Asheville Botanical Garden

 One day last week I stopped in at the very tiny but interesting Asheville Botanical Garden.  Not really a "groomed" garden, but more of a natural area where some specimens of native wildflowers and plants have been nurtured so they can be seen without leaving the city to go up in the mountains.  I guess that's the aim, anyway. A little bit of a river runs through it, so it does attract birds and some wildlife.

Cute little chipmunk kind of stalking an area where squirrels were going crazy for something they had found to eat on the ground.  It watched for a while, but then must have decided there were too many squirrels moving too fast to make it worth the risk to investigate further.

A "baby" house wren sat in the sunbeams on a low branch in a brambly area, patiently waiting for its parents to fly in with food, which they did often enough to keep it happy!  I stood and watched for quite a while, and in between bits to eat, it seemed to get sleepy and dozy.

There were quite a few wrens in this particular area where the baby was; I think this is one of the adults.

The garden has this really cool feeder tray suspended over the stream and a great location to sit and watch the birds fly in and out.  The cardinal and white breasted nuthatch were enjoying the bounty, and I also saw a song sparrow snacking.

Small's Beard Tongue

Devil's Bill (I thought this one was very cool!)

Just being artsy with these yellow flowers and the rocks.

Another one I'll have to look up somewhere; I couldn't find any identification of it.  But pretty interesting the way the little green "bells" grow off of the underside of the leaves.