East Ridge Trail in Montreat

We went for a walk on the East Ridge trail in Montreat last week. One area on that trail is so peaceful and beautiful with this lovely fern covering the ground on both sides of the trail which runs along the ridge of mountains of the Blue Ridge range. This fern is Lady Fern and it is this lovely bright green and very soft looking. Also on this trail we saw these pretty red flowers called Fire Pink.

The third picture is Chinquapin. This shrub is in the same family as American Chestnut. The Chestnut was once the dominant hardwood of our eastern forests. It has been wiped out by a blight. We still see some small chestnut trees here in Montreat but they never get very large because they are killed by the blight. The Chinquapin was once believed to be immune to the Chestnut blight but that is not the case and Chinquapin will likely suffer the same fate as the Chestnut.

Early summer at the ponds.

I took a walk to the Beaty St. pond today as well as the pond at Roosevelt Wilson Park on Griffith St. I saw this male Mallard duck and he was pretty friendly. I think he's used to people feeding him. Notice how dark green his head is. The female Mallards are more brown all over and lack the green head.

At the Beaty St. pond I noticed that the algae bloom is beginning. In this picture you can see bands of green on the surface of the water which is the algae beginning to form. As the summer goes on it will get much thicker. One thing that contributes to algae bloom is runoff from lawns and other places. The fertilizer on lawns gets concentrated in the water and provides food for the algae. This can be a problem for fish and other animals living in the pond. In this picture if you look closely you can see a turtle floating just under the surface of the pond. The top of his shell is showing as well as his head.