Anne Elliott's photos with the keyword: eastern edge of Rocky Mountains

After waiting about a year to get back to Bow Valley Provincial Park, to see the wonderful display of wildflowers, it turned out to be a very wet day for us. Everywhere was so green and clean and fresh and the flowers looked beautiful covered in raindrops. However, I completely forgot that water droplets cause blur in a photo - this is one of the only photos that came out that day, lol! "Many people find the wood lily irresistable and many a field of lilies has ended up in a vase on a kitchen table. Unfortunately, lilies do not respond well to being disturbed and once picked, the plant will not recover. In many areas, wood lily populations have been decimated by over-picking." From the link below. www.mountainnature.com/Plants/PlantsLatinNameResult.asp?I...

I went with friends to Bow Valley Provincial Park near the end of August, for a day of botanizing. They were searching for lichens, especially any ones that were new to them, but of course I had to get it a few scenery shots, too ; ) There are several trails one can follow in this Park, all beautiful, and this was seen at the Middle Lake trail. It is less than an hour's drive from Calgary west to Bow Valley Provincial Park, and it is a superb place for wildflowers, especially in June. Wish I had the courage to drive there myself, though it's probably not a good thing to do on one's own, anyway.

I only took a few photos yesterday, when I went with several others to Bow Valley Provincial Park for the day. These were birders, LOL, and they walk at a much faster pace than my botany friends! Also, most of the wildflowers have finished now, apart mainly from Asters. This park is well known for its amazing displays of wildflowers - best time, end of June. I always love the view across this small lake, Middle Lake, with reeds in the foreground. The sky darkened with clouds as the day wore on and my scenery photos came out dark blue and little else. I've adjusted colours, etc. in this one, so that you can actually see something, but still not sure now that I've got it right ; ) Was out for about three hours this morning in Fish Creek Park. Raining and cold - well, it's only 6C this afternoon! The average low for today is 7C, so that tells you something. I think the average high for today is 21C. I ended up having to drive to three different spots, all pretty close together, as I was just in too much pain to do a long walk at a fairly fast pace. Saw a few things including two handsome White-tailed Bucks, two teeny slugs on a post, and various birds. I hadn't been to this part of the park for ages and was shocked at the devastation caused by one recent storm. So many large trees had been blown down. I was relieved to see that the Great Horned Owl's new nesting tree for this year was still standing, but two trees near it had fallen to the ground. The young owls had used these other two trees when they were learning to fly, so I'm not sure if the adults will use this nesting tree next year.

It was the colour of this little blue spider that caught my eye when we were walking one of the trails at Bow Valley Provincial Park on Saturday. Saw a photo of what appeared to be a similar spider, and the ID given was an Orbweaver, but I could be very wrong : )