We discovered autumn and winter is no time to be in Boulder, CO. It's just too damn boring. Mixing in a dose of a tedious, boring job where most of the guests are no fun at all and you soon find you're talking to yourself. We began to ponder moving on.
After sifting through about a half-dozen job offers, we decided to move on to he southern coast of Washington. We suddenly found ourselves faced not only with the prospect of packing and moving, but also with hoping to find a few early spring wildflowers during a not very springy April. The disappointment we felt at missing out on some of those high elevation Rocky Mt. wildflower meadows would have to be assuaged with what few blossom we could find between snow showers.
It didn't look good. What made it worse for me was that I really wanted see Golden Banner, a lupine look-alike. It was at the top of my list. And again, as some of you know, when I find something I've been looking for, something I've been hoping to see with all my might, I break into one fierce botanical jig of joy. Last April, in the field of Chautauqua Park, overlooking Boulder, I was John Travolta tripping to light fantastic.
Golden Banner (Thermopsis Montana) does look like lupine. False Lupine is another of its common names. Thermos is Greek for "lupine," and opsis is Greek for "similar." The most obvious difference between them is in the
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