Two or three years ago I saw my first pink wild beans in Erie (see July 23) and every year since I would go back to the same intersection and "visit" them. Today we were walking in the Occoquan Wildlife Refuge and I saw these, different kinds of sweet peas or beans. Back at home, (and after an extensive internet/wildflower book search) I discovered that these are the pink wild bean and the other flowers are the everlasting pea. See there is always a reason that I shouldn't be so cocky about what I (think) I know.
As a record, we saw lots of wildflowers I had never seen before (very exciting for me, not so exciting for the boys), including groundnut (which does not grow on the ground), and Virginia buttonweed. Several others I haven't been able to identify from any sources (maybe they are considered weeds?). We also saw huge stands of crimson-eye rose mallow and wild clematis. On the wildlife front we saw many tiger swallowtails, one black swallowtail (a first for me, as once again, I was wrong. I thought the black swallowtail was the one that was all black, but it's the one that is black with yellow bands on the bottom wings -- very pretty, but it flew too fast for me to get a picture.) We saw an osprey and a few cardinals. I also thought we saw a bald eagle, but then the boys spent five minutes arguing with me because they thought it was another osprey so I just gave up (but I really think it was a bald eagle).
