Grouse Mountain Flowers

Above: Prunella vulgaris - Self Heal.  We went up to Grouse quite late - taking a bus, a sea bus (a ferry for non-Vancouverians), another bus, and a gondola/cable car... Public transport, for a Capetonian, even a New Yorker, is creepily efficient. Things arrive on time, to the minute. 

The last time we were on Grouse Mountain together Vincent asked me if I would consider spending the rest of my life with him. I said, Yes, I would. Wouldn't I like to think about it first, he asked. No, I said, I had already thought about it. 

That evening, in late October last year, our breath hung in clouds in the dark blue air, and early snow was on the ground. It was freezing. Now, in mid-September, the outlook is summery and Alpine with tall grasses, thickets of late salmon berries (like raspberries but bigger and shinier, and arguably better-tasting), blueberries, wildflowers and unfearful deer cropping the heads off flowers. 

These were so beautiful in the late sunlight. Like dandelions but a burned orange. Much Googling today revealed that they are considered a "noxious weed". And there I was stalking them with my camera. It shows how an unprejudiced (or uninformed) eye can see things... So, I like weeds. 

They are Hieracium aurentiacum - orange hawkweed, introduced from Europe, happy at altitude and loved by gardeners. So that makes me a gardener, rather than a botanist. An article in the New York Times is challenging the notion of the Exotic Invader...

  I thought it looked familiar...Hypericum - St John's Wort, with smaller flowers than the shrub we know, about the size of a quarter.

I still don't know what this is. I posted a thread on the UBC's Plant Forum. These were like everlastings with grey, furry stems and grew en masse on the slopes.

Yarrow. 

No-name grass, thick with seeds and very tall, about five feet.

Bokkies.

Baby bokkie.

These beers were growing on our table overlooking greater Vancouver, Vancouver Island and the Olympic Mountains in the distance. Surrounding tables were filled by a mixture of dressed-up diners straight from work and sweaty runners and hikers who had just done the Grouse Grind, an almost vertical hike from the bottom of the mountain to the top. Rewarding themselves with beer and burgers before catching the gondola back down again. 

  A remarkably fine fig and wild leaf salad. Cape Town's restaurant on Table Mountain could learn a thing or two from this one.