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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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Perhaps the Last Sighting for a While
Not really purple but raspberry red, male, and soft brown and white, female. A pair of Purple Finches (Haemorhous purpureus). Most winters I don’t see these finches due to their erratic and irruptive habit, thought to be connected to variations in the production of conifer cones in their winter range. Spring migration generally happens between…
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Raindrops on Bloodroot
At the backdoor today. I went out in the fog this afternoon looking for photographs waiting to happen. This one called to me. Raindrops on Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis).
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The Perfect Climbing Tree
Many years ago I would spend much vacation time at a wonderful home in southeastern Pennsylvania. There my best friends who happen to also be my cousins, Judie and Beverly, taught me that apple trees are the preeminent climbing trees. Perfect climbing trees for children. Apple trees are also great climbing trees for hungry bears.…
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American Woodcock
This morning returning from yoga I stopped several times to pick up cans that had been tossed aside along the road. A gesture that was rewarded, as my truck climbed the mountain, with the sight of an American Woodcock (Scolopax minor), slowly dancing across the road. What a joy to see! This chunky little speckled…
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Spicebush in Spring to Berries in Autumn
Right now, the beginning of spring, if you’re in the right place in the woods you’ll be surrounded by Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) in bloom. The woods appear to have been painted by a water color artist. A thin wash of butter yellow extending far into the distance. As the weeks move along leaves will appear,…
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A Bridge in Spring
A magical moment with her grandpa. Spring of 2016. A bridge over Four Mile Run in Bon Air Park.
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What Have I Done?
The cabin was built 30 years ago. Back in the day when I had very little concept of native plants. It was then that I planted it. And now I am thinking, “WHAT HAVE I DONE!?” There is a large hillside behind the cabin. Due to construction of the cabin there was absolutely nothing growing…
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Bloodroot in Bloom Now
The first of the Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) — up and blooming. A spring ephemeral native from Nova Scotia to Florida and west to Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Manitoba, that grows prolifically up here in the Blue Ridge. As the leaf and bud push up through the soil, that leaf will envelop the bud, protecting it…
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Recycling
It is not so much that our planet needs or wants our help, it is actually that Nature needs our help. This planet will keep on happily spinning around not caring about whatever might be on its surface for billions of years. But we humans have the responsibility to care for this planet, not for…