Today I took my daughters and we went to Cedars of Lebanon for the annual Elsie Quarterman Glade Festival. While it was raining and cloudy it was still a good day to get out with the girls. As my daughters have been developing a desire to spend time with me outdoors photographing the flowers we find, it is always a rewarding time even on a cloudy day. While we did see a few flowers, we didn't spend much time out in the weather since my oldest daughter has been recovering from a bad virus. But we did stop long enough for her to jump out of the van and get a picture of this Ox-eye Daisy,Chrysanthemum leucanthemum, growing on the roadside.

We plan on many days ahead going out and visiting various locations around the state and identifying wildflowers and taking photographs. We expect to find some we are unable to identify and hope to meet some new friends on this blog that can help us with identifications. Maybe some folks can even suggest some great areas for us to visit and find a good variety of flowers and plants to photograph. I know we will be returning to the glades on sunnier days to spend more time looking for many of the plants we heard talked about today. In future posts I plan to share some natural history on the flowers we find as I research and learn more about the wildflowers of Tennessee. I hope some followers will share additional information to allow us all to learn more about the fascinating world of plants.

We have a lot of flowers and plants to identify over the next 4 or 5 months. I will be slowed down a bit by some knee surgery I have to take care of and will probably miss 4 -6 weeks of prime time, but that will just make me more eager to stick to the therapy plan following the surgery. So over the next few weeks while I'm laid up I will share some of the plants we have photographed over the last few weeks.