{"id":8058,"date":"2016-06-01T21:39:18","date_gmt":"2016-06-02T01:39:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8058"},"modified":"2017-04-20T11:41:46","modified_gmt":"2017-04-20T15:41:46","slug":"old-friends-new-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=8058","title":{"rendered":"Old friends, new friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

A storm was coming. I had to hike early today to beat it, because I was going to do a tough trail.<\/p>\n

It’s one\u00a0I haven’t been on in many months. But my recovery<\/a> seems to be mostly over, and I felt ready to tackle it.<\/p>\n

The trail\u00a0starts out with a piece that climbs steadily but gently, and I hiked\u00a0that part a couple\u00a0times in May.<\/p>\n

The extension of the trail then goes up and up steeply, on seven sharp traverses across the face of a mountain. The elevation gain in that section is about 1,000 feet or so.<\/p>\n

\"up<\/p>\n

My best time for this hike is an hour and 15 minutes. Today, still trying to get back in shape, I was hoping to do it in less than two hours.<\/p>\n

The lower elevations still had lots of beautiful skullcap,<\/p>\n

\"IMG_5996\"<\/p>\n

but only\u00a0when I began the difficult upper half did\u00a0I begin to see other\u00a0flowers. Or maybe I just noticed them because I had to walk more slowly on the steep path.<\/p>\n

Well, not that I could possibly miss the FIRE PINK<\/a> in three places! I’ve\u00a0never seen fire pink on this trail before.<\/p>\n

\"fire<\/p>\n

There were a half-dozen lovely purple\u00a0spiderwort blooming – which I previously have only seen\u00a0once, earlier this year<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"spiderwort\"<\/p>\n

[Bad photo! iPhone doesn’t do well with purple flowers]<\/p>\n

Black cohosh abounds on this trail, and it’s already sticking up stalks with flower buds:<\/p>\n

\"cohosh<\/p>\n

The clouds were gathering. With the temperature in the high 80s and the humidity sucking at my hot skin, I thought a bit of rain might not feel\u00a0so bad.<\/p>\n

In rapid succession, three new plants threw themselves in my path.<\/p>\n

The first one, pale tubes with purple veins, was\u00a0a puzzle. The flowers look so much like gentian, but that doesn’t bloom until September:<\/p>\n

\"gentian\"<\/p>\n

Fellow naturalists tell me it’s probably\u00a0Penstemon canescens<\/em>, eastern gray\u00a0beardtongue. First that I’ve seen it.<\/p>\n

Just a bit further on the same traverse – the yellow petals of Sundrops (Oenothera fruticosa)<\/em>\u00a0gave me a\u00a0shock, so big and bright, laying on a rock as though to make SURE I didn’t miss it:<\/p>\n

\"sundrops\"<\/p>\n

It appeared\u00a0the stem of this plant had been broken by another hiker; but another two plants were still upright.<\/p>\n

This flower is in the same family as the Evening Primrose; it looks very similar, but blooms during the day. Another first for me.<\/p>\n

Finally, my eye was caught by the white of a flower curled up beside some poison ivy. I followed the stem as it curved around, to its heart-shaped leaves:<\/p>\n

\"low<\/p>\n

It’s Low bindweed, Calystegia spithamaea. <\/em>I haven’t seen this plant before, either.<\/p>\n

No doubt I’d have missed these new flowers if the rain had begun while I was hiking.<\/p>\n

I didn’t know their names on sight, of course. I don’t usually carry my flower guidebooks on trails because I’m too lazy; I take photos and notes, and look them up when I get home.<\/p>\n

Which gave me something to do when the thunderstorm finally arrived.<\/p>\n

Today’s penny is a 2014, the year that the extension\u00a0part of the trail was completed. My time hiking the whole trail\u00a0today: one and a half hours.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A storm was coming. I had to hike early today to beat it, because I was going to do a tough trail. It’s one\u00a0I haven’t been on in many months. But my recovery seems to be mostly over, and I felt ready to tackle it. The trail\u00a0starts out with a piece that climbs steadily but … read more Old friends, new friends<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[36,157,499,959,141],"class_list":["post-8058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tress","tag-36","tag-flowers","tag-hike","tag-mountain","tag-rain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8058"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8075,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8058\/revisions\/8075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}