I made note of this place last week on Facebook with a short video… it’s yet another of those sweet places not far from the Blue Ridge Parkway that so few stop to see. This is around a mile and a half up the Flat Top Mountain trail… it begins at the barn at Moses Cone Manor (at Milepost 294 on the BRP) and winds its way up to the Flat Top Tower, 2.7 miles away. A short jaunt from the barn takes you under a bridge on the parkway, then up along a fenced cow pasture and into the woods. At about a mile, the woods open to this expansive meadow. Summer is the peak time for wildflowers here, as you can see. There are also wildflowers in the woods such as fire pink and Virginia spiderwort… but here in the meadow, the sun-loving daisies, black-eyed Susans, astors, fleabane, coreopsis, yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, large clover, and many flowering grasses abound. One that is a standout to me is milkweed, seen here as a purple/pink cluster on long stalks… the clusters are made up of many individual flowers that are every bit as complex as orchids when viewed close. The part that’s interesting to me, however, is that the milkweed you see here, just one of some 140 species of milkweed, is so wonderfully fragrant, it makes the trip here worthwhile just to breathe it all in. Their scent is quite cloying if you sniff the flowers directly but diluted in a high-country breeze it’s intoxicating. In the video, I mentioned that it would make a delightful fragrance… but who would buy milkweed perfume?

That's Grandfather Mountain in the distance, where my wife, Joyce, is the hard at work as the state convener of the House of Boyd (long story short, essentially a Scottish clan) during the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games held every July in McRae Meadows... unless you prefer men in kilts, this meadow is prettier. I would be negligent if I didn’t mention that this is also a great place to photograph butterflies… though I believe you could have figured that out.