Native flowers by the bike trail

Friday
We woke up this morning to clear blue skies, a very rare sight recently. However, temperatures are beginning to ramp up, and by Monday we will hit 96 F (36C) for a high! Today however was a pleasantly hot summer day, with plenty of sun. We ate our breakfast outside on the patio, watching the birds, then we got out cycling on the Little Miami trail, starting from South Lebanon. At the end of the car park, next to the road, there was a lovely bed of native flowers, so that was my blip sorted for Flower Friday! I wasn’t very familiar with the red flower - I think I’ve seen it before, but not known its name, but Mr Google came to my rescue -:it is apparently Scarlet Beebalm.
There were quite a number of people out on the trail today, though far from crowded. In some places along the trail, it was littered with quite a lot of tree “debris” from storms we had come through the other evening, and in one place there had obviously been a relatively small tree come down, as you could see fresh cuts either side.
We came back home for a few hours, and then went to the Blue Ash “Y” for a refreshing outdoor swim, followed by some time reading. I’m currently reading the American classic Huckleberry Fin by Mark Twain, a book I’ve always meant to read but never got round to. However, our next Book Club read is James by Percival Everett, which is a re-imagining of Huckeleberry Finn - told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view, so I thought it would make sense to read Huckleberry Finn first.
When we got back home, I got some ironing done, while Roger went out to pick up our camper/ travel trailer from the storage facility. We are leaving on Sunday for 4 nights at West Branch State Park, in the north of the state, east of Akron. Temperatures will be a couple of degrees cooler up there, and our camper has AC and we do have a shady site, but if we really can’t stand it we’ll just come home! We ‘re taking our kayaks and bikes, so we’ll just have to try and get out early before it gets too hot, and remember the sunscreen!
This evening we went out to eat at Bonefish Grill, and now I’m getting up to date with blips, then will do some knitting. Have a good weekend fellow blippers!