Summer brings in a blaze of glory, and around here, much of the glory is in the ditches.

Our coastal plain is unique because the ancient sand ridges of old beach dunes that ring the coast sometimes extend inland as much as 50 miles, and are the high spots between bogs.

Often, in just the space of a few hundred yards, you can walk from a dry-land xerosphere of pine, turkey oak and wiregrass savannah, through impossibly thick and overgrown Carolina Bays, and onto marsh and boglands with a profusion of pond pines, carnivorous and exotic plants.

Keep in mind while you're walking head down along the ditches, admiring all the pretty flowers, that there are likely critters in the woods watching your every step - this morning's stroll showed that our tracks crossed those made by bear, deer, bobcat and otter - all fresh.

At the top, the spider lily - hymenocallis caroliniana - is found in wet woods usually near water, and often rooted in clumps in rocks in running water.

The 'habernaria' orchids are in profusion; in some places mostly yellow, other places mostly white, and in one place, what appears to be a pale yellow hybrid.

The stunning Southern Red Lily was found in the ditches along Tram Road near Trumpeter Swamp inside the Holly Shelter Wildlife Management Area.

The Venus flytraps are carpet thick in a very visible but completely overlooked habitat along the side of a major highway.

The bottom picture is an ant bridge.

When it rains a lot, the ditches fill up with water, and when the ground saturates, ants head for higher ground. 

When they encounter open water in a ditch they need to cross, thousands will walk out onto the water (surface tension holds them up) and link legs together to form a bridge that the rest of the colony can use to go back and forth to move the nest contents to the new location.