Summer's glory

Summer is in all its glory here in the Black Hills. The abundant rain has led to a profusion of flowers and greenery everywhere you look, even though we are almost into August! We are spending a week by Rockerville at Rushmore Shadows Campground. The purple flowers are bee balm (monera), the round white blobs are some kind of fungal growth under the oak leaves, the purple coneflower has a dark brown top, the white flower is a sego lily (its huge! and perfect!) and I took a picture of the very precious wild strawberry. When I ate it, it was like an explosion of strawberry taste; very lovely and sweet, unlike any strawberry I've eaten at the store. They are very tiny and hard to find, however. Ron and I have been picking wild raspberries; they seem to like to grow by the burnt downed pine trees in the fire areas. John came Sunday and prospected with us - you can see we found a little gold! I kept the fine stuff and he got the vial to show off. Ron took a pretty good picture of me so I thought I'd show it, although I'm squinting a little in the sun. This last picture is by request; for Ron's birthday in March, I gave him a quartz rock and a bunch of little metal figurines - a metal detector man, a snake, a cactus, a coyote, a wagon wheel, etc. Ron glued them on the rock and then melted solder in the crack by the metal detector man to imitate gold. It looks a lot better in person, you'll have to stop by and see it on the fireplace mantel.