A Few More Signs of Spring

Longfellow once wrote: “The spring came suddenly, bursting upon the world as a child bursts into a room, with a laugh and a shout and hands full of flowers,” and that is often just how it is, but not this year. This year spring seems to be giving us only a flower or two each day, and those seem to come begrudgingly. But spring isn’t just about flowers. There are many other signs to watch for, and they seem to be right on time. Canada geese for instance, have returned. The goose in the above photo seemed to be all about making waves, so I watched what it was doing. The waves came from its body rocking back and forth, and it was doing that because it was stamping or dragging its feet on the pond bottom.

And then: plink; it would drop its head into the water to feed on whatever it happened to kick up. Last years cattail leaves seem most likely to be what it was feeding on in this spot. They must still contain some nutrients if the geese eat them. My question was, with all that kicking up of the silt how could the goose see anything?

There is still a lot of melt water pouring off the hillsides. This stream helps feed the pond that the goose was in.

I stood looking at the beautiful jewel like catkins of the alders lining the shore of the pond and suddenly I felt a rush of something familiar that I have never been able to explain. It was the same feeling I used to have as a boy in spring. I’d walk or ride my bike to school at this time of year and see lawns greening up and see new leaves and flowers here and there, and hear all the birds singing, and by the time I got to school I was often just about as close to ecstatic as a 10 year old boy could be, and for no other reason than experiencing all the things that make up spring. The season has always had a powerful hold on me and if anything, it has gotten stronger as I’ve aged. I open the door in the morning and step outside and bang, instant happiness. I think if I were blind I would still know it was spring because part of it is here, inside me.

American hazelnut bushes are loaded with so many catkins this year I don’t know if I could find a spot to hang another one.

The catkins are strings of male flowers that spiral around a central stalk. What look like tiny manta rays with a black tail and white fringe on either side, are the bud scales that protect the flower buds over winter. When the catkins soften and lengthen the bud scales open, and that is the signal that the flowers will be opening to release their pollen to the wind any day now. Under each bud scale are three to five tiny yellowish flowers, so there can be hundreds of flowers per catkin. How many there are on a single bush is a question that boggles the mind.

If I go by the white specks on some of the sticky female hazelnut flowers, they are already catching some of that wind borne pollen. Each of those tiny red stigmas is smaller in diameter than a piece of kite string, but in the fall if everything goes according to nature’s plan the birds and animals will have plenty of hazelnuts.

Here comes a little more pollen. Poplars are also showing their male flowers, which will also be opening any day now.

The reddish bits are the male stamens, which will split open to release the pollen. Once the female flowers receive the pollen they’ll produce fluffy white seeds which will blow on the wind and give these trees another name: cottonwoods. When the seeds let go you had better have your house and car windows closed. If not you’ll be vacuuming, because the seeds blow everywhere.

Night temperatures are still dropping into the 20s and daytime temps are between 45 and 55 degrees on average, so maple sap is still flowing. I’ve seen flowers on the red maples though, and I’ve heard that once a tree flowers the sap becomes bitter, so I suppose it must depend on the ratio of red to sugar maples you’ve tapped. A few red maples probably don’t make that much difference in the quality of the syrup.

I was happy to see new green the shoots of cattails. Muskrats will be happy, too.

A little friend was enjoying a left over nut from last year, and making quite a mess of the job too, if I may say so. He was also molting. At least I think so; I’ve read that gray squirrels lose all their hair from their head to their tail twice each year. And then it all grows back, of course. This one looked to have lost most of its hair down to its waist, but there is still plenty left to go. I thought about suggesting that he might lose it faster if he didn’t sit around eating nuts all day but then I decided it wasn’t any of my business.

I love the color of the willows in spring. They’re usually a bright golden color but this orangey kind of color is what 2 different cameras saw on this day. It’s not what I thought I saw but I can’t explain it.

Last year’s oak leaves have become the rich, warm, orangey brown that they often do once they dry on the tree. They look like soft leather but are crisp, like a potato chip. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: if you can find beauty in simple things, then you’ll find beauty wherever you go. Life is full of beautiful things but you have to give yourself time to see them.

I woke up one morning and found a beautiful reticulated iris in the yard. My blogging friend Ginny sent me some seeds and bulbs from Maryland last year and I planted some of the bulbs where I had cleared out a huge old Japanese honeysuckle. This was the first flower to appear but now there are also what look like white scilla blossoms coming along as well. Since I love reticulated irises, I was very happy to see this one, even if it is the only one so far.

I’ve seen exactly one Johnny jump up blossom this year and this is it. In years past I would have seen hundreds by now.

This is one of my favorite crocuses so I was happy to see that they had come up.

Two or three days before I took this shot there wasn’t a flower in sight and then all of the sudden there were snowdrops everywhere.

This is another favorite crocus. I love the delicate shading inside the flower but the light on this day was too harsh to show it well. Many crocuses close when it’s cloudy but if you hit this bed just as it begins to cloud over, that’s when the shading is at its most beautiful.

On this day there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but there was a pale moon hanging there. I didn’t have a tripod with me but I thought I’d try anyway. It’s not the sharpest photo I’ve ever taken but I was happy that it came out at all. Next week is supposed to be relatively warm so there should be a lot more flowers to see.

Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! ~Sitting Bull

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A Little Bit of Everything

I went over to Perkin’s Pond in Troy last week to see how spring was getting on but it still looked wintery, even though the day was gloriously spring like. The view of Mount Monadnock was as good as it gets, all frosted with snow like it was. At just over 3,000 feet, It’s the tallest peak in the area and until recently it was the second most climbed mountain in the world after Mount Fuji in Japan. Now however, there is said to be a mountain in China that sees over two million visitors each year. Mark Twain, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson are among a few of the well known people who have climbed Monadnock, and countless poets, authors, artists, and musicians have described how it made them feel. Thoreau said that it was far more beautiful when seen from a distance than it was looking off from the summit, and I agree. Its name is said to mean “mountain that stands alone” in the native Abenaki language. In warmer months this stretch of road is often lined with painters, photographers, and tourists.

Years ago, a friend and I climbed Monadnock in mid April when the snowpack looked much like it does in this shot. You can if you’re careful, pick your way around the snow, but there are spots where you have to go through it. We climbed unprepared for the conditions, and foolish mistakes like that can be dangerous and even deadly up there. In places we found ourselves in snow so deep we had to spread ourselves out and kind of swim -wriggle -crawl over the top of it. When we finally got to the top exhausted and drenched, we found ourselves in a fog so thick we couldn’t see enough of the landscape to know if we had even reached the summit. The world had become a blank, uniformly gray nothingness. Over on the right in this shot you can see a group of maybe 7 or 8 people, and I’d guess when they got got home they were able to wring water out of everything they wore, just like we were that day. But at least they weren’t in a fog.

The ice on Perkin’s Pond was starting to melt but I could see tracks on the ice leading to or away from the open water. I hope they were made by some thing rather than some one. This is not a good time of year to be on the ice.

I saw some shy old friends, the split gill mushrooms. These true winter mushrooms are small and always wear a fuzzy coat, as can be seen here. I couldn’t call them rare but neither are they common. I might find one group of them per year if I’m lucky.

These examples were dry and quite small; the largest one in this shot might have been as big as an aspirin. The “gills” on the split gill fungus are actually folds in the tissue of its spore bearing surface that split lengthwise when it dries out. The splits close over the fertile surfaces as the mushroom shrivels in dry weather. When rehydrated by rain the splits reopen, the spore-producing surfaces are exposed to the air, and spores are released. These little mushrooms are very tough and leathery and even though they’re white they can be hard to spot.

I mentioned in that last post how subtle the start of spring can be, and these hazelnut catkins illustrate that very well. You can just see that they’ve started to turn golden from the green they’ve been all winter, and that’s just one subtle sign of spring that I look for. At this time of year, it really doesn’t matter what the calendar says.

You can look at the seasons in two ways. Meteorologically, seasons go by temperature, with the hottest three months in the northern hemisphere being summer and the coldest three months winter. This way, winter starts on December first, spring on March first, summer on June first, and autumn on September first. This is the way meteorologists prefer to see the seasons. Another way to look at the seasons is astronomically. Equinoxes are when day and night are closest to equal length; spring begins around March 21st and autumn around September 22nd. The solstices are days with the longest and shortest amounts of sunlight; summer begins around June 21st and winter around December 22nd. The dates of the solstices and equinoxes can vary from year to year, and that’s why meteorologists don’t use them. They like solid, three month intervals. I forget all of it and watch nature.

Poplar catkins look a lot like pussy willow catkins and that’s not surprising, because poplar trees are in the willow family. North American poplars are divided into three main groups: the cottonwoods, the aspens, and the balsam poplars. If the buds aren’t sticky then the tree belongs in the aspen group. These bud scales were beautifully shiny but not at all sticky so this was an aspen. Poplar catkins often appear right around the same time willow catkins do. Maybe a week or so later.

I saw signs that the alder catkins were loosening up. The grayish “glue” that keeps water from getting in under the bud scales had disappeared on the catkins that receive the most sunlight and they had also started to show some red and purple coloration. When the bud scales open and reveal the flowers the purple and green catkins sparkle as they move on the breeze, and it looks like jewels have been hung from the bushes. It’s another of those many things that makes spring so special.

Encouraged by the warm sunshine I went to the local college campus again. There I found the first snowdrops I’ve seen this spring. They bloom early but they aren’t the earliest flowers to appear.

I also saw the first purple crocus of the year, and it was beautiful. I haven’t seen any bees yet but I’ve seen a lot of other insects.

I found cress in bloom as well. I don’t know if it’s winter cress or spring cress but it doesn’t matter; all that matters is its beauty. It’s a very early flower that I always like to see.

It’s also a very small flower. A bouqet of four or five of these could hide behind a pea. I wanted to put a flower on a penny for scale but I didn’t have a single coin with me. They are so hard for me to see it took me a few tries to get a shot that was useable.

This was the strangest thing I saw on this day. Blue leaf buds? I’ve never heard of such a thing, but I tried to just forget the color and looked the plant over. From what I saw I believe it was some variety of big leaf hydrangea but I couldn’t swear to it. There were several plants in a group, all maybe two to three feet tall, and they baffled Google lens as well. I’m hoping someone might know what it is; maybe one of the master gardeners out there? I’d love to hear about it. I’d plant it just for that beautiful blue bud color.

One of my favorite spring flowers is reticulated iris and here they were in full bloom. When I first started visiting the college campus to see the spring flowers that bloomed there I often saw these little irises coming up and blooming right through the snow. Back then they were the earliest of all the flowers on the campus but no longer. Now they’re well behind crocuses, and I can’t imagine why.

In the last post I showed you some crocuses trying to bloom under the snow, and this is what I found in that spot on this day. After a long New Hampshire winter, a scene like this can melt even the hardest of hearts. Flowers give so much and ask so little. They are precious jewels, and I try to remember to be grateful for the richness they bring to life each time I see them.

I saw a new spring blooming witch hazel in bloom. It was very showy and looked much like its cousin the native fall blooming witch hazel. These spring bloomers are extremely fragrant and their scent always says spring to me.

But then there was another bump in the road to spring this week. This is what we woke up to Wednesday morning: more heavy wet snow. The snow pasted on the trees said the wind had come out of the northeast and I’ve heard that in places, it howled. It often does when we have a nor’easter.

One of my favorite snow quotes is by William Sharp, who said “There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.” That is a perfect description of what I saw, and it was amazingly beautiful.

The trouble is, the same thing that makes this kind of snow so very beautiful also makes it problematic. It is so wet it sticks to everything and when you get several inches of it, it gets very heavy. Everywhere I went I heard tales of snow blowers that had broken down and plow trucks that could just barely move it. In the view above, birch trees were bent right down to the ground under the weight of it. Sometimes they will recover and stand up straight again but more often than not they have to be cut. I’m thankful that we don’t see storms like this one very often, and that I was able to shovel what fell at my house.

I was lucky as far as snow totals go. Though the official total was supposed to be 17 inches here, I measured slightly less than 7 inches in my yard. Snow this wet and heavy can compact itself though, so that might account for the difference. I didn’t lose power here but many thousands of people did. About 12 miles to the northeast in the town of Nelson, they saw 40 inches, according to the local news station. That’s an incredible amount of snow from one storm, even for New Hampshire. I’d bet there are a lot of sore backs among the unlucky folks in that part of the state. It will most likely take about a week for it to all melt depending on the weather, so I probably won’t be seeing flowers again for a while. If there is one thing you learn quickly when you take up nature blogging it is that you can’t pick and choose. You learn to take what comes without complaint. I have been known to whine about the #$+&@^!* weather now and then but I won’t do that today. Instead, I’ll think about calendar spring, which starts in two days. My 12th year of blogging also starts on that day.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself. ~Annie Leibovitz

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Spring Flowers

We’ve had a string of very warm days here lately and that was all it took to kick spring into high gear. As you can see in this photo of the buds, red maples are responding to the warmth and buds are breaking. You can just see the male stamens all tucked inside the now open buds.

And then on another branch of the same tree the male flowers had fully opened and were producing pollen. I looked at several different red maples on this day, but this was the only one I saw flowering. Tree blossoming periods are staggered over several weeks, so if frost damages some flowers it won’t damage them all. That’s a good thing because this tree has misjudged the weather and jumped the gun. The night time forecasts include below freezing temperatures this week, so there is a good chance that any open flowers on this tree will die. However, thanks to the staggered bloom times that nature has seen to, I might still find red maples flowering a month from now.

I checked hundreds of hazelnut buds but hadn’t seen any of the tiny scarlet, female thread like flowers. They would appear at the top of a bud much like this one, which is so small I don’t really know how to describe it.

But then I saw this bush, loaded with golden colored male catkins, so I decided to check it for female flowers. Hazelnut catkins are just a string of tiny male flowers that usually spiral around a central stalk, and though these weren’t open and producing pollen yet the fact that they have readied themselves to do so is enough to awaken the female flowers.

And there they were, just barely opened on the first day of spring. If the wind blows just right and they are pollinated these almost microscopic scarlet threads will become hazelnuts, which will hopefully ripen by next fall.

There was a time, when I was gardening professionally, that I dreaded seeing dandelions starting to bloom, but I can’t tell you how happy I was to see this, the first dandelion I’ve seen this year.

I suppose my outlook must have changed. All the prejudices that I had toward them began to slip away and I started seeing dandelions for what they really are, which is a beautiful yellow flower that shouts spring is here! When I stopped fighting them and just let them be, I saw the beauty that had always been there. It was only my thoughts about them that had kept their beauty hidden. As Marcus Aurelius said “If you are pained by external things, it is not they that disturb you, but your own judgement of them. And it is in your power to wipe out that judgement now.” Though I didn’t consciously “wipe out my judgement” of dandelions I have certainly softened my attitude toward them over the years. My dislike (that was mostly learned from others who didn’t like them) has completely fallen away, and maybe that is as it should be. All of my life they have been here. I have eaten their leaves and drank the coffee I made from their roots and dusted the tip of my nose with their pollen, and they are old friends.

I’ve spent a few years trying to figure out what the name of this plant is. I know it is in the mustard family and I know it’s a cress, but I’m not sure which one so I’ll just call it a spring cress. I think it might actually be hairy bittercress but by most accounts it’s a hated weed that is almost impossible to eradicate because of the huge numbers of seeds it produces. You can pull plants until the cows come home but you’ll always miss one or two. It’s like sea turtles; most will get eaten by birds or fish but there will always be some that survive to carry on the Prime Directive, which is continuation of the species. Nature has taken care of it.

Can you see the beauty in this “horrible weed?” Its leaves were just unfolding when I got there, which I thought made it even prettier.

If I go all the way back as far as my memory will go, I find the flowers of ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) living there. Both houses I spent my time at when I was young, my father’s and grandmother’s, had plenty of ground ivy in the lawns and I used to love seeing them bloom so early in spring. Ground ivy 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 smell that gets in the back of your throat and stays there for a while.

I brushed some leaves aside where I know Solomon’s seal plants grow and there were the spring shoots. After I took this photo, I covered them up again and let them be. They’re beautiful just as their first leaves start to unfurl, so I’ll try to be there at the end of April to see it happening.

Even after temperatures in the 60s and 70s F. willows still aren’t showing any signs of their yellow flowers. They know what they’re doing and they bloom when they’re ready but I have seen bees and other insects flying already, and they would love to forage on some willow pollen, I’m sure.

I looked at the buds of a native pink azalea (Rhododendron periclymenoides) and though the bud scales looked like they had relaxed I’m not sure any actual swelling had begun. They bloom in June so there is time. As can be seen in this photo this is a very hairy plant, and it is the hairs on the outside of the flowers that exude the wonderful scent.  

Looking for the seedpods of a wild azalea is a good way to find them. They’re quite large and showy.

Snowdrops bloomed while there was still a bit of snow left near them. Maybe that’s how they came by their name.

Johnny jump ups have lifted their heads up and are blooming far better now than they were just a week ago. The warm weather and rapidly melting snow have given everything a boost and plants now seem anxious to get going.

I saw a crocus, then two, and then just a day or two later they were everywhere. It’s remarkable what a couple of warm days will do for flowers in springtime. It was all very sudden; it seemed like most of the flowers in this post had appeared overnight.

I saw some of my old favorites. There were lots of bees buzzing around all the open flowers but they were too skittish for me to get a shot of them.

This one was very dark. Better to show off the yellow stamens and pistil in the center to the bees, maybe. I certainly enjoyed the contrasting colors.

This white one was quite small for a crocus. I’d guess barely an inch across.

All of these crocuses were small. I don’t know if they’re a new kind of hybrid or if they’re just getting smaller with age.

A new witch hazel has come out, or at least it’s new to me, and it’s very pink. I don’t remember ever seeing one with pink petals but I must have because I visit these bushes every spring.

I went to see the skunk cabbages and wow; I saw a lot of them. So many in fact, that I couldn’t move without stepping on the ones still under leaves that I couldn’t see. When you step on a skunk cabbage spathe they squeak, much like a head of cabbage does sometimes when you cut into it, and that’s how I knew I had stepped on them.

Luckily, I only stepped on one or two and didn’t damage them too badly. In any event the spathe isn’t quite as critical as the spadix, which is the pinkish thing that carries the tiny flowers seen here. The spadix is what, through a process called thermogenesis, can raise the temperature of the plant to as much as 70 degrees F. inside the spathe, thereby attracting insects to the tiny flowers, which on this day were already producing pollen. To a cold, hungry insect it is a nice warm cave that serves food. Though this plant’s roots are poisonous and the leaves can cause burning in the mouth Native Americans new how to prepare it, and used skunk cabbage medicinally. I’ve read that they also used the roots as an underarm deodorant, though I’m not sure just how that might have worked. In the 1800s medicine made from the plant was sold as a cure all, most likely by traveling salesman.

Spring in the world! And all things are made new! ~Richard Hovey

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February Flooding

We had a good string of 50-degree weather last week but of course on the weekend it dropped back down into the 20s F. and even snowed, just enough to slick up the roads and be a nuisance. That’s why we call them nuisance storms. Anyhow I’d had glimpses here and there of what looked like the Ashuelot River flooding and I wanted to see if what I thought I saw was actually happening, so I chose a section of rail trail in Keene that more or less follows the river. This was not a day for photography; all 3 cameras I carried had a hard time but I can’t tell you why. It was as if there was a mist in the air that only the cameras could see, so we’ll just have to pretend we’re walking into an impressionist painting.

The first thing I noticed was a flock of robins in the trees but I couldn’t tell what they were eating until I saw this photo, which tells me their food was the berries of the invasive Oriental Bittersweet. Unfortunately it doesn’t show the entire bird but it shows enough. It looked like he’d eaten enough berries to last for a week, but I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his friends, so I didn’t say anything. Maybe he had just puffed himself up.

Further down the trail I saw a nest from last year that would have been the right size for a robin, so I think a lot of them live out here. There’s plenty for them to eat. When I was a boy, this area was filled with Baltimore orioles but I haven’t seen one here in years, and I think it’s because the type of fruit they ate no longer grows out here. I don’t see many wild grapes, for instance.

There were a lot of invasive burning bush berries but thankfully the birds were leaving them alone.

They had eaten all the native staghorn sumac berries so that was a good thing. Since I couldn’t get a shot of any sumac fruit I settled for a bud instead. It looked as much animal as vegetable but these buds are naked with no bud scales, so they use hairs to keep from freezing.

You have to really know hazelnut catkins to tell, but they are losing their green color and starting to turn just a little golden colored. They’re also lengthening and becoming pliable rather than stiff, as they’ve been all winter. These are all signs that the shrubs are switching from winter to spring mode and are getting ready to produce pollen. It won’t be that long before I have to start watching for the tiny scarlet threads of the female blossoms.

The catkins hold the male flowers, which are all arranged in a spiral around a central stalk. Each tiny group of hairs seen here is on the edge of a bud scale, and soon these scales will lift to reveal the golden pollen bearing male flowers underneath. It’s an event I’m looking forward to, very much.

Here was a sign that made me happy but I wish the deep cut trail in Westmoreland had been included. The drainage ditches have completely failed up there.

Before I decided to walk this trail, I got out of the car and walked a short way to make sure there wasn’t any ice. All I found was gravel but right after the sign in the previous shot there it was, and someone had slipped on it. There’s nothing worse than light snow on ice. It’s very slippery and now I was going to have to walk over half the trail on it. I knew I should have worn spikes. I hope the person who slipped didn’t fall and get hurt. I see quite a lot of older folks out here.

Some were even riding bikes out here. I’m not sure I’d do that on ice but maybe the tires had spikes.

I saw a very unusual oak gall, at least in my experience. It looked like this on one side….

….and it looked like this on the other side. Usually they are smooth and very hard. These galls form when an insect called a rough bullet gall wasp lays its eggs on part of the tree, be it leaves or twigs. They are of course called bullet galls and are maybe twice the diameter of a pea. They will often grow in large clusters of many galls but though this tree had many on it they all grew singly.

Here was something I had been wondering about for years and I thought maybe the new camera could show me what I couldn’t see. I’m talking about all those dark “pits” on the underside of beech leaves.

The new camera did a fine job of showing me that they weren’t pits at all. They looked like some type of gall. I looked them up and found that they are called “Erineum patches.” They are created by eriophyid mites and they don’t really hurt the tree unless there are very large numbers of them. Each patch is made up of tiny hairs that grow from the tissue of the leaf but you would need at least 40X magnification to see them or the mites that create them. The new camera is good but not quite that good, so we’ll just have to imagine creatures so small they can’t be seen.

This is what you see on the upper surface of the leaf; what look like pock marks. I see these all the time so I’m glad to finally know what they’re all about. Thanks goes to Ohio State University Extension Service for help in solving this riddle.

I had to say “wow” when I saw that the whole forest had flooded, even though the river was running very fast. Apparently, there is nowhere for all the water to go down to the south of town, so it’s backing up.

I went down the embankment as far as I dared to see if I could get shots that weren’t looking through brush. The noises from the ice cracking, hissing and groaning, were amazing. It might be as flat as a dance floor but it’s very alive and it lets you know it. Life is always flowing, even when it appears still.

Almost all of the trees here are red or silver maples and they can stand this kind of treatment but still, it was amzing to see. I used to play here as a boy and I used to see the river flood, but I can’t remember ever seeing it quite like this. The reflections must be beautiful under a blue sky.

Here was the trestle. I hoped to get a good view of the ice from there.

And there was what was supposed to be Ash Brook. It had grown many times over its normal width.

I can’t even guess what made that pattern in the ice. It looked like foam had frozen into it but where the foam came from, I don’t know.

The dark area shows where the channel of Ash Brook would normally be. I was flabbergasted by the extent of the flooding, and I left hoping no homes along the river had flooded. We lived just feet away from the river when I was a boy and each spring the river would rise just to the top of its banks but not spill over on our side. I hope that’s still true. The street I lived on isn’t far from here.

The blue sap on this white pine told me how cold it was but I didn’t really need its help because after being surrounded by all this ice I was chilled just about to the bone. I made it back to the car without slipping on the ice and the thermometer read only 27 degrees, so there would be no melting on this day. The next day, Monday was supposed to reach 50, so we’re on the spring roller coaster as far as temperatures go.

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. ~Loren Eiseley

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