I'm usually alert to the presence of strange plants, gifts from nature that I hadn't recalled planting, when I look about taking inventory through the various garden beds. I had come across one plant that I didn't quite recognize and it was at that point mature enough that the flower head had gone into bud, so of course I left it. Yesterday the flower opened and I realized that somehow a fleabane plant had migrated to the garden. Delightful, actually, and I mean to leave it there.

False Solomon's seal flowering

Fleabane

Later in the day when we were ambling through the ravine, though I thought the flowering of fleabane was much too soon in the season, there in the woods we came across other fleabane in flower, so obviously not. But it wasn't just the fleabane that surprised us by its early presence. There are others in bloom as well. Buttercups, whose bloom seems awfully early to us, but there they are, dotted here and there at the edges of the forest alongside the trails, nicely flowering.

Buttercups

False Solomon's Seal is also now in full flower, just as woodland plants like foamflower are beginning to recede. There also, unusual for the offerings in the ravine, was a patch of wild geranium and its tiny pink flowers are delightful to come across.

There are some examples of shelf fungi that are truly impressive, growing on fallen tree trunks. The variety of the fungi, their colour, shape and texture is nothing short of fascinating. Worth a diversionary ascent down a bank and up again to get close enough to take photographs.

The ambient temperature is much cooler now, and wind shifts the cooler air around nicely, helping to keep the mosquito population at bay; not entirely, but to a good extent. What the breezes also bring is the soft, sweet fragrance of the blossoming dogwood and honeysuckle clinging to the wind and embracing our nostrils.

Spring phlox

Undergrowth on the forest floor is filling out nicely, lots of bright green bracken, the various types of ferns glorying in the season. We're also coming across delightfully colourful displays of spring phlox growing among robust burdock.

And along with wild strawberries in bloom the arching gracefulness of blackberry stalks are stippled now with their white blossoms preparatory to giving way in time to fruit to entice us later in the season.