This past Thursday I felt the need to get away from the computer and the shuttles and the beater, and we went up the mountain to commune with the forest spirits. Here in the Piedmont the rhododendrons are finished, but a little higher up they were still in evidence.
And higher still, we found some early mountain laurel. This one, not fully opened yet, had a cute little red bug on it.
At Craggy Gardens, the woods were deliciously green—that early young green—and we could still see other mountain ranges through the not yet fully leafed out trees.
It was high season for trillium. Wide swaths of them carpeted the ground.
Of course I took some tree branch pictures to put in my archives for future use. You never know.