A Yellow Sea of Poppies! -Woodland Walk Wednesday

Yellow Celandine Poppies & Virginia Blues have filled

 my little patch of Heaven with a golden yellow glow!

It's hard to capture how magical
my woodland garden path looks at this moment!  
During this time of year, in my little patch of Heaven,
 the woods are aglow with hundreds of Celandine Poppies!
These beautiful yellow wildflowers are in full bloom!

While the poppies are dominating the woods
right now, there are many other native wildflowers mixed in and gorgeous in their own right. 



 Bleeding Hearts, White Foamflowers, and Blue Violets



!

Pink Bleeding Hearts

 Allegany Foamflower

Some of the flowers along the path aren't so obvious!

They make you search to find their flowers!  Right now, its the Wild Ginger plants, and soon it will be the Mayapples!

Wild Ginger patch along the path.

Their heart shaped leaves hide little maroon flowers. 

This is the maroon flower of the wild ginger plant.

 There is only one flower per plant, 

it is small and close to the ground.....

 very hard to find unless you know where to look for it!

Although I like to plant new wildflowers where I think they will thrive and be happy, I often find they will eventually move
 where they want through seeds or roots!! 

Mayapples pushing up through the mulch along the woodland path.
Notorious for spreading aggressively by roots, these will have to be moved
 or they will be trampled.


The beauty of the natural garden
 is finding a balance between keeping some structure, but also allowing the plants to find new places to settle -

like nature itself. 

Surprised by a yellow violet nestled in between the rocks
 at the top of a wall. Violets are the free spirits of the native garden!
They can pop up anywhere- but I love them and happy
 to see them most anywhere. They are a host plant and source
 of food to many butterflies and insects. There are
 certain varieties that are much less invasive
 than the common purple and white varieties.

White Trillium- It's taken me years to finally have a variety of Trilliums
growing through out my woodland garden.
The deer love to eat these!

Jacob's Ladder 

I'll end this walk with a picture of the Red-Bellied

 Woodpecker. He was busy hammering away on the tree limb above me while I was busy taking pictures for this weeks walk.  I'm so fortunate to have many different woodpeckers take up residence in our woods! I've learned through the years how to tell them apart by their call. The Red-Bellied Woodpecker has a loud chu-urr, chu-urr, chu-urro. You can find out more about this bird by clicking on  the link Red-Bellied Woodpecker below.

Red-Bellied Woodpecker - He's about 10", has a barred

 black and white back and upper wings, with a striking red crown,

 nape and lores. This little drummer is a male.

  If you look closely, they have pale red-bellies!

  

Until next week!!

Tracey :-)