Santamont Trail In Catherineville State Forest - Part 3

We'd hiked as far as I thought I could go on my bad ankles, so we turned around and began our trip back to the car (see also previous two posts):

Seamus looked healthy in his newly svelte body and Clover jumped up onto a rise to survey the forest:

But mostly we just trudged along. My ankles were becoming painful and, though the dogs could have gone on all day, they too had slowed down:

Clover and Daphne went off the trail to explore a rocky, mossy, wet area:

Seamus and Fergus looked noble:

Marsh Marigold, Caltha palustris, was blooming abundantly in the many wet spots:

And everywhere we saw the beautiful Painted Trilliums:

By this time I was slowing down and the dogs didn't seem to mind. They certainly weren't as full of excess energy as they were when we began:

The quieter, more leisurely pace of the return hike is more pleasant to me than trying to control five excited dogs at the beginning of the hike:

We were soon approaching the gravel road on which we'd parked. I called the dogs to heel, which they sort of do (except for Jack, and even he is beginning to get the idea):

Shadbush was blooming abundantly along every road and lane, but I never saw a single one in the forest. So I simply waited until we reached the gravel road to snap a photo of this beauty:

And a close-up of Shadbush flowers. But our hike was done and it was time to return home:

A Few Of The Flowers Of May

Things have been blooming since the month of May began. Apple blossoms, for instance:

And wild Violets in the lawn:

And my old-fashioned Bleeding Heart:

I couldn't neglect to mention the beautiful Dandelions:

And along three local roads I saw strips of white flowers:

Of course I stopped to see what they were and they turned out to be Large-Flowered Trillium. I'd been accustomed to thinking of Trilliums as a somewhat rare woodland plant, but around here they can be a roadside weed!:

And they are beauties, these flowers. Their common name is Large-Flowered Trillium or White Trillium, and their scientific name is Trillium Grandiflorum. Here's a closeup:

And not far from the Trilliums were these boggy areas of yellow flowers:

A little closer look revealed them to be Marsh-Marigolds, or Cowslips:

There is an introduced alien, called Lesser Celandine, which is easily confused with our native species. But Marsh-Marigold has more petals and slightly different shaped leaves. After much inspection of my field guide, I was happy to pronounce these the true native, Marsh-Marigold:

My Rugosa Roses have done so very well that I dug up some runners with shoots and transplanted them to the front of the house. They looked a bit droopy:

But the old-fashioned roses I transplanted last year by inverting a glass jar over them did so well that I decided to use the same technique, supposedly the way the pioneers moved their favorite rose plants with them as they moved westward. I needed a jar with a wider mouth for this one, though, so I inverted a plastic pitcher. So far, it seems to be working: