Our family’s favorite daily dog walk is up the Jacobson Trail to Saddle Rock. We’ve been doing this most days for 28 years. It is often squeezed into an hour, with little time to stop and look at closely at one thing. This spring, my husband, Paul, stopped and snapped this photo of an arrowleaf balsamroot (Balsamohriza sagittata), and also of his shoes! This plant is situated in the middle of the trail, where early spring mud has resulted in people creating a forked path and somehow, an island of native plants continue to thrive, surrounded by compacted walkways. It gave me the idea to try and document how this single plant would change over time and I tried to always include my shoe.

As I walk, I often think about this resilient and wide-spread native plant, that is found throughout the western U.S at a wide variety of elevations. You can still find fresh flower blooms on plants growing at 3000″ in mid-June in the Wenatchee Mountain while the mid-June Wenatchee Foothills plants have already shed their ripe seeds. Read more about arrowleaf balsamroot ecology in Curious About … Blooming Balsamroot.

Today is Day 70 for my series. I invite you to scroll down through this set of 10 images, all of the same plant, but often with different shoes. Pick one flower, or one leaf, to visual track the change over time, from early spring into summer.