Thursday, May 17, 2018

May

Here is the "standard view" of the north part of the prairie today.  Arrowleaf balsamroot and geraniums are visible, and several of the shrubs are getting big.  I've had to mow in the foreground for cheatgrass.  There is a fair amount of native grass and various perennial plants and flowers there, but mowing doesn't hurt them and does knock the cheatgrass back.


So many of these plants take a long time before they bloom.  This balsamroot (below) took eight years before it bloomed for the first time last year.


In 2011, a Palouse garden tour included our property, and a person on the tour who lived near Kamiak Butte told me that she had camas on her property, and that I could collect seed.  So, that seed was planted in 2012.  The first camas from that seed bloomed this year, six years later!