Sheep Laurel

A couple days ago I wrote that the neighbor’s sheep laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) had bloomed. Well today mine did. A little.

Kalmia angustifolia

This plant is in the same genus as the famed mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), but that plant grows pretty much only on mountains, so I don’t see it that often. No mountains in my yard or within walking distance of the office.

According to Wikipedia, Mountain laurel grows from 3-9 meters tall. Sheep laurel doesn’t even come close to that height. The biggest ones I’ve ever seen are less than one meter tall. In spite of K. latifolia’s stature and fame, I think I like K. angustifloia better. In my opinion, the flowers are prettier. Also, it grows in my own woods, and that’s got to count for something.

The tricky part about taking this photo was that neither of my tripods are adequate for the job. I have a tiny little tripod that will raise the camera anywhere from four to maybe 8 inches off the ground, and I have a “standard” tripod that will put it at 30 to 72 inches. And of course these blossoms were about 12 inches off the ground. Too high for the tiny tripod, and too low for the big one. I ended up grabbing a rock out of one of the piles I dug up on Friday and lugging it over. Then I set the little tripod on that and was able to get the photo. A tripod was absolutely necessary in this case, because I set the exposure time to .3 seconds. That’s a long time to be absolutely still.

In other news, Va and I spent some time this evening laying out the Investiture program for Adventurers and Pathfinders. I think it’s going to go pretty well.

Also, I bought a couple of used external frame backpacks from someone who posted them on Craigslist last night. I think they were a steal. I only had a little bit of trouble finding the place. Tomtom was right on (which seems increasingly unusual) this time. The problem was that the one-way street where these were was closed due to construction. I circled around, found a parking lot within a hundred yards of the guy’s house, and hiked the last part. I figure if you can’t hike a hundred yards, you prolly shouldn’t be buying a backpack.