I blame the Canadians.

Today’s new plant: yarrow, also known as milfoil - Achillea millefolium.

It occurs to me that given the amount of time I spend looking at and figuring out all the plants around here, it’s like my job or something. It certainly seems to be my work, in the sense of “life task” or “higher purpose”. Unless you kind folks want to send me a dollar, I guess it’s not actually my job.

But I digress.

This seems to be in the aster family. Asters take up pages and pages of my flower guide; the closest I can come to identifying this one is Panicled Aster (Aster simplex), but don’t count on me for this.

Let’s have another look at the shy little one just opening up:

There are still a few bluets blooming…

…but many have gone to seed.

So that’s what a bluet gone to seed looks like. Who knew?

The anemones are still in full force:

This, is a Hoplia somethingsomething, according to my hero on bugguide.net. In the general May beetle and June bug department. The anemones were apparently of great interest to the buggies of the world today. Here’s another one; look at this cutie:

HI, I’M GREEN!

I’ll be curious to see if anyone on bugguide figures out the green fellow.

This is also an anemone – just one whose petals have fallen off already.

The raspberries are flowering. Last year I had this whole embarrassing episode in which I thought these were mallow flowers. Oh, the shame.

One last iris, lurking behind the ferns:

The rest of the irises are humming quietly under their breaths…

“…we used to be pretty, once…”

The saga of the entangled ferns continues. I finally braved pulling apart one of the entanglements:

I believe the scientific term for this is, “ick”. To give you an idea of how much of this is going on…

…at least four fronds are infected in this picture. So my current theory? Fungus. When in doubt, blame the fungi. I was going to say, blame the Canadians, but in all fairness to our neighbors to the north, some of ‘em have pretty decent blogs, so I’ll try to be polite. Even though they’re basically taking over the world, and all. With their niceness. Shudder.

On the bright side, the wild roses are blooming.

Speaking of white petals and yellow naughty bits, let’s revisit the Oxeye Daisy...

I keep thinking of some kind of elaborate birthday cake, from this angle. Or possibly that amusement park ride where you’re strapped in to a little cage along the edge of a wheel and then spun around and around until you reconsider your decision to have paid good money for the experience.

The mountain crowfoot (Ranunculus allegheniensis), which we’ve seen before here, is undergoing this cool thing where some of the seeds are falling off the seed balls. Or are being eaten off. Or something.

Every present and accounted for on this one…

But not on this one! *Slurp”

The Solomon Seal berries are fat and happy. I wonder what color they’ll turn. I have no idea. I refuse to look it up in a book.

OH! THE FERN! This is so cool. I took a picture of a fern a while back that just looked odd to me.

June 2. It was the only fern of its kind I’ve seen, with just one little leaf per side, and curled up like that, too.

Well, check it out today.

WOW. Spores, and so forth, yes, I get that.

The False Solomon Seal berries are forming and they are TINY. Because of the overcast light, and the ever-so-slight breeze, and the fact that the berries are shiny, I had a hell of a time getting any close-up shots in focus.

…so you’ll just have to be patient on this one.

Our buddy was back.

As cute as ever.

Oh, to be orange.