A storefront in Roanoke and what do I see? A pair of RUBY SLIPPERS just waiting for me. (I can do it too, my dear amigo Gar-ee!)
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Flip the pages of the calendar ahead to June and this is what you’ll find in some of my gardens. Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) is a wonderful flower to attract pollinators, and what better example to find than a Monarch Butterfly (Danaus plexippus).
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This one, the Six-spotted Tiger Beetle (Cicindela sexguttata), which I love to find along the trails up here. A lovely color. Metallic, emerald green, though some lean toward a blue-green.
A beneficial insect, consuming insects and other arthropods that are pests in our gardens and woods.
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Since autumn they’ve been waiting there at the ends of the branches. Waiting through the chill of winter. Biding time till spring. Now that spring is nearly here the buds are swelling.
Oodles of buds. Blueberry bushes in front of the cabin, in front of the woodshop, in front of the vegetable garden.
With just a bit of time there will be blossoms that will in turn become luscious berries.
And those berries will become pies, pancakes, muffins, toppings for cereal, sundaes, countless forms to delight.
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Snow this morning. First a nice slow gentle falling. Then lots of graupel that made the ground look like it was covered by exploded bits of styrofoam coolers. Then snow, snow, snow. Lots of snow falling from the sky. It covered the ground with a serious, measurable, inch of snow. The most snow we’ve had all winter long.
And now, as I type this I realize there is more snow coming down. Could there be more than an inch on the ground in the morning? Haha! Wishful thinking.
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The woods are full of small, soft yellow-green blooms now. Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) is showing off its flowers.
Spicebush, the larval host plant of the Spicebush Swallowtail (Papilio troilus) is a perennial shrub that often reaches to 15 feet, sometimes 20 feet. It is dioecious, meaning there are only male or female flowers on a single bush. It also means that the beautiful crimson berries that appear in autumn are only on the female bushes.
A lovely shrub to have growing throughout my woods.
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The delightful spring weather called to me today. Called me to come out. To walk around. Something that I love to do. And when I’m out I am always looking for something new, something that will reinforce my love of nature. Big or small, there is always something out there. Most of the time, that something is a surprise. Sure enough, I certainly wasn’t expecting to find blooming Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). But there it was shining, snow white, making its way through leaf litter.
Sometime later I walked past this same Bloodroot bloom and there was another surprise. The first Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens) of the season, collecting pollen from the soft yellow anthers.
Nature never fails to surprise me. There is so much out there to take in.
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Prickly Pear Cactus (Opuntia). Tucson, Arizona. Native only to the Americas, including a couple species that are native to the East Coast of the United States.
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Yesterday, just after noon a bird came by, surely on the lookout for its lunch. It sat in a Maple Tree which was thinking of bursting forth with red springtime blooms. The bird, a large one, a Red-shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus).
As it sat there, the birds at the feeders immediately realized the hawk was on the prowl, and vanished. I’m sure though, at some point it found what is was looking for. Lunch.
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Ice on a vernal pool. February 13, 2018. Perhaps a normal winter. What IS normal these days?
February 10, 2023. I miss seeing ice. I won’t even mention my feelings about snow. You probably already know. I miss going out for a walk in the woods and not thinking about spraying myself with an insect repellent. Those ticks are happy about the warm weather. They’re out there just waiting for me.
A dear friend two days ago let me know he encountered a snake while out tackling Rosa multiflora. He thought he wouldn’t see any snakes. It’s winter after all. And the high temperature that day? 70°.
This is one crazy winter, 2023.
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