The Excitement of Anticipation

If you're familiar with the look of Snowy Thistle, Cirsium occidentale, when it's in full bloom, you'll understand why I've titled this post "...Anticipation."  Here we have a hint of the incredible bright red flower head that's coming soon.  This one was at Oakland Camp.  A little later in the season, you can find a great patch of these at the base of the Gold Lake Road in Graeagle.  The second photo today is of the Narrow-leaf Milkweed, Asclepias fascicularis.  This one is not quite blooming, and I found it near the above-mentioned thistle.  This species of milkweed attracts some of the same invertebrate visitors as the other milweeds, but also some that are species-specific.  I can hardly wait.  This species and also the Showy Milkweed, A. speciosa, are due to bloom within the next week, although some nature lovers who wander where I don't, might have already found some in bloom.  The Monarch Butterflies are here and restless, so they, too, are feeling the "excitement of anticipation." 
This next one is going to seem strange, for it's already in bloom.  The Checker Bloom, Sidalcea glaucescens, is in the Family Malvaceae, and it is easily confused with Farewell-to-Spring, a species of Clarkia, which is not yet blooming at this altitude.  The various Clarkias are in the Evening Primrose family, Onagraceae.  Checker Bloom has 5 petals and Clarkia has 4.  So, when Checker Bloom comes out, I anticipate the arrival of the Clarkia, and enjoy pointing them both out to my hiking guests as an exercise in paying attention to detail and finding significant differences.  I try to keep this on a level of aesthetic enjoyment and not sink to the level of taxonomic hair-splitting.  There's a time and a place for that, but not here.