April Showers Bring-Birds?

Last week (4/9 – 4/14) we had several wet days. Since what we saw were showers rather than steady rain, I thought I might have a chance to get some photos of what happens here on showery days.

The hellebore are still going strong. I think they’re doing better this year than I’ve ever seen.

I wasn’t sure what the freezing temperatures we had in March would do to the Forsythia buds but as we see here, they didn’t seem to bother them at all. Their bright cheery color can be seen in large numbers on every street in town right now and I am always reminded how very different spring would be without them.

Siberian bugloss is also known as Brunnera macrophylla. It’s a pretty little plant that is blooming now. I first saw it in a local park and I’ve watched it spread over the years, but not to the point of being invasive. Plant breeders have come up with several different colors in the leaves, and all are quite pretty. Soon these plants will be loaded with flowers.

I love the deeply pleated leaves of false hellebore plants, which have just come up. They don’t look like any other plant in the spring forest at this time of year and that’s a good thing, because they are also the most toxic plant found in the spring forest, and people have died from eating them.

The white parts of these wild leeks look somewhat like scallions and taste somewhere between onion and garlic. They are considered a delicacy and are called ramps. They’re a favorite spring vegetable from Quebec to Tennessee, and ramp festivals are held in almost all states on the U.S. east coast and many other countries in the world. I found them just a couple of yards away from the false hellebores. Since both plants come up at the same time I like to show them in the same post when I can because people claim that they confuse the two, even though they look nothing alike. If you scroll up and down between this shot and the previous one I’m sure you’ll wonder as I do, how anyone could possibly confuse these two plants. If you’re a forager you should know false hellebores well.

Bloodroot blossoms will not open in the rain or on very cloudy days but this day was overcast and bright, so they were open or opening when I got there. “There” was an unexpected place; right along the rail trail I used to walk as a boy. Trains were running then though, and I can’t ever remember seeing a bloodroot along the tracks. I’m pretty sure the railroad used herbicides to keep the weeds (and flowers) down. Anyhow, I was lucky to have an overcast sky because the fine veins in bloodroot petals just disappear in sunshine. These are one of our most beautiful spring ephemeral flowers, here for just a short time. Their common name comes from the blood red sap found in their roots, which Native Americans once used to paint both themselves and their horses.

Every now and then the sun would break through the clouds, but not often. I was glad to see it lighting up these myrtle flowers one day. This is one of the old “shared” plants that passed from neighbor to neighbor in the early 1800s. Along with lilacs, peonies, iris, and orange daylilies it’s a plant that you find out in the middle of nowhere growing beside old cellar holes. After 200 years of growing on their own the plants still bloom as if the house was still standing and they were still being tended.

There is a big difference between looking and actually seeing, and if we just stop for a moment beautiful things like raindrops on lupine leaves can show us that difference. As Henry David Thoreau once said: It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

I like the dark, loose flowers on this hyacinth. I used to know its name but that doesn’t matter. It’s a beautiful thing and so different from other hyacinths.

Tulips are up and blooming. These small red ones are the first I’ve seen but there are lots more coming.

Ornamental cherry trees just started blossoming. These are the first I’ve seen. We have mostly white and pink.

The magnolias are blooming beautifully this year but you can find frost burns here and there on them if you look closely.

Petals had fallen from another pure white magnolia blossom so I could see into its heart. It was as beautiful without its petals as it was with them.

One day I decided to go to the wetlands because nature seems to be really humming there lately. I sometimes stop at this picnic table to see if I can get a feel for what’s going on. There is a road to the immediate right out of view and on the day this photo was taken my car was parked on the other side of it so I wouldn’t have to go far if it rained.

I met a common grackle on the picnic table one showery day. “Mind if I sit with you?” I asked. It didn’t answer but apparently it did mind because it flew up and landed on a branch. Last time I saw it, it was high up in the top of a pine tree.

After I had sat on the picnic table for a while a cute little yellow bird landed in a bush beside it. “Look at my full belly,” it said. “Yes I see,” I replied. “It looks like you’ve had plenty to eat. You look almost like a pear with wings.”

The little bird had to smile at the thought of itself as a flying pear. Though it didn’t introduce itself I think it might have been a palm warbler, but I can never be 100% certain with birds. I don’t know why anything with the word “palm” in its name would be in New Hampshire in April but that’s what Google lens says. If it’s wrong I hope someone will let me know.

An eastern phoebe (I think) landed on a cattail in front of me, looking thin and forlorn. “I wish I had a full belly,” it said. “Maybe you just need to try a little harder” I suggested. “Watch your cousin over there and see what happens. There seems to be plenty of food for everyone right now.”

There had been a week long insect hatching taking place in the pond and though I didn’t know for sure at this point, I thought the insects might be mayflies. Mayflies can hatch in the billions and sometimes the swarms are so large they can even be seen on radar.

The phoebe’s cousin looked fit and trim and as we watched it would hop off the cattail stem and just fall like dead weight straight down to the surface of the water, where it would spread its wings at the last minute and scoop up an insect. “Try doing that,” I suggested to the thin phoebe. The palm warblers were doing the same thing but I noticed that they would also fly up into the air occasionally. They were all busy little birds, constantly moving.

Overhead was a flock of hundreds of swallows, swooping and diving and barrel rolling through the sky over the pond, eating any hapless insects that flew from the pond surface. They were also making other birds quite agitated. Many of last year’s cattail stems were armed with male red winged blackbirds, all looking up. If a swallow got too close to a nesting site, off the blackbird would go at top speed like a missile, chasing the swallow and matching its flight pattern move for move, plucking at its tail feathers all the way.

I’ve accidentally stumbled into red winged blackbird nesting sites so I didn’t envy the swallows; these blackbirds are fierce defenders of their territory. They have turned me around in a hurry by hovering right in front of my face and beating on my head and face with wildly flapping wings. They have no fear.

This not very good shot shows just a very few of the hundreds of swallows that swarmed together over the pond in a feeding frenzy.

On the pond surface were Canada geese, mallards, hooded mergansers, wood ducks like the pair in this photo, and I don’t know what else. As I sat on the picnic table I had to wonder how word of these hatchings traveled so quickly through nature. It seemed like a messaging system had let everyone know, because all these birds would show up in no time at all when the insects appeared. It was an amazing thing to watch, and I learned quite a lot by just sitting and watching. Male wood ducks are usually very shy and hide away in coves and backwaters where they can’t be seen, yet here they were out in plain sight with people nearby. That’s how strong the pull of easy food pickings was.

It was hard to get a good shot of the wood ducks because they never stopped moving. They and all the other waterfowl swam quickly back and forth, vacuuming up as many insects as they could, just as this one was doing. They must have been eating them by the thousands, and if you figure in all the swallows overhead and the smaller birds in the bushes, along with all the fish, frogs, turtles, and other life in the pond, you begin to see that it’s a miracle that any of the insects survive. But they do survive, and they have for hundreds of millions of years. Mayflies, it is said, are among the most ancient of insects still living. And it’s a good thing they’re still with us; just look at all the life they help support. Though called “mayflies” I’ve read that they can appear at any time from April to October.

It started to rain again and as I got back to the car and reached for the door handle I saw an insect that had been resting on the car fly away. I still can’t say for certain because I only got a quick glimpse, but it looked to me like a mayfly. Other possibilities are stoneflies and caddisflies but what I saw didn’t look like either of those. They’re bigger than mayflies.

Non biting midges are another good possibility. Midge fly pupae swim to the surface and emerge as adults, which look a lot like mosquitoes. They mate in a swarm shortly after becoming adults, so they sound like a good possibility as well. Adults live for 3-5 days.

After all this talk of mayflies I knew I’d better show you one. A year or two ago I got this shot of one hiding on a fern stalk. According to what I read about them online the dull opaque color of the wings means this mayfly was at the “subimago stage,” which is halfway between the nymph and adult stages. This is when they are most vulnerable, so they will often hide in the undergrowth at pond edges. At the adult stage they have no mouth parts and cannot eat. They mate and the female lays her eggs in water, and both she and the male will die after living for just a day or two.

I found this photo of non-biting midges, also called lake flies, on Wikipedia. It was taken by Alexsuchy near Lake Winnebago in Neenah, Wisconsin. These insects like a surface water temperature of 60 degrees F. to hatch, while Damselflies prefer 70 degrees F. If I’d had a way to measure the water temperature I would have had my answer. Mayflies require very clean water but midge larvae are somewhat tolerant of pollution.

When a fly fisherman ties a fly he tries to make that fly look like whatever insect will be hatching when he uses it. If it’s good enough it will fool the fish into thinking it’s the real thing.

I suppose the moral of this story is, don’t let wet weather stop you. You can often see amazing things on rainy days that you might only rarely see when the sun shines. The beauty and splendor never stops, rain or shine.

Looking at the pond all I could think was that it is an incredible thing how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all. ~Sarah Dressen

Thanks for coming by.

More To See Each Day

More glory of the snow flowers have come along. This is another under used spring flowering bulb that I can find only in one spot in a local park. I think it must be another of those flowers that people simply aren’t aware of. It’s too bad we don’t have a public garden here where people could go to learn the names of flowers they like and to see how they can be used in a garden.

It’s already time to say goodbye to the crocuses. They were beautiful this year despite the snow and cold they went through.

New flowers have taken over for the crocuses. Hyacinths and daffodils dominate this bed at the local college. I wish I could add fragrance to photos.

Most of the daffodils are in full bloom now. This one was fading a bit already but it was still pretty.

Bleeding hearts are up. These are the tall old fashioned bleeding hearts that disappear in the heat of summer. I like their spring foliage but sometimes it can be hard to catch it in this stage because it grows so fast. These plants will be blooming in no time.

Scilla blossoms are at their peak right now and since they’re my favorite color, I’m happy that they are. This spring bulb always looks better planted in large numbers, as these were.

I think it’s safe to say that lilacs are going to have a great year. As long as we don’t have another freeze, that is.

The Japanese magnolia buds that I showed in the last post have opened. As I mentioned they are this plum color outside….

…and white on the inside. As I also said, the petals tend to flop around a lot.

Violas seem tired this year. I can remember plants full of flowers but these plants at the local college are getting old so they can only manage one or two blooms at a time now. They were show stopping when they were in their prime.

It’s getting to be time now for the flowering shrubs and trees to add to the beauty. Japanese andromeda are one of the first shrubs to bloom and this year they are heavy with flowers that look like tiny fairy lights mounted in gold. They must like mild winters; I’ve never seen them bloom like they are now.

Once just by dumb luck I took a photo of a henbit flower and saw lots of hairs that I couldn’t see with my eyes, so every now and then I try for the hairs. This shot is this year’s the result. It’s a tiny but very hairy flower. It’s in the deadnettle family and some call it henbit deadnettle. The red parts seen under the hood are its four stamens. It has two long and two short stamens, much like ground ivy. I’ve read that its name comes from the way hens peck at the flowers but it isn’t the flowers they’re after; it’s the four tiny seeds the flowers produce.

Dandelions haven’t stopped since February. It seems like each time I go out I see even more. Many this year have had huge flowers on them but I’d say these were average.

I went to the wetlands hoping I might see some dragonflies but it must have been too early. I did see some red maples shining in the morning sunlight though, and they were beautiful. I also saw a small orange butterfly but it was too quick for me.

I sat on a picnic table on the side of the road and this bird flew into a bush beside me. Google lens says it’s a song sparrow but I wonder, because it squawked but didn’t really sing. Last year while I was sitting on the same picnic table a bird that looked like this one flew into the same bush, but that one sang beautifully.

When I got up to leave after sitting for a while I saw that a muskrat had come up out of the pond to eat some of the fresh green grass shoots. Its front paws looked just like little hands but with long claws. Muskrats must be famished for something green in spring; I’ve seen them do this once or twice before but it’s rare to see one expose itself in daylight when people are around. Muskrats can be aggressive if they feel threatened, so it’s best to give them plenty of space.

Muskrats are smaller than beavers and their ears are small, flat against the head and hard to see while a beaver’s ears are larger, protruding, and easy to see. The tails are the best way to tell them apart but the tail isn’t always visible. A muskrat can curl its rat like tail around its body as this one had but I don’t think beavers are able to do this with their longer, flat tails. Any time I’ve seen a beaver on dry land its tail was obvious.

On Tuesday it reached 70 degrees F. and the turtles came out in large numbers to soak up some warmth. At first I thought I was seeing just that larger turtle but then I moved a little and saw another one behind it. Then I got home and looked at the photo and saw another one coming out of the water. The scene looked like they had wrecked a bamboo raft and were scrambling to safety but it was really just last year’s cattail stems scattered around. While I was getting shots of turtles I heard a deep throated bullfrog croaking off in the distance; the first I’ve heard this year.

I think the mourning doves have been taking turkey lessons, because as I walked down a road recently I watched two doves stopping traffic. Anyone who knows these birds knows how skittish they can be but this particular pair were so interested in something in the road, they had no fear. A car came along at speed but the driver had to hit the brakes, letting the car creep along until the doves moved slowly out of the way, just as turkeys do. After taking a couple of shots I kept walking, but when I looked back there they were again, right back in the middle of the road. I’ve read that the name “mourning” dove comes from the mournful sound they make.

Willows were absolutely glowing on a recent cloudy day. I was surprised because they were female flowers, which in willows aren’t as showy or as brightly colored as male flowers.

This is what the female (pistillate) flowers look like. They’re smaller, paler, and obviously evenly spaced.

This is what the male (staminate) flowers look like. They’re a bright, banana yellow and are bigger than the female flowers. Though they are also evenly spaced it isn’t readily apparent. They often look kind of chaotic and one sided.

I went to see how the hobblebush flower buds were coming along. They aren’t very big yet because they bloom in May but they’re bigger than the last time I saw them. Each flower bud is between two young leaves that look like they’re made of corduroy. They are in their bunny face mode right how but soon the leaves will flatten out and uncurl and the beautiful snow white flowers will start to open. Hobblebushes are one of our most beautiful native viburnums.

The male flower bud scales on box elders have opened to reveal the reddish brown colored stamens within. They should grow quickly out of the buds now, and before long each stamen will dangle at the end of a long filament. A week or so after they have fully developed, the female flowers, which are sticky lime green pistils, will appear along with the leaves. Box elder flowers are quite beautiful but since the trees are considered “weed trees” they are becoming increasingly hard to find and get close to. Box elder is in the maple family and is considered one of the “soft maples.” The oldest intact Native American flute ever found was made from box elder.

Next time you’re walking under a tree why not stop for a moment and reach up and pull down a branch? Just take a look at the buds; it takes little effort and even less time, and you might be amazed that you have been walking right by something so beautiful for so long. These slightly hairy, richly colored Norway maple buds are about at their peak of beauty right now. Soon they’ll open and large clusters of yellow flowers will spill out of them. Norway Maple is actually an invasive tree but so many towns and cities have planted them as landscape specimens, it’s far too late to do much about it now. I find them in the woods fairly regularly.

Every bird, every tree, every flower reminds me what a blessing and privilege it is just to be alive.
 ~Marty Rubin

Thanks for stopping in.

A Beautiful Recovery

As this photo shows the crocuses have recovered beautifully from the snowstorm I showed in the last post. Spring flowers look delicate but they’re built for snow and cold. April is when the spring ephemeral wildflowers really get going so there will be lots to see this month, both in and out of the garden.

I had to get another shot of one of my favorite crocuses. I hope you aren’t getting tired of seeing them. It’s their shading that makes them so beautiful, in my opinion.

The hyacinths are out fully now and this one reminded me of a stalk full of scilla blossoms. The color and the shape of the flowers is similar.

I see so many flowers it’s impossible to pick a favorite, but one of my favorite spring flowering bulbs is striped squill. It looks a lot like a scilla in size but its flowers are white with blue pin stripes. I think for me it is their simplicity that makes them a favorite. It’s amazing how just a simple line on a flower petal can look so elegant and beautiful. They bloom at just about the same time as scilla and seeing both blooming together is a beautiful sight. Years ago when I started this blog they were very hard to find but now any good spring bulb seller will have them. Still, I know of only one place to see them blossom. It’s hard to believe that something so beautiful could be so under used. I think the answer is simply that since people don’t see them in gardens, they don’t know what they are and don’t know what to ask for. I’ve had countless people ask me about them over the years when they’ve seen me taking photos of them. Their Sunday go to meeting name is Puschkinia scilloides, but simply Googling “striped squill” will get you there. Take a look; you might fall in love with them as I did years ago.

The hellebores have fully opened now, even though this shot was taken a slightly before this one had.

I took these photos because I thought you might like to see what most people walk right by. There’s a lot going on in there.

The buds on the Japanese magnolias are showing color now. I think this one’s name is “Jane.” It will have bicolor petals that are dark on the outside and pure white on the inside. Some are pinkish like this one and others are purple. Their colors are very beautiful but the petals kind of flop around. They’re very different than the flowers on a star magnolia.

Once again glory of the snow refused to blossom until the snow had melted. I don’t know where its name came from but I do know that I’ve never once seen it blossom in the snow. I have seen almost every other spring flowering bulb bloom in the snow however, so this one’s name must have been more wish than fact. In the end it really doesn’t matter, because it’s a pretty flower.

I looked for bees on all the garden flowers and saw none. Then I looked at the dandelions and there they were. I don’t get too many shots of things in flight but this bee was indeed hovering over the flower.

Robins used to be a reliable sign of spring but many stay here all year now so that isn’t entirely true anymore. What is a sign of spring when it comes to robins is when you see them pulling worms up out of the soil. That means the ground has thawed and is warm enough for the worms to come to the surface. It also means the soil is warm enough for spring wildflowers to start growing.

I was surprised to see this lilac’s bud scales had pulled back enough to reveal the flower buds within. It grows in a local park so I don’t know its name but I do know it will bloom earlier than any other lilac I’ve seen. We had a white lilac that my mother planted and that was the lilac that started me watching lilac buds in spring when I was a boy. I’ve watched them every year since. If you take a look at them once or twice each week they can tell you a lot about spring’s progression.  

In a different park in a different part of town this lilac with its striking bicolor buds grows. I haven’t been able to find out its name yet but its buds have grown quite a lot since I last saw them.

I saw a Japanese maple in the same park that still had last year’s leaves on it. That isn’t unusual but the way they have held on to their fall color sure is.

I went to see a favorite red maple and found that many of its male flower buds had been killed by the cold. Those we see here should be bright red, not that dark, bruised purplish color. This tree blooms a little later than most others and is very pretty, but not this year.

This shot from a few years ago shows the same tree full of flowers. What makes it so beautiful is how almost all the flowers bloom at once and how the filaments hold the stamens out away from the flower clusters so they look like bright, red and yellow pincushions. This was the first red maple to show me how spicy the fragrance could be from a tree all in bloom. Before the leaves appear red and silver maples can be tough to tell apart so I just call any tree that looks like this a red maple. The tree doesn’t care what I call it and neither do I, so until the leaves appear it’s a red maple. Once the leaves appear it might have to graduate to silver.

Skunk cabbages are producing leaves now. This is when, for just a short time, the leaves actually look like cabbage leaves. Soon each plant will be huge, with a crown of leaves 3-5 feet across and thigh high.

Coltsfoot flowers are everywhere now. Soon they’ll go to seed and have white cottony seedheads, and the leaves will start to appear. Spring ephemerals don’t stay around too long so to catch them you really have to get out there every day. Fleeting, is what they are.

There are a few plants that usually show fresh spring growth more or less at the same time, so when I see one I start to look for the others. They are plantain leaved sedge, seen above. Ramps, which are a kind of wild onion or leek. False hellebore, which is the most toxic plant in the spring forest. Skunk cabbage, spring beauties, bloodroot, and trout lilies.

They were a little hard to see in that previous photo but the plantain leaved sedge was full of new flower stalks like that seen above. Very soon now the butter yellow male flowers will appear at the top of the stem and the feathery white female flowers will blossom lower down on the same stem. Pennsylvania sedge is much more common and blossoms at about the same time. Pennsylvania sedge looks like clumps of grass growing here and there in groups on the forest floor.

I went to see the striped maples once again and found that all the bud scales had opened. Soon a large, velvety, pink and orange bud will appear from each pair of bud scales, and they’ll grow quickly. It’s hard to believe that all of the current year’s growth will appear from these small buds but it does.

Mouse ear chickweeds have started blooming. They are also called sticky chickweed because of the sticky sap the hairy stems produce. They are usually one of the earliest spring flowers to appear, along with ground ivy and henbit. This plant is all about fives, with 5 white petals and 5 green sepals in a star shape behind them. At the time of this photo it was already producing seed pods, one of which can be seen below the flowers.

Ground ivy wasn’t bothered by snow. If anything it’s growing better than it was. Sometimes spring snow is called “poor man’s fertilizer” due to all the nitrates it drags down out of the atmosphere, and there is a lot of truth in that. This is from a website called “Farm and Dairy”: Nitrates are the result of nitrogen dioxide dissolving in moisture in the clouds. Precipitation pulls the nitrates down to the ground creating poor man’s fertilizer. Rain and snow both contain nitrogen, but snow by its nature provides a better delivery method. Nutrients are slowly released into the soil as the snow melts. This is especially effective early in the spring when the ground is thawed. Nature is a wonderful thing! (Actually it isn’t a thing, but I won’t get into that now.)

While I was crawling around admiring spring beauty blossoms I saw tiny green wood frogs jumping in the leaf litter and I heard the first spring peepers on this day. Wood frogs make a kind of quacking noise and spring peepers peep. Loudly. I’ve also seen wood ducks and mergansers eating lots of unknown insects that were hatching in ponds, and Canada geese acting like they were looking for nesting sites. Nature knows that spring is here, now if only the weather would agree.

On this past Thursday we had another spring snowstorm that dropped over a foot of snow in northern parts of the state and caused avalanches in the White Mountains, and downed trees and powerlines, but in my yard I saw barely three inches. It was like the last storm; heavy and wet, but the difference between this storm and the last was, it stayed warm enough so nothing froze this time. You may have heard about the “Major nor’easter slamming into New England” and I suppose that was true in places, but here it was just more poor man’s fertilizer.

I focused on this little blossom and it was as if the beauty of all the flowers I’ve ever seen came together, right here in this tiny blossom. I’m convinced that one thing this world will never run out of is beauty.

Treasures are hidden away in quiet places. They speak in soft tones and often become silenced as we approach. They don’t beg to be found, but embrace us if we do happen to find them. They are the product of completely ordinary circumstances unfolding in wonderfully extraordinary ways. They are found hidden in the nooks and crannies of our existence; all around us if we quit allowing our attention to be captivated by that which is noisy and listen for that which is quiet and still. ~Craig D. Lounsbrough

Thanks for coming by. I hope nobody lost power during the storm.

After the Snow

According to the folks at the National Weather Service 2.7 inches of snow fell in Keene last weekend. That was then packed down by all the rain that followed, and then all of that froze solid over night so there was no shoveling it until the next day. I had to wait until the sun came out on Monday and softened it up a bit, but even then I was shoveling inch thick plates of ice. Once the shoveling was done (actually I was done) I went out to see how the flowers had come through and was surprised to see how unaffected many of them were. It was the temperature, which got down into the low teens, more than the snow that harmed many of them so the ones that were insulated by snow cover pulled through. Those blossoms higher up on bushes and trees weren’t so lucky.

Sometimes it looked like the weight of the heavy wet snow rather than cold damaged the most delicate blossoms.

Many crocuses were open for business as this one was, but there were no takers. All the bees were somewhere other than here and I haven’t seen one in days now.  

There is something about flowers in the snow that I find very beautiful. Maybe it’s because it’s so unexpected; one of those things that takes you completely by surprise.

You can see in this shot how the snow had turned to ice. That little scilla blossom seemed very interested in what was going on in that hole that had opened up. Maybe warmth? On very cold days I’ve seen warmth in the form of vapor coming out of holes like that one many times. It’s the warmth of the earth.

These crocuses looked like they were made of silver and inlayed with lapis lazuli. They were very beautiful, I thought.

The vernal witch hazels said “Ho hum, another spring storm.” They’ve been blooming since February and they’ll continue for as long as the cool weather does. Too much heat is the enemy of these flowers.

I’ve been waiting for the hellebores but apparently they were waiting for some snow to bloom in. Another name for them is “Lenten rose” and this year it looks as if they’ve lived up to it.

This hyacinth, the first one I’ve seen blooming, had been frost burned but there are more to come.

The Cornelian cherries miscalculated and were hit hard by the freezing temperatures. The petals on the flowers seen here were more liquid than solid, and the same was true for most of the buds. I don’t know if these cultivars bear fruit because I’ve never seen it, but if they do there won’t be much of it this year. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this happen to them.

The one Forsythia I know of with open flowers was also hit hard but this is one among many thousands. Most buds on other bushes aren’t even showing color yet so they might still blossom as usual. It’s hard to tell with Forsythia because they’re so susceptible to cold. Many years in spring you’ll find blossoms only at the bottom of the bushes, and that’s because that’s where the snow was deep enough to insulate the buds against the cold. This year we had little to no snow and no real cold until now, so it’s anyone’s guess how they’ll blossom. 

I’ve seen very few open magnolia buds but the ones that had opened before last weekend had been burned brown by the cold. They shouldn’t look like a brown paper bag.

The tiny threads that are female American Hazelnut flowers should be bright red so these were looking a bit under the weather. That could be cold damage but it could also be that they had been pollinated and didn’t need to be there anymore. Only the fall hazelnut crop will let us know for sure.

The willow blossoms that had opened before the storm were lost to the cold but most had not opened yet, so there are still many millions of willow blossoms to come. They’re an important early spring source of pollen and nectar, so I’m glad they hadn’t all opened.

How very beautiful life is and how easy it is to love. There is no work to it; gratitude is the key that unlocks the door and then love and joy just quietly seep in.

The willows in this post bloom under the power lines on power company property so I have to walk an old access road to get to them. The heavy rain over the weekend flooded the road and then the cold froze it all, so I had to walk in the unmowed rough alongside it. There was lots of melting ice on this day, and that meant the water in places was deep enough to be over my boot tops. I can’t say that I got out of there completely dry.

There were lots of shapes in the ice. This one reminded me of a caladium leaf. If you don’t know what a caladium is but have a lot of shade in your yard, you might want to look them up.

There were bubbles full of bubbles in many places. This scene reminded me of a painting of glass. I’ve seen paintings with glasses in them that looked as real as any photo, and it was because the artist had been so accurate with the highlights. I’ve had several painters ask me if they could paint my photos and I think this would be a great one to practice with. Nature makes each little spot of sunlight and the white outline on each bubble look so simple…..

Dandelions said what snow? It didn’t even slow them down.

This shot is of many thousands of red maple flowers that fell to the pavement during the rain. This is a common sight in spring, usually made up of male flowers that have released their pollen. Once they’ve done their job and are no longer needed they fall like rain.

Mallards didn’t seem to mind the ice and snow, and what must have been very cold water.

Before the storm the summit of Mount Monadnock was down to bare granite but now there’s a lot of snow up there for the sun to melt away again. Since we’ve had another cool and cloudy week it hasn’t gone anywhere yet. I’ve always thought the mountain was at its most beautiful when capped by snow so I had to stop and get a shot of it to show you. On this day I had the added bonus of a cloud shadow.

Flowers carry not only beauty but also the silent song of love. You just have to feel it. ~Debasish Mridha

Thanks for stopping in. I hope everyone has a Happy Easter tomorrow.

A Cold Snap

We’ve had a cool, showery week and that has slowed down a lot of the flowers. Since they were really blooming about two weeks early anyway, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The weathervane at the local college on this day was showing stiff winds out of the east-northeast, which is almost always a chilly direction, so I didn’t spend much time standing around.

NOTE: The arrow on a weathervane always points in the direction that the wind is coming from, which in this case is the west. I took this photo on Wednsday but was apparently thinking of yesterday when I put this post together. In any event it has been cold and windy all week.

Of course I didn’t really need a weather vane; all I had to do was watch the alder catkins. Their normal position at rest is straight up and down, so even sitting in a car I knew it was windy.

Last week I was able to show spring beauties but they’ve left us for now due to the change in weather, I think. This week coltsfoot blossoms have appeared. They’re another early spring flower which is able to stand a lot of cold. They close up at night and when rain threatens. Though they aren’t native they’re a welcome sign of spring.

This shot isn’t great but I wanted to show it because it shows how flat coltsfoot blossoms are as opposed to dandelion blossoms, which are more mounded. At a glance you could walk right by thinking you had seen dandelions, but a closer look would show the differences. Another difference is in the stems; dandelion stems are smooth and coltsfoot stems are very scaly. Once you look closely you see that they don’t look at all alike.

Flower buds are finally showing through the gray of willow catkins but as I write this on Thursday, March 21st, the night’s forecast calls for temps as low as 15-20 degrees F. Willows are used to the cold, but we’ll have to wait and see just how cold it gets. These were female flowers.

I got up the next morning and saw that the thermometer read 19 degrees; not good with so many flowers in bloom, so off I went. I found that the few male willow blossoms that had appeared  over the past day or two were undamaged, and I saw many willow catkins that still hadn’t blossomed yet. It’s going to be a great year for willow flowers by the looks.

I could see that some of the female red maple flowers had blackened tips, and in other places the entire stigma was black and withered. There are many millions if not billions of these flowers in just this area though, so the red maple population will be fine, I’m sure. Staggered bloom times mean that by the time the last flowers appear the first ones that appeared have already been pollinated and are producing seeds.

One of my favorite buds to watch in spring are red elderberry. They’re uncommon but worth looking for because they’re very colorful and are big enough to be easily seen. This year I was fortunate to find two or three bushes in different places in different stages of growth, so we can see what bud break looks like in a red elderberry.

Bud break happens when you can just see the tip of a green leaf coming out of a bud in spring. Or in this case, a purple leaf. Many new spring leaves protect themselves from harsh sunlight by having colors other than green to start with. Purple and red are common new spring leaf colors.

This is the first time I’ve been able to show you the entire sequence of red elderberry buds breaking in one post. Normally I’d have to show it over the course of two or three posts. Elderberry buds show a lot of movement, even in still photos. The new leaves look like little hands.

This photo is from a few years ago but I’m including it so you can see the entire bud break sequence. In this shot the flower buds have appeared and the new leaves have started to turn green. When mature the flower heads will be small, bright white, and kind of truncated cone or bee hive shaped; much different than the large, flat flower heads of the much more common American black elderberry which is found throughout the northeastern U.S.

Cornelian cherries have finally blossomed, just in time for the coldest weather since January. The plant itself is hardy down to -30F but I didn’t get a chance to get back to them so we’ll have to wait and see how the tiny flowers did. This is an ancient plant that was well known by the Greeks and Romans. Pits from its tart berries have even been found in archeological digs dating back to Neanderthal times.

The ground ivy flowers have been growing quickly so the large, spotted “landing pad” petal will now support insects. From there an insect might crawl over a small forest of guide hairs which point them down into a tube where they will find nectar. Once they’ve had their fill of nectar they’ll crawl up out of the tube, hopefully avoiding the guide hairs and instead brushing against the 4 chunky white stamens. The stamens will dust them with pollen, which they’ll transport to another flower. Above the blocky white stamens, peeking through a notch in the upper petal, is the forked style. The example show here still had some growing to do; when fully grown it will arch up over the flower, bending almost low enough to touch the guide hairs. When an insect that has been dusted with pollen from another flower brushes against that sticky forked style and leaves its pollen, pollination will be complete and the flower can produce its 4 seeds, which are called nutlets. Ground ivy flowers can be male, female or “perfect,” flowers, which means they have both male and female reproductive parts. In the time it took to type this a dozen flowers probably could probably have been pollinated. It’s a quick, uncomplicated process. Until you try to explain it, that is.  

I saw maybe a dozen flowers open on a single Forsythia but the thousands of others in town, on almost every street, aren’t blooming yet. Most aren’t even showing color in their buds yet.

Though I thought I’d be wasting my time I went and checked the striped maple buds. Much to my surprise I found several that were close to opening. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them open this early. I think for striped maple it usually happens in early to mid-April, so everything seems to have been accelerated by two or three weeks due to the early warmth.

The light colored bud inside the darker bud scales is very easy to see. I’ll have to watch them closely now so I don’t miss the beautiful velvety, pink and orange buds. They’re easily one of the prettiest buds to open in spring and I’ve seen them each spring no matter what the weather has been like. Bud opening is staggered, so if a few are lost to the cold there will be more coming along.

Violas won’t mind the cold. I’ve seen them blooming surrounded by snow.

This was the first daffodil I found fully opened. The cold probably wasn’t kind to the garden flowers but the few daffodils I have here which are budded, made it through fine. Scilla and reticulated iris also weren’t harmed. I have to remind myself occasionally that certain plants bloom in early spring because they can stand the cold. And when it comes right down to it this really isn’t unusually cold weather at all; it’s normal weather. It just seems cold because it was 60 degrees in February, which isn’t normal at all.

I saw a few magnolia buds that had started to open. It would be nice if most of them stayed closed for now. They’re delicate, and burn easily.

The first of the grape hyacinths are up at the local college. It’s funny; as I saw them there I realized that this small group of them, in this spot, are the first I see each year. Like clockwork they’ve appeared here each spring I think for as long as I’ve been doing this blog. Through them I’ve learned just how unique they are, or at least how unique their timing is; I know that I won’t see another grape hyacinth blooming anywhere for a week or two after I’ve seen these.

The witch hazels are still going strong. They can take a lot of cold and though they can roll up their petals I’ve seen a lot of them blackened over the years. I’d like to not see that this year.

Another of my favorite crocuses is up and blooming. I don’t really know how much cold this one can stand but I have seen them blooming in the snow before. It’s a beautiful thing and I’d like to see it last for a while.

I’m short on critters this week. I heard lots of birds but didn’t see many, and the animals have been quiet. I did see this bee peeking over the rim of a crocus though.

It was moving slowly and I didn’t know if that was because of the cold or if it was looking for a place to stop and clean itself up. It had obviously been rolling in pollen so it was probably about as happy as a bee can be.

As I finish this post on Friday evening I see that they’ve now changed the forecast, saying we could get 3-5 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. Or it could be sleet and/or freezing rain. Whatever it turns out to be, it will be normal weather for March in New England. We may lose a few flowers but there are many more to come.

Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment. ~Ellis Peters

Thanks for stopping in.

The First Spring Wildflowers Appear

The biggest surprise this week was finding beautiful spring beauty flowers in bloom a full two weeks ahead of the earliest date I had ever seen them, which was April first. The most beautiful things in nature are almost always right there in plain sight but to find them we have to look carefully, and we have to see. Spring beauty blossoms are about the size of an aspirin and can be very hard to see when they first appear. Later on though, when the forest floor is carpeted with them it will be an unforgettable sight. They are usually the first true ephemeral wildflowers to appear in the forest in this area, so nothing says spring quite like they do.

I had to stop when I saw this dandelion blossom shining like a miniature sun. It was twice as big as all the others in the area and so very bright and beautiful more light shined out of it than on it. It was producing pollen and the bees were rejoicing. I joined them as I knelt to take its photo, so happy that spring was here once again. The Taraxacon part of the scientific name comes from the Greek taraxos, meaning disorder, and akos, meaning remedy. Dandelions have been used as both food and medicine for thousands of years and there was even a time when grass was torn up to make more room for them. A weed is an opinion, nothing more.

Signs that spring is here are everywhere now. Female American hazelnut blossoms are about as big and numerous as they ever get.

The brownish, triangular, manta ray like bud scales have opened on many of the American hazelnut catkins. Under each bud scale are three to five tiny yellowish male flowers, so there can be hundreds of flowers per catkin, wound in a spiral formation around a central stalk. Just a touch and this bush released clouds of pollen.

Female red and silver maple flowers look much like the female hazelnut flowers; just single forked threads called stigma or stigmas. Though I’ve seen many insects they don’t rely on them; they’re sticky so they can catch the pollen that the male flowers release to the wind.

Pollen production is now in full swing on male red and silver maple flowers. Some were producing pollen before they had even grown out of the bud.

Like the American hazelnut catkins, alder catkins have also started opening. Alder catkins have beautiful deep purple bud scales which contrast nicely with the tiny yellowish flowers. These flowers weren’t quite fully opened yet and weren’t releasing pollen but you can see how the buds spiral down the central stalk. Nature uses spirals almost everywhere, from spiral galaxies billions of light years across to the tiny spiral cochlea in our inner ear. That’s because the spiral, it is said, is the most efficient way for something to grow. More can be packed into a spiral than into other shapes and one of the easiest ways to see and understand this is to look at a sunflower that has gone to seed. If you look closely you see that much of nature is all about spirals.

As I poked around looking at this and that one day I had the feeling that I was being watched and I was, by a robin. This was the first one to get close to me this year. They’re very inquisitive birds and I usually have one or two land very near me each spring. One spring I was looking at maple flowers and a robin landed right beside me and began kicking up leaves, making all kinds of noise. They want to see you and they want to be seen by you.

I think this one might have been working on a nest because it didn’t seem to want to leave this spot. I didn’t want to upset it so I took a quick shot or two and let it be. This shot would have been okay one if I hadn’t cut its tail off.

Speaking of birds, in that last post I showed what I thought was a purple finch but this week I was walking through the campus of the local college and heard that wonderful song again. This time I used the Merlin bird identification app on my phone and it said “house finch.” I was quite far away from where I heard it the first time but what are the chances of both a house finch and purple finch being on the same campus? I can’t answer that but it may be that Susan’s thought that it was a house finch last week had been correct. When I was just a boy I decided I would never be able to be a “bird person” because of colorblindness, so any uncommon bird name you find on this blog should be taken with a grain of salt. I try hard not to misinform but I certainly don’t know all the bird names. Really the whole point of the story of that bird was me hoping you would want to go and hear its song online. I still hope that, because you’ll hear one of the most beautiful sounds that nature has to offer. It is like spring being presented in song.

I looked at lilac buds and noticed that the bud scales were relaxing and starting to open. I’ve been fascinated by the way buds open in spring since I was a small boy. Lilacs were the first ones I watched because they were everywhere and easy to get to.

I saw something entirely different on these lilac buds; squirrel hair blowing in the breeze.

The lilac with squirrel hair was on the grounds of the local college, and so was this squirrel. This must have been an educated squirrel because as I watched it looked both ways before crossing the road. Squirrels that live on the college campus have an easy life. Not only are there millions of acorns falling from the huge old oaks; there are also hickory, black walnut, hazelnut, butternut, and other nut bearing trees growing there. Even a blind squirrel could find nuts there.

Call it creeping Charlie or gill over the ground or ground ivy; no matter what you want to call it is one of the most common “weeds” in these parts, and it’s in full bloom. This plant grew at both may father’s and grandmother’s houses so it was one of the first plants I ever paid any real attention to. As far back as memory can take me, it’s there. It is in the mint family and is related to henbit. It has a powerful and unusual odor when it is mowed, with the kind of odor that gets in the back of your throat and stays there for a while. I think that’s what I remember most about it; that strange scent.

Speaking of henbit, here it is now. This plant’s name comes from the way chickens peck at it. Like ground ivy it is in the mint family and I’ve heard that all parts of it are edible. I like its tiny cartoonish flowers that always look surprised. Surprised that spring is here? Surprised by their own existence? I can’t say.

I haven’t seen any willow flowers yet but poplar catkins have appeared. Poplar trees are in the willow family but the catkins are usually two or three times as big as those on willows. Instead of bright yellow flowers the male poplar flowers will be a beautiful chocolate brown. The shiny brown bud scales are also bigger than willow bud scales and since those bud scales weren’t sticky I know this tree was an aspen, which like cottonwood is just another variety of poplar.

One of my favorite spring garden flowers is this beautiful crocus, called the vernal crocus. Some call them “Tommys” due to their scientific name, which is Crocus tommasinianus. I like the delicate shading inside.

I think the person who planned this bed at the local college might have miscalculated the bloom times of the crocuses because the yellow flowers always bloom two weeks before the purple, so by the time the purples show themselves the yellows are passing on. Of course that might have been the plan but in my opinion it is the contrasting colors that make the show. But that’s just another opinion.

I watched the bees fly quickly from purple to purple flower, not stopping to sample them at all. Clearly, they prefer the yellow flowers, for whatever reason. It can’t be pollen because I saw a few purple flowers that had pollen spilled on their petals.

The daffodils are promising to be beautiful this year as long as we don’t get a cold snap.

The scilla at the college are fully out in places but in other places there isn’t a sign of them. Mine aren’t showing at all yet.

More reticulated iris have come along. I love the color of these flowers but the foliage grows quite fast to twice the height of the flowers and gets in the way, especially if you’re trying to photograph them.

This beautiful reticulated iris suddenly appeared in my yard recently and there are quite a few more on the way. They came from Maryland, from my blogging friend Ginny, so once again I’ll say thanks Ginny! Your flowery gift just keeps on giving and I’m very happy to have them. Nobody I used to garden for ever grew reticulated iris.

I went to the swamp where skunk cabbages grow to see how they were doing and I took a step backward and heard a crunching sound. I knew what that meant and sure enough when I turned around I saw that I had accidentally stepped on one of the plants. Though the damage might look severe I only damaged the outer spathe, so none of the actual flowers were harmed. The flowers are the tiny white bits that spiral around the spadix, which is the thing that looks sort of like a brain. These flowers are special though, because they are the female flowers of the skunk cabbage, and you’ve never seen them before on this blog.

In all the years I’ve been doing this blog each spring I’ve shown you skunk cabbage flowers, and in all those years not once did I find female flowers. Every spring they’ve been male flowers like those seen in this photo. So what are the odds of seeing female flowers only once in 13 years? Quite high, apparently. The odd thing is, not once did I tell myself that I really should show you the female flowers. That I think, is because I’m always so relieved to have gotten a photo at all. To get photos of skunk cabbage flowers you are in a swamp, usually standing or kneeling in mud and/or water, trying to train your lens through an opening that might be two inches wide if you’re lucky. It’s a bit like shining a flashlight into a cave and It gets more challenging each year, so I’m usually happy to leave the swamp.

With the weekly rains we’ve been having the rivers are running quite high, so I thought I’d go and see if I could catch a wave. Here it is.

I hope you are having good weather and are seeing plenty of signs of spring, wherever you are.

If you listen to the birds, every day will have a song in it. ~Kyo Maclear

Thanks for coming by.

Birds, Buds, and Blossoms

Anyone who has spent time in nature knows that spring doesn’t happen on a certain calendar day. Spring happens when everything seems to just come together one day. The breeze is warmer, the sunshine is warmer, all the birds are singing, insects appear, and people are smiling for no reason they can explain. But even with all these outward signs the first day of spring is sensed more than anything else, and you find that you are finally able to say “this is spring.” That day came last Sunday, March 3rd. One of the outward signs was a beautiful bird song that seemed to be coming from everywhere. I was at the local college and the bird, which I believe was a purple finch, was up in the top of a tree on the corner of one of the large brick buildings surrounding the campus quad. Its warbling song echoed off the brick walls and made it sound like it came from all directions. I think it was enjoying the natural PA system it had found, because even though it saw me with my camera it still sang beautifully.

The purple finch, bird people say, has no purple on it but it does have a color they call “raspberry” on its head, chest, face and back. It’s the New Hampshire State Bird, and it gained that title by edging a chicken out of the top spot. I’d guess whoever named it, if they thought that color was purple, must have been even more colorblind than I am.

The purpose of this day’s outing was to see if I could find any female American hazelnut flowers in bloom. I chose a bush that had male catkins that were golden colored and pliable, signalling that they were almost ready to open and start releasing pollen.

And there were the tiny scarlet stigmas that are the female flowers. I saw several in bloom on this day.  The easiest way to find out if they’re ready to bloom is by watching the male catkins. When they turn a gold color the female flowers will be along at any time, because these tiny, sticky red threads are what will catch the pollen that is released on by the male flowers on the golden catkins. If pollination is successful each tiny thread will become a hazelnut.

As I usually do, I’ll show this photo I took years ago to give you a sense of scale. These are some of the smallest flowers I try to get photos of. The only way I can find them is by looking for a hint of color.  

While I was looking at the hazelnuts I noticed birds up in the staghord sumacs. They were quite far away and I couldn’t tell what they were, but I had seen flocks of robins here before eating the sumac berries so I assumed that’s what they were. I was surprised, once I started clicking the shutter, to see that they were bluebirds. I believe the one seen here is a female. It’s not a great shot but considering how far away I was on a dim, overcast day I had to be happy with it.

A male bluebird was high up on one of the rungs that climb the towers that hold up the high tension wires in this area. He didn’t have to worry about me following him up there.

Red winged blackbirds have come back in great numbers and for those who have never seen one, this is a classic pose for the males. Males are the only ones with red and yellow shoulder patches. Returning males will sit at the tops of cattail stems to guard the spot they’ve chosen for a nest, and they will fight off any interlopers. Their lives seem to revolve around cattail plants; they use them for cover and build their nests down low to the ground in them. They use their soft fluffy seeds to line the nest and they dig grubs out of last year’s stems. Males will often hide down in the cattails. Their strange whirring, clicking, and whistling calls are the only thing that gives them away. Males will also sit high in the tops of tall trees in large numbers, I found out just the other day.

I’ve never seen the back of a red winged blackbird before. They have some interesting makings.

I took a closer look at a few buds I saw here and there. This Japanese honeysuckle bud was already leafing out, and I wasn’t surprised. That’s one way invasives get a leg up on natives; they start photosynthesizing earlier in spring and later into the fall. It’s common to see Japanese honeysuckles with leaves after most other leaves have fallen.

I didn’t expect to see any movement in beech buds but it’ll soon be time to start watching them for signs of bending. Sunlight excites the cells on the sunlit side of the bud and they grow faster than the cells on the shaded side, and this creates tension in the bud. They slowly curl into a rainbow shaped arc until finally something has to give, and they quite literally tear themselves open. The new leaves just out of the bud are one of the most beautiful things seen in a spring forest but it isn’t just beech; oak, maple, hickory and others are also all beautiful in their own ways. Spring is the time to start watching nature closely if you care about learning anything from it.

Nothing is happening with the brambles like blackberry and raspberry yet but they open quite early so it shouldn’t be too long before they start leafing out.

Last year I saw the beautiful chrome yellow-green buds of bitternut hickory and I told myself I’d go back and see the leaves, but of course I forgot.

This year I’ve written myself a note and stuck it on the refrigerator. SEE BITTERNUT HICKORY LEAVES it says. Whether I see them or not is still a 50/50 chance. The thing about writing notes to yourself is, you can still forget where you put the note.

I took another look look at red maple buds to see how they were coming along. Each one of these buds is just about the size of a BB that you’d put in an air rifle. The one in the middle, just above center, had a hole in it and that meant the bud scales were pulling back to let the flowers out of the bud. Very soon I thought, there will be red and silver maple flowers everywhere.

I went back to the same tree a few days later, after a night of heavy rain, and found that most of the buds had indeed opened and had flowers showing. But I also found many of them filled with water. This illustrates the danger of buds opening too early; if we were to have cold enough weather and the rain water in these buds was to freeze, every flower in the bud, 20-25 of them, would be killed. That’s what bud scales are for; they protect the flower buds inside from getting wet and freezing. If they happen to open too early freezing is a real possibility. We had a freeze in May last spring that wiped out most of the apple crop but by then the maples had done their job and were setting seed.

The vernal pools and wetlands are all free of ice now so I’d guess that the spring peepers will start in any time. They usually start singing just about the time the redwing blackbirds appear.

Willows have yet to flower but the catkins get bigger every day, so it won’t be long.

This is the first scilla of the season that I’ve seen. I think they’re one of the prettiest spring flowering bulbs, especially when massed in the hundreds. I found it in bloom at the local college. Mine aren’t showing yet.

This is the second viola I’ve seen this spring; another college find. I couldn’t get close to it so we could get a better look but there should be many more coming along. I like its color.

Last week I told the story of the lady who asked me about coming to see the locust when what she meant was crocus. This week I was standing on the sidewalk getting shots of these yellow crocus blossoms when a young girl came along with who I would guess must have been her mother and grandmother. “Oh look honey!” the mother said, “The tulips are blooming!” I just smiled and said hello. As John Maxwell said: You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.

I saw a few reticulated irises at the college, but just a few. There used to be large numbers of them but I suppose they must be fading away with age. Or something. From what I understand the college no longer has a gardener, or someone dedicated to strictly gardening. It’s too bad, because they need one.

These particular reticulated irises are not fading away. In fact they’re increasing and I’m happy about that because they grow in my yard. Last year I had one flower and this year I have four. I have to thank my blogging friend Ginny for them because she sent them up from Maryland. They’re much bigger than those at the college so I’m guessing they must be a hybrid. They’re beautiful whatever they are, so thanks Ginny!

Another thing I’m happy about is daylight savings time begins tonight. I’m all for later sunsets.

It’s spring fever, that’s what the name of it is. And when you’ve got it, you want — oh, you don’t quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! ~Mark Twain

Thanks for stopping in.

A Few More Signs of Spring

Spring is happening slowly again after a warm spell two weeks or so ago that got everything moving quickly. I saw maple sap flowing a couple of weeks ago but they just put out the sap buckets this past week. Warm days and cold nights are what keeps the sap flowing so hopefully it won’t get too hot too fast and spoil the season. Right now it’s just about right, with daytime temps in the 40s and nights getting down into the 20s. Much higher than the 40s during the daytime means the sap won’t run.

The red and silver maples are beautiful, loaded as they are with bright red buds.

I haven’t seen any maple flowers yet though, even though the buds are swelling. Maple trees can flower quickly and a tree that doesn’t have any flowers one day can be loaded with them the next. Maple syrup producers are in no hurry to see the trees flower because that means syrup season is just about done. Red maple sap especially, gets bitter once the trees start flowering, but luckily all the trees don’t blossom at the same time. Blossom times are naturally staggered so you can find trees just coming into flower as much as a month after you saw the first one blossom. Nature has it all figured out.

I looked at some of the beautiful powder blue box elder buds but they didn’t seem to be doing too much yet. They’re one of the last trees in the maple family to flower. The powdery blue color on the new twigs and buds is cause by the same natural wax like crystals that cause the bloom on blueberries, plums, and many other things. It’s there essentially to protect from sunburn.

I took that shot of the box elder branch at the river, where I also saw a large gathering of ducks and geese. This Canada goose was alone but there were also pairs there as well.

This is unusual. Ducks and geese don’t usually come onto the shore when there are people around. In fact they usually swim or fly to the other side of the river as soon as they see someone coming. It didn’t take long to see what had removed their fear though; someone had dumped something they liked on shore and they all wanted it. From a distance it looked like it might have been cracked corn but I couldn’t be sure. Every time Mr. and Mrs. Mallard got too close the geese would run them off, so it must have been tasty. Feeding wildfowl isn’t usually done here so I can’t even guess what this was all about.

After the mallards got the geese really bothered one goose stood guard while the other ate. You can see the mallards over there on the right, plotting their next move.

The waterfowl are happy the ice is gone but really, there wasn’t much to go. Nobody was able to skate on this pond at a local park this year and the annual ice fishing derby on Wilson Pond in Swanzey was cancelled because what little ice there was never got thick enough to support all the fishermen. This is the first time that has happened, I think.

I gave up on winter and went looking for spring, and I was glad I did. I found this grouping of crocus at the local college. A lady saw me with my camera and stopped me to ask if I was there to get photos of the locust. “The locust?” I asked. She must have thought I looked confused because she said “You know; the flowers.” I told her that I thought she might mean the crocus and if so yes, that was what I was there for. “Oh yes, locusts are insects, right?” “Yes, that’s right,” I replied. I didn’t want to explain that certain trees are also known as locusts. “Well, have fun,” she said with a smile, and off she went.  

This one was my favorite.

The ones that are white inside and have three petals that are purple on the outside is another favorite. I think this is the first time I’ve ever found them wide open like this. For years I’ve always found them closed.

At another part of the college there are groups of yellow crocus planted with groups of purple ones. The yellow ones always seem to come up first and there are a lot of them blooming right now.

Bees were enjoying the flowers too.

I was surprised to see the bees because I didn’t think it had warmed up enough for them. They left these crocus flowers covered in pollen, so their timing was perfect.

I saw one or two purple crocuses but there are lots more to come. I always like to see the beautiful feathery designs inside these flowers.

I saw just one wrinkled viola blossom, which is odd. In years past these plants often bloomed before the crocuses, and it was colder then.

There are a few snowdrops in bloom with many more of them to come as well.

Dandelions started blooming two or three weeks ago and they haven’t stopped since. Not even snow can slow them down this year.

The Cornelian cherries are taking it slow. Like a child dipping one toe at a time in the water to feel its temperature, they seem to open one bud at a time to feel the air temperature. Then one day, as if a silent signal was given, you’ll walk by one of the trees and all its flowers will be open.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the spring blooming witch hazels with so many flowers on them as they have this year. I stopped to see them one day and found bees all over them. The flowers seen here seemed to be what they preferred. Possibly because they’re the most fragrant. You can smell them from a block away when the breeze is right.

I like this one because of its long petals. On cold nights they roll up each of the four petals and tuck them in for the night. In the morning when the sun warms them they unroll them again. That’s why the petals always look so crinkly, almost like crepe paper. Other than to attract insects and look pretty, they serve no real purpose.

Go out in nature and you will find yourself in love with all of nature’s kind. ~Wald Wassermann

Thanks for coming by.

Things I’ve Seen

Right after I told you in that last post that crows flew away as soon as I pointed anything at them, this one landed in a tree right above me and posed for as many photos as I wanted to take. Even so I never did get a good one, but this reminded me once again that the words “always” and “never” have no place in nature study. As soon as you start thinking you have it all figured out nature shows you that you don’t.

After I walked down the trail for a few yards I stopped and looked back and saw the crow still sitting in the same place, looking as if it was admiring the red maple on the other side of the trail. I noticed that it kept looking over its shoulder and upwards so I wonder if there might have been a hawk nearby. There are cornfields very nearby so there are many squirrels living here. Because of that it has become a well known hawk hang out. The squirrels eat the corn and the hawks eat the squirrels and the crows hope everyone just leaves them alone.

The tree the crow was sitting in was a poplar. They have large, shiny buds that will open to reveal catkins that look almost like gray, fluffy, giant willow catkins. These bud scales were not sticky and that tells me this was a quaking aspen because that is the only member of the poplar family with buds like these that don’t have sticky bud scales. Balsam poplar buds look much the same but their brown bud scales are very sticky to the touch. I have touched huge numbers of poplar buds but only a few were sticky so we don’t seem to have a lot of balsam poplars in this immediate area.

The willows are going strong now with more buds opening every day. It won’t be long now before we see their beautiful, bright yellow flowers.

American hazelnut catkins are growing as well. I wanted to visit this particular rail trail because I know there are a lot of hazelnuts growing here. I had hoped to find some of the tiny female flowers but it got cold again after that last flowery post you saw, so spring flowers have been on hold for most of the week.

I saw a few hazelnuts that hadn’t been eaten but most were gone. At least a few have to fall to the ground and grow so future generations of birds and animals will have them.

I saw some beautiful leaves as well but I couldn’t be sure that they were hazelnut leaves. Hazelnut leaves will often stay red-brown all winter. They seem very warm on a cold February day.

Staghorn sumacs are covered in velvet like hairs like a deer’s antler, and when the light hits them in a certain way they glow as if lit from within. For the first time this year I noticed that cattails do the same.

A large mower had mowed the sides of the trail and when it did it scarred an older staghorn sumac, tearing its bark. This had most likely happened last fall and here was the inner bark turning bright red, just as I’ve seen it do so many times. As it ages it will slowly turn to gray but for now it’s beautiful. There is a lot of red in sumacs, including their beautiful fall color. Native Americans used all parts of this plant for everything from a kind of lemonade from its berries to dye from its bark and twigs.

I was surprised to find a wild privet with green leaves still on it out here. I grew up walking this trail when it was a working railroad and have never seen a privet here. I’ve read that birds love the berries so it will be appearing everywhere, I’m sure.

There are lots of grapevines along this trail and I always like to stop and have a look at the tendrils, wondering where my imagination might take me. It’s easy to get lost in this so you have to keep your wits about you so you don’t come down with a good case of tendrilitis. I can easily spend hours doing things like this. This one looked kind of like an S with an extra squiggle or top knot.

I went to where the trout lilies bloom so beautifully in the wetlands and saw what looked like a buck rub on an old alder. Since the way the alder grew would prevent a tractor or mower damaging it in this way, a buck rub is the only answer I could come up with.

A buck rub happens when a male deer rubs its antlers on a tree trunk or branch. It does this when the blood supply to its antlers decreases in the fall. The velvet on the antlers dries and begins peeling, and to get rid of it the deer rubs them on a tree or branch. It is also thought that this may be a way that young bucks practice fighting other young bucks. Quite often the same tree, or in this case a shrub, is used again and again, rubbing the bark right off it. Since I saw two bucks and four does in this area one day I suspect that this was probably a prime hunting spot before a public road was built very nearby.  

As if to confirm my suspicions, here was an old tree stand; so old that it was falling apart. In those days they were built, not bought. Imagine sitting on that for hours on a cold fall morning, lashed to the tree, waiting for a deer to come by. It was a good choice though; that buck rub wasn’t too far from here.

The way the sunlight lit up this beech tree was so beautiful, I had to stop and take a photo of it. This is an example of why I often say beauty is everywhere you look. But you have to look, and you have to see. Unless you are power walking for exercise what harm could there be in just walking slowly and looking closely at your surroundings? When something captures your eye (or your heart) just go and see. And yes, looking is different than seeing. Anyone can look, but few seem to be able to really see. All it takes is a little practice.

I saw a very red colored seep. According to what I’ve read this red color in seeps and on river and stream banks is usually caused by iron hydroxide. A seep happens when ground water reaches the surface. It doesn’t flow; it just sits, and will usually stay in liquid form all winter without freezing.

There were lots of skunk cabbages in the seep with their mottled maroon and yellow spathes just starting to show. I went and saw the skunk cabbage with an open spathe that we saw in the last post, thinking I might see the flowers inside, but instead I found that the spathe had closed. That was a first; I’ve never seen them close their spathes before and have never heard that they could do so, but apparently if it gets cold enough they will. I think it got down to around 16 or 17 degrees F. on a couple of nights, so they must have closed up shop in a hurry. Plenty of plants get fooled in spring but I’ve never known skunk cabbages to fall for early warmth.

Lilac buds are getting big and beautiful now. Lilac buds normally have a natural whitish “glue” that keeps the overlapping bud scales from allowing water into the bud where it could freeze and kill the bud. These buds instead had this strip of tan (?) tissue on their leading edges, which was very pretty, I thought.

Yesterday it warmed up again in the afternoon and I must have seen two dozen dandelion blossoms. Here are two of them. Dandelions seem to be raring to go so far this year.

I can’t tell you how happy I was to see these two little yellow crocuses blossoming yesterday. Unfortunately it was supposed to get cold (23 degrees F) last night and it’s supposed to stay cold all of today, so there’s a good chance I won’t see them again. There are plenty more on the way though. As I said in the last post; once spring gets going there is no stopping it.

You must, in order that it shall speak to you, take a thing during a certain time as the only one that exists, as the only phenomenon which through your diligent and exclusive love finds itself set down in the center of the universe. ~Rilke

Thanks for stopping in.

Spring in February?

Shortly after I clicked “publish” on the last post I happened to see this out of the corner of my eye while I was driving by. All the trees and the bare granite summit on Mount Monadnock had a frosting of wet snow and it was beautiful. I quickly turned around and found a place to park alongside one of the busiest streets in Keene and got out with my camera. I noticed that drivers were becoming interested either in what I was doing or in what I might be pointing the camera at instead of the road. They were slowing down enough for traffic to start bunching up so I didn’t stay long. Having lived with the mountain for most of my life I can say that what you see here is just about as beautiful as it ever gets. Unfortunately though, most drivers seemed in a hurry to drive right by.

It was warm down in the lowlands that day I took the photo of Mount Monadnock and then it got even warmer, until we ended up with the second warmest first 12 days of February, second only to 2018. Plants responded, as this skunk cabbage shows. According to this blog February eighth in 2020 held the record for the earliest I had seen them until February seventh of this year broke that record. Overall I think this year is quite a lot warmer than 2020 because I didn’t see all the plants and flowers in 2020 that I’m seeing now.

This photo of the same plant was taken five days after the previous one and you can see how the spathe on the left has opened up, tearing itself a bit in the process. Inside the spathe is the spadix, which is what the small flowers grow on. Each day the spathe will open wider to allow early insects access the flower pollen. I saw two or three small insects flying on this day but I couldn’t tell what they were.

Willow catkins are just starting to show. I’m sure all the school teachers will be out cutting them soon to have in their classrooms as they do every year. It’s nice to think of all the younger children getting to see how the bright yellow flowers develop.

I admired a beautiful bud on another willow. It reminded me of a red painted fingernail.

I saw a teddy bear face on another willow. Actually this is a crown gall, which can be caused by bacteria in the soil or a fungus, depending on the host plant. Though this gall shows holes that look like they were made by insects I think they were actually made by a woodpecker. Most galls don’t harm the host plant but crown galls can damage a plant by restricting sap flow and weakening it. Rapid growth of plant cells results in a large, rock hard mass like that seen here. Several ornamental shrubs are susceptible to crown gall. If you find galls on one of yours just Google “Crown Gall on plant name.”

You won’t see many photos of crows on this blog, because they are very smart birds. Point anything at them and they’re gone. I happened to see these birds out in an old field and I wondered if I stayed in the car if they’d let me get a shot. It worked; I shot this through the passenger window while they wandered through the field, ignoring me. I’d bet that if I had gotten out of the car they would have been gone before I could even focus. The two birds in flight seen here were coming in for a landing rather than taking off. Interesting how their black eyes shine in the sunlight. I’ve never noticed that before.

A lady I met in the wetlands the other day told me she had seen and heard red winged blackbirds. They are a sure sign of spring and there are plenty of last year’s cattails waiting for nest building time. Not only do the females use the fluffy seeds to line their nests, they also find nice fat grubs in the plant’s stems. I won’t see them at this pond for a few day though, that’s ice behind them.

Though I haven’t seen any sap buckets yet sap was dripping here and there from the branches of this red maple and the bud scales had loosened and started to open on several of the buds. I expect sap buckets will appear before too long.

Mallards never bothered to go anywhere this year. I’ve seen them regularly since last fall. There are muskrats and beavers living in this stream and they eat the roots of the many cattails growing here. You can see some cattail leaves and stems that have been cut away from the roots floating behind the mallard. In this way they stay well fed and also keep a channel open through the cattails.

Blades of grass were melting their way through this ice. It’s amazing how much warmth anything dark colored generates on a sunny spring day. It’s all energy.

The ice was too thick for this oak leaf to radiate its way through, apparently.

An old willow tree’s branches had turned to gold. It’s the only tree I know of that does this each spring.

American hazelnut catkins are also turning from green to gold. As more sap flows into them they lengthen, become pliable and grow in girth before opening their bud scales and revealing the golden yellow male flowers underneath. The flowers are arranged in spirals around a central stalk, and that can easily be seen here. You can also see the bud scales, which overlap like tiny shingles, just starting to open if you look carefully at the upper left edge of that central catkin. All of these signs point directly to spring. Soon it will be time to look for the tiny female flowers.

The early bittercress plants are blooming. These plants are in the mustard family and are among the first to bloom in spring. They can be a real headache for gardeners. The plants shown here are a mix of hairy and wavy bittercress, I believe.

Bittercress flowers are so tiny this entire bouquet could fit behind a pea. Each flower has four petals and four (hairy) or six (wavy) stamens. The long narrow seedpods, like the one seen here in the background, can shoot seeds several feet, making sure they spread all over a garden. Seeds germinate in the fall, and that’s the best time to pull the small plants; before they flower and set more seeds. It’s always best to make sure that all beds go into winter clean of all but the plants that are supposed to be in them. It’s easier that way.

I saw that a few Cornelian cherry bud scales had opened enough to reveal all the flower buds inside. The tightly packed flower buds looked to be pulling apart and getting ready to open. There’s still room for a lot of cold air in the month of February so I hope they’ll wait. Most of the plants seen in this post are built for cold and they can take it but I think it would kill off Cornelian cherry blossoms. This small tree is in the dogwood family and I see brown, frost bitten dogwood blossoms almost every year. The bud seen here is about as big as a pea.

Magnolias have just one bud scale called a cap, and most of the time they fall off whole but sometimes they’ll do what this one is doing and fool you into thinking there are two scales instead of one. What surprised me about this bud is how it had another hairy bud scale inside the outer one. I can’t remember ever seeing this before.

There are large numbers of daffodils shooting up but I haven’t seen any buds yet. That’s probably a good thing.

Hyacinths are also up, and early. They don’t usually come along unto the crocuses begin to bloom and I haven’t seen a crocus yet.

This dandelion blossom looked as if it had just rolled out of bed and hadn’t had time to fully wake up. There’s also a lot of chickweed in this shot, I see. That will be the next to bloom, before long.

I was happy but not surprised to see the spring blooming witch hazels in full bloom. They’re beautiful and it was nice to see them again.

Though they are native to the United States they are not native this far north but even so I’ve seen them blossom their way through snow storms and very cold weather. Though the individual flowers are small there are so many of them they put on a good show. They also have a wonderful scent that is hard to describe. Maybe a little spicy but also clean and fresh. Some have described it as clean laundry just brought in off the line. They often bloom for weeks depending on the weather, so they would be a great addition to any spring garden.

Yesterday morning was cold and a couple inches of nuisance snow had fallen overnight but it doesn’t matter because spring is on the way. The plants in this post might be slowed down by a cold snap or two but they won’t be stopped. If you aren’t seeing flowers just yet chances are it won’t be long.

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men. ~Chinese Proverb

Thanks for coming by.