think about opening...

While the Western Trillium are still going strong...

 The Bleeding Hearts are in bloom...

Cardamine never stop blooming, it seems, although the varieties take turns. This one has lots of basal leaves that look nothing like the flowering stem leaves. I call it Duck Foot Cardamine.

 Not blooming, but decorative: Licorice Ferns

 Bushes along the  creek beginning to bud... And from somewhere across the creek, I heard a Barred owl calling: "Who cooks for you? Who cooks for you all?"

 I also walked through the horse pasture, from where I recently removed the horses to let it grow back. Horses don't like lawn daisies so they are thick...

Happily, horses don't like wild strawberries, either, and there will be lots...

The Oregon Grape, also not touched by horses, is blooming now...

Relegated to mowing the grass around the goat barn, Nightingale takes a drink from the rain barrel.

It was a fine day for a walk through the property between goat chores. I brought up mint from by the creek that Johnny made into delicious mint tea. It was a good day, highlighted by that Chocolate Lily, Fritillaria lanceolata, in bloom.

Although I did not take photos again of the other lilies I'm hoping to see bloom this year, the Tiger Lilies, Lilium columbianum, they are popping up near each other under their protective dog hair. Today I counted twelve of them!

Happy spring!