vituperation

Most of the pictures I post from hiking around here are sweeping vistas (such as there are from small mountains), cascading streambeds, and unusual or spectacular rock formations. Those are the big things that make hiking fun.

Today, the small.

On the off chance anyone wants full-size versions of any of these (I think some of them are actually good, but I’m biased), feel free to email me.

"You want a piece of me?"

St. John’s Wort is growing wild everywhere around here.
They’re awfully pretty. It seems like you can use it to treat some
mental disorder, but trying to find things like that with Google
just makes me feel depressed.

The blackberries are starting to ripen nicely.

Lizards are strange. Some days I see them everywhere; some days I
don’t see a single one.

The web tree

These days, I’m seeing more turtles than snakes, oddly.

Millipedes are all over the forest floor.

I love me some wildflowers.

An ant checks out my backpack when I stop for water.

I wish this picture hadn’t blurred. Whatever that is, it’s alive.
I won’t even hazard a guess as to sort of insect it is,
but it’s mighty cool-looking.

Like an itty bitty sunflower, but alas, it’s a daisy.

Wild petunias grow all over Monte Sano. Ruellia humilis, if you speak Latin.

Places to go, people to see. Move along now.

It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.

Sometimes I feel watched when I’m stopped for water.

I don’t know if this was a big fern with little fronds, or a
bunch of little baby ferns.

Many varieties of colorful shrooms around here.

Another visitor on my backpack.
Almost translucent, he was.

A deer tick waits on a weed for an unsuspecting host named Fred
to wander by. You wouldn’t believe how many of these things I find
crawling up my legs. I’m a tick-thumping champion now.

But, no matter how I check, I still find them when I get home.
This one’s on my sock, and made it up inside my tied-leg pants.

One from the butt of my pants I found when I was checking
them before putting them in the wash.

And one that made it into my calf. He doesn’t look attached, but he was.
Originally I thought you were supposed to put Vaseline on them to get
them to let go, but Google told me otherwise. You just grab them up
by the head with some tweezers and yank them right out.

Damn ticks.

Not impressed with his daddy’s ticks.