Walking with wildflowers
A photography walk for the soul
Dear Creative Soul,
Nearly every weekend from late July through to late October, we walk with wildflowers. Most of the time we walk in a bush reserve five minutes’ drive from our house, recording what we find each week. Learning which leaves poking from the ground belong to different orchids, and when to expect certain orchids to flower. After several years’ of these floral forays, we have a pretty good idea of what we’ll find and when.
A week ago, it was too windy for flower photography, but yesterday proved perfect, and so I grabbed my Canon DSLR and macro lens, and took myself off for a photographic microadventure - a new term for me, but one I like because adventure sounds so much more fun than a little walk (but can still be exactly that).
, who writes about the benefits of microadventures for mental health in the post linked below, says: “I’m lucky to live 20 minutes from the Lake District. A lot of my microadventures involve heading to a lake with my friends and with my dog. I go most weekends with my family and even see that as a little adventure sometimes. Microadventures are subjective. If something feels like an adventure to you then you’re already on an adventure!! It’s simple really!”
So, wander with me among the wildflowers of Don Shepherd Nature Reserve Trail and, if you can, pause to wonder at the the intricate detail and beauty of the flowers.
When we walk through the gate, the first flowers we spot are hibertia, simple shrubs with five-petalled yellow flowers, prolific in this patch of bush. You’ll see one further down in this post, but we often overlook them, searching for the more exotic blooms, much as we do the conostylis aculeata (cotton heads) flowers. Just a hibertia, we say. Just a conostylis. “Poor things,” I tell my husband. “They’re not just anything …” He smiles. We have a conostylis in our front garden, and onward we wander, passing trailing hardenbergia, a native wisteria that clambers over dead and burnt wood and winds around anything it can.
Moving on, we soon spot the first orchids, rising tall and proud. Today, in the spirit of microadventures, I’m keeping the words of this post short and sweet - I’ll let the pictures tell the story of my photography walk and go back to weeding my own backyard. This time of year, as the ground awakens from a cool slumber, you have to keep on top of the pesky weeds.
Enjoy!
Which one is your favourite? I love them all, but I’m quite partial to the milkmaids - they shine with a pure, simple beauty.
PS. I’m off to book a different microadventure - a weekend away in wine country.
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Such beautiful photos. Kangaroo Paw is such a novelty for me, coming from the east coast. I freaked out when I first saw them on a roadside near Paruna Sanctuary!
I loooove the milkmaids and the color of that jewel beetle is amazing! Such a beautiful walk and I loved to see the flowers 🥰 thank you! ♥️🌸✨