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Dreaming
The weather is like spring rather than the winter that I love. I might as well be dreaming about the season to come. April, with a Confederate Violet (Viola sororia priceana) and a Falcate Orangetip (Anthocharis midea). Soon to be reality.
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What Season is it Anyway?
Though spring is moving right along, things got very confusing today, as graupel pummeled my mountain, off and on for several hours. But spring is here. Very soon Flowering Dogwood (Cornus florida) will be filling the verdant woods with creamy white blossoms. Despite today’s weather, spring is here.
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Sassafras Trees Are Dioecious
Seems winter has given up. Spring has won the battle of the seasons and is stepping through the woods. Right now, mid-April, Sassafras Trees (Sassafras albidum) are in bloom throughout the woods of the Blue Ridge Mountains in central Virginia. Creating a soft watercolor wash of pale yellow. Sassafras is a dioecious tree, meaning any…
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Tomorrow is SPRING!
Many of you know that I love winter, my totally, over the top, favorite season. But I also delight in the seasons changing. If the seasons stayed the same, day after day after day after day I wouldn’t be content. I think the world of CHANGE. Sometimes even Mother Nature just doesn’t want to let…
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Cutleaf Toothwort
A spring ephemeral, a perennial native to eastern North America. Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata). The “toothwort” of its name is thanks to the appearance of its rhizome. The Cutleaf Toothwort likes woods with mesic soils covered with lots of leaf litter. This certainly must be the description of the woods where I live. Many of…
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The Middle of March
It’s the middle of March and the first of my daffodils are up and blooming. Looking so lovely as they trumpet the arrival of spring. Don’t get too confident though you golden beauties. Mother Nature has a way of bringing surprises. Surprises like SNOW, even in the middle of APRIL!
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Hoarfrost
The cold temperatures of winter can create such works of wonder. Often so delicate they can’t be touched for fear of destruction. Occasionally the beauty makes me forget that what I am looking at, such as these rose hips of Multiflora Rose (Rosa multiflora), is something that I work diligently to rid my woods of.…
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Five Inches of Snow
It snowed overnight. Wet puffy snow has covered everything. I’ve been transported into a Christmas card waiting to be signed and sent on its way. It’s the second snow here this winter making winter seem a bit more like the way winters ought to be. The winters that I think of when I think back…
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In Praise of Blueberries
In my yard I’ve got a good number of mature blueberry bushes. Twelve? Fourteen? Enough that I can stock my freezer with loads of quarts of luscious berries to last throughout the year. And the birds? They’re welcome to their share. I love that the berries entice them. Of the birds that come to enjoy…
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Intrepid Daffodil
In the garden today – the intrepid daffodil. Sending fingers up to test out conditions. Or perhaps their bulbs are sending up periscopes to see if it’s safe. But for Daffodils things are just fine. They can take most anything. Even snow in late March. Tough as nails they stand up to wintery conditions. Surprise…