We hiked through the lower hills and found conditions to be very dry.    Conditions were good, except for some wind,  but we also stopped to enjoy some wildflowers along the way.

A few wild blue flax (linum perenne sp.) were in bloom, always a welcome sight.

Cut-leaved daisy (erigeron compositus sp.) has been out for a while, but in the dry soils is starting to fade.

Tiny blue forget-me-nots (myosotis laxa) are easy to miss and hard to photograph.

Meadow death-camas (zigazenus venosus) was interspersed among the Thompson’s paintbrush.

Yarrow (achillea millefolium) was just starting to bloom.   It will prolific soon.

Pale comandra (c. umbellata) has had small buds for a while, but the flowers were starting to open in the warm weather.

We spotted a number of birds and insects along the trail too.

Yellow gromwell (lithospermum incisum) was flowering.    We tend to see it in the lower hills in the valley.

Fine-leaved daisy (erigeron linearis) was blooming in clusters on rocky, dry hills.

Alumroot (heuchera sp.) was spotted on some north-facing hills

Lemonweed (lithorspermum ruderale) was abundant in the hills and each plant had many small yellow flowers.

Thompson’s paintbrush (castilleja thompsonii) was abundant, especially in the sagebrush zones.

We have seen many pussytoes developing and we were pleased to spot some rosy pussytoes (antennaria microphylla sp.) in color.

And there were still a few small-flowered woodland stars (lithophragma parviflorum) in bloom, one of our favorites.

Little attempt has been made to provide botanical information in this post.   It is simply a celebration of nature, captured in a series of carefully composed images.