Not quite Stonehenge...

Yet. But something very amazing. This is the English equivalent of what we call jewelweed or touch-me-nots (impatiens cadensis). If you touch their seedpods in late summer/early fall, you'll be surprised by the explosion of seeds. I love these flowers. It's a ritual in the fall for me to go and find these flowers. Except they're orange and yellow at home.

Saturday morning, Greg and I went to a county park and met up with a bunch of Royal Society for the Protection of Birds people for a monthly bird walk. It was amazingly fun. A chance to get out in nature with a bunch of like-minded people. We had great conversations (interspersed with quiet bird watching, of course). And as always, for me, it was about the wildflowers.

As we first got out of the car, I had wistful thoughts about my yearly cabin trip with my chicks, and the jewelweed in Southern Indiana at Yellowwood. I'm missing out this year, I thought, with a twinge of homesickness. And thirty minutes later, there they were. Known as Himalayan Balsam here (impatiens grandulifera). So I gathered the kids round and showed them how to pop the seedpods. Pretty soon the adults were joining in. It was great fun, and quite a hit.

Later, one of the adults told me that the Himalayan Balsam is seen as invasive here, and the conservationists go out and cut them back a couple times a year. This, after we spread seeds everywhere. Oops!