Walk in the Woods

It's always good to get out in nature, take a break and explore. It was (as our grandmother would say) beastly hot yesterday and Tina came over. We decided to go down in the woods since we haven't taken one of our walks for some time. We barely got down the hill before we realized the heat was a little stifling, but we pressed on.

We were hoping for raspberries. They usually are ripe right around July 4 so we were a little late. Luckily though, we found some wine berries. I was surprised that Tina had never tried them before and we agreed they were almost better than the raspberries we had missed.

Wine berries are ripe when the berries are bright red as opposed to the black raspberries which, oddly enough, need to be almost black. The wine berries have a hairy covering over them which pops open shortly before the berries are ready to eat.

We located the trilliums & wild ginger that we had planted this spring, but the bayberry bushes will have to wait 'til some of the undergrowth is gone before we'll be checking them again. Besides, there are too many snakes in the deep grass near the stream! They are non-poisonous, but I just don't want to get close enough to confirm this.

After wending our way through the woodland path which was liberally festooned with spider webs I might add, we had to climb back up to civilization. In the heat, it was something of a challenge, but we came up behind the house to the couple of Mimosa trees which line the top of the hill behind our house. I always loved them in the morning because I would look out the kitchen window and imagine I was in Africa. Mimosas have the same horizontal look as the trees that are always shown in movies about Africa - Acacia trees, maybe?

The pink and yellow powderpuff blossoms are a jaunty addition this time of the year and their fragrance is intoxicating. Might make a nice color combo for a set of beads.

We were grateful to get back to the air conditioning, but certainly did enjoy our brush with nature.