New Hampshire Garden Solutions

I’ve been to the Beaver Brook Natural Area several times lately, watching for the trees to go green and for the flowers to bloom. It has been so cool and wet things are still moving very slowly, but spring is rolling along and finally, the trees here are green once again. This shot is of the old abandoned road, closed off in the 1970s, that parallels Beaver Brook through the narrow, natural ravine.

The hobblebushes here, one of our most beautiful native viburnums, are now in full bloom. The larger sterile, pure white flowers around the perimeter are there to entice insects into visiting the smaller fertile flowers in the center. If pollination is successful each of those tiny flowers will become a berry which will turn from green to red to dark purple. Then the deer will come along and eat them and we’ll have more hobblebushes. Unless that is, people get to them first. The fruit is edible raw or cooked and is said to taste like raisins.

I’ve never seen blue bead lily plants here so I was surprised to see a colony of them growing on the hillside near the hobblebushes. Some like the one shown had flower buds, so I’m looking forward to seeing the yellow, lily like flowers any day now. The plant gets its name from the electric blue, round fruit that pollinated flowers produce, but deer love them and finding them gets tougher each year.

At a glance this plant might be confused with pink lady’s slipper but that plant’s leaves are deeply pleated, and the leaves of blue bead lily are smooth.

Heart leaf foam flowers (Tiarella cordifolia) used to grow here by the hundreds until “improvements” were made a few years ago. Now there are maybe two or three dozen plants left. If you like what you see in the photo there are many cultivars available, and they’re very easy to grow. They don’t mind shade and they do well in damp places. Each flower stalk is about six inches tall.

I saw some turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor) here and though they weren’t the prettiest ones I’ve seen at least they were here. Since the ongoing drought has meant no mushroom posts for I think four years now, any mushroom is nice to see.

Turkey tails are among the most colorful mushrooms but I’ve never been able to find out what determines the various colors. I’ve assumed that the minerals the tree took up in groundwater were the source of the mushroom’s colors but I’m not sure anyone really knows.

I saw a dryad’s saddle (Polyporus squamosus) bracket fungus on a log. These mushrooms get quite large and are fairly common on dead hardwood trees and stumps in the spring and fall. The squamosus part of the scientific name means scaly and this mushroom almost always has brown scales on its cap. It is named after the dryad, which is a tree nymph or female tree spirit from Greek mythology. They were considered very shy creatures but I’m not sure why they needed a saddle.

The red elderberries are in bloom with hen’s egg size flower heads made up of tiny, white pencil eraser size flowers. What I want to see are the shrub’s small, bright red berries. Birds really love the fruit though, so if I want a photo of them I’ll have to return often. It’s been several years since I was last able to show them to you.

There are lots of violets growing here and in many other places I visit this year. They’re loving this weather, I think.

Wild sarsaparilla is another of those plants that start life with shiny leaves which then turn to a matte finish as they age. This plant’s leaves also often start out red, then turn a kind of bronze before finally changing to green. I just happened to catch this plant betwixt and between all of it’s various changes. Each plant if old enough, will usually have three spherical flower heads tucked beneath the leaves.

The roots of this plant were once used to make root beer but the drink that was called sarsaparilla contained no part of the plant. It was made from sweet birch oil and sassafras root.

I stopped to see an old friend, the smoky eye boulder lichen. It’s one of the most beautiful lichens that I know of but it was even more so when I first met it. Back then the body or thallus of the lichen was colored brown gold, and the blue apothecia where the lichen’s spores are produced against the golden thallus was even more beautiful than it is today. Usually when you find this lichen its apothecia are a kind of smoky gray, but the light in this location is caught by their waxy coating in just the right way to turn them a beautiful blue. It’s a relatively rare sight in my experience.

I’ve seen Beaver Brook threaten to spill over its banks many times in spring but this year it has been very tame. If you want to see an incredible amount of beauty in a relatively small space, this place is for you. All we’ve seen in these pages is contained in what is less than a mile’s walk and I didn’t even mention the hundreds of red trilliums, solomon’s seal, flowering raspberry, and other plants that grow here.

After Beaver Brook I went to the wetlands and saw a mother mallard with her newly hatched ducklings. I first noticed last year when a mother mallard and her brood swam over to me that mallard mothers really do seem very willing to show off their babies. These must have swam quite close for an hour or more.

If you count the ducklings in the first shot you get to 11. Count them here and you only get 10, so one must have wandered off. I wondered how she could keep so many ducklings in line and doing what she wanted them to and then I saw one method she used; she gave two or three of them a sharp peck on the top of the head. She also quacked softly to them.

Then she said “Look what I can do!” “Impressive” I admitted, “but your babies are scattering.“ She got down off her tuffet and swam to the ducklings, immediately pecking one on the top of its head. I wondered what that one had done that the others weren’t doing.

A little solitary sandpiper (I think) was taking a bath right in front of where I was. When it was finished it returned to hunting for food. It had no fear and stayed in this spot for quite some time.

Nature is a funny thing. You can go for days without seeing much of anything out of the ordinary and then one day it’s as if nature is throwing itself at you, wanting you to see all it has. That’s how this day with all its waterfowl was. At times I couldn’t click the shutter fast enough. That’s why, if you truly want to study nature, you have to be out there evey day. You just never know what you’ll see, or when.

A little song sparrow landed on a limb so it could get a better look at me but it didn’t sing. Quite often they’ll land in a nearby bush or tree and sing beautifully, but not this one. Maybe it was hiding behind that small branch and didn’t want me to see.

I think I’ve shown you enough photos of wood ducks for a while but I wanted to show this one because it’s so unusual, and it’s unusual because there is no water in it. The female is still in hiding but I hope to see her and some little wood ducklings soon.

One of the things I like to try is getting a clear shot of a butterfly’s eye, and I do that because they’re fascinating things when seen up close. I didn’t do very well with this little cabbage white I found sitting on a tulip leaf but the season is young and soon the bigger butterflies will appear.

It’s hard to believe since they’re our state flower, but I’ve had a hard time finding lilacs in bloom this year. I’d guess that is because many flower buds were lost to frost and cold. We had freeze warnings this past Monday and Tuesday night and I haven’t got a single lilac blossoming in my yard. I had to go to the local college to see these.

I wen’t to a local park to find white lilacs. My mother planted a white lilac before she died so that was the lilac I grew up with, and it has always been a personal favorite. The one we had was very fragrant but the newer cultivars don’t seem to be that fragrant.

Chokecherry trees are blossoming now. Chokecherries are small trees that often resemble shrubs. The sausage shaped flower heads are very different from the flower clusters that we saw on the pin cherry in that last post. The racemes full of flowers are very fragrant. If pollinated each flower will become a dark purple one seeded berry (drupe) which, though edible can be bitter or sour. Many Native American tribes used the fruit as food and used other parts of the tree such as the inner bark medicinally. They also used the bark in their smoking mixtures to improve the flavor.

Chokecherry flowerheads look very similar to those on black cherry but this tree’s leaves are shorter and more rounded than black cherry. Black cherry leaves are longer and thinner. Also, black cherry trees are much bigger, often reaching 60-80 feet while chokecherry trees might reach 20 feet on a good day.

Black choke berry flowers are about as big as an aspirin and have plum colored anthers, which help tell them from some of our other white flowered trees and shrubs. The plants I’ve seen might reach 5 feet tall and are always more shrub than tree. It is considered an important forage plant and bear, birds, rabbits, mice, chipmunks, deer, elk, and moose eat various parts of it. Ants, butterflies, honeybees, flies, and hummingbirds drink its nectar.

Native Americans used all parts of this plant medicinally. The fruit was used for canker sores and sore throats and the roots were dried, chewed, and placed in wounds to stop bleeding. The stems were boiled to make tea to treat fevers. The small drupes have an edible outer fleshy layer but the single seed contains high levels of hydrogen cyanide so children should be warned against eating too many of them.

I’m showing a close look at this beautiful native blue phlox blossom (Phlox divaricata) because dame’s rocket will be blooming soon and the two plants are sometimes confused. Phlox has five petals while dame’s rocket has four. If there are no flowers I look at the leaves; phlox leaves are opposite while dame’s rocket has alternate leaves. Since I enjoy seeing both plants I don’t get too worked up about it but dame’s rocket isn’t native and it can be invasive. It often grows in large colonies.

Old fashioned bleeding heart dies right back to nothing in the heat of summer so it is enjoying the cool spring. It’s blooming well again this year.

Allergy sufferers beware; grasses are just starting to flower and shin high sweet vernal grass (Anthoxanthum odoratum) is usually one of the first to bloom. The sedge like, feathery white filaments seen here are its beautiful female flowers, and you can also see two or three of its butter yellow male stamens. Smelling this grass reminds you of fresh cut hay with a bit of vanilla mixed in, and for that reason it is also called vanilla grass.

There are many trees that have gone through or are going through bud break right now but few are as beautiful as shagbark hickory buds. Unfortunately though, most people never get to see what we see here because shagbark hickory trees can reach 60-80 feet tall and of course most of the buds are at the top of the trees. Fortunately I know a place along the Ashuelot river where beavers are very active, and one of the trees they cut again and again is the shagbark hickory. This means the buds remain at about eye level and that lets me show you what we would usually never be able to see. They are as beautiful as flowers for just a short time, and then they’re gone over to leaves.

The rarest wildflower in this post is this blue cohosh. Rare in my experience anyway; I’ve only found it twice in 60 years of walking through these woods. The other single plant I found grew in Westmoreland but it was destroyed during rail trail improvements. I mention that plant because it had a blueish cast like this one does on its buds and flowers. I suppose that must be where the name blue cohosh came from, but cohosh is a Native American name that can mean any one of three or four different plants.

Each flower is just slightly larger than a standard aspirin, with six yellow, green striped sepals and six yellow stamens surrounding a style, stigma, and a green “superior” ovary, which is an ovary attached to the receptacle above rather than below other “floral parts.” Six green, small petals form a ring between the sepals and the stamens, and each one has a nectar gland to attract insects. It’s safe to say that there are no other flowers in these New England woods that are quite like these.

Blue cohosh fruit is I’ve read, “unique among flowering plants.” Two brown, naked seeds outgrow the flower’s ovary and burst through its wall and then develop a spherical, green fleshy coating that eventually turns blue. When you see the blue “fruit” of a blue cohosh plant technically what you’re seeing is the fleshy outer seed coating, not fruit. These fleshy seeds are said to be toxic and believed to be eaten mostly by mice but I’ve seen them still on the plant the following spring. The leaves are toxic so deer and most other animals won’t eat them. The plant likes rich, moist soil in hardwood forests and seems to prefer partial shade. As I’ve discovered, it can form quite large colonies if it likes where it grows. For that reason I’d say it was a fair bet there are large patches of it here and there that haven’t been found. Or at least, that haven’t been reported.

You can experience the beauty of nature only when you sit with it, observe it, breathe it and talk to it. ~Sanchita Pandey

Thanks for coming by.

All the posts that have appeared here since March have come to this, the beautiful softness of the forest. The soft greens began on the forest floor with a sedge here, a fiddlehead there, and then they climbed into the understory, coloring the hobblebushes, elderberries and honeysuckles. Now they have climbed into the trees, that beautiful softness of spring. It’s like being enveloped in a green mist sometimes, and I suppose I first noticed it in this place when I was what 6, 8, 10 years old? I can’t remember how old I was but I do remember the softness, and the love I had for it. Of all the changes I’ve seen, that love has remained unchanging. It has stayed with me through all of my life and it is here now as I look at this photo and remember being in this place just the other day. If only all children could grow up in such a paradise and fall in love with life early on.

But not all of it is green. This beautiful thing stood by while I took that previous photo. I think it was an invasive Norway maple but names don’t matter. Only its beauty matters and beauty doesn’t need an explanation or a definition. Just look at it. Could you feel anything but love for something so beautiful? And all of this is here for us. All the tiny stomata in each of the trillions of leaves is pumping out oxygen for us to breathe. Without them we couldn’t be here.

When you look closely you find that surprisingly, very few new leaves are actually green as they come out of the bud. Maple leaves can be red and will often stay red for weeks. Oak leaves like those on the white oak seen here can be any one of many colors, from white to pink to orange to intense, fluorescent green. Of all the new leaves that appear in spring the oaks probably have the greatest color range. It is thought that new leaves use color to protect themselves from sunburn, but I don’t know that as fact. I just enjoy all the various colors and shapes. The little grape like clusters will be flowers shortly.

The largest of these new oak leaves might have been a little longer than my thumbnail but their color range was amazing. My color finding software sees two shades of salmon pink, orange, yellow, tan, brown, gold, in fact all the colors we see in the fall are here now, coated in velvety softness.

But it isn’t always about color; sometimes it’s about shape. Beech leaves, in green with silver hairs, look like angel wings as they open. Beech bud break is one of those natural wonders I make sure I don’t miss in spring. Once it begins I watch closely each day, from tree to tree, because it lasts for just a short time.

How beautiful is that? In the background you can see the fuzzy, out of focus story of beech bud break. It begins when the normally straight buds start to curl, as that out of focus bud is doing. The curling is caused by the cells on the sunny side of the bud growing faster than those on the shaded side. This creates a tension that curls the bud and eventually causes the bud scales to pull apart so the leaves can emerge. The bud litterally rips itself apart and releases the new leaves. And how beautiful those fresh leaves are. Beech leaves come out of the bud and expand like an accordian. All this is happening in a forest near you.

New Hampshire has four native cherry trees: black cherry (Prunus serotina), choke cherry (Prunus virginiana), pin cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), and wild American plum (Prunus americana). The blossoms in the above photo are pin cherry blossoms. Choke cherries have just started blossoming as well.

Pin cherries get their common name from the way the bright red fruits hang at the end of a long stem (pedicel) and resemble hat pins. It can be seen here with the flower buds in the foreground.

One evening after work six years ago I was working on a blog post and I was going to tell you about how I used to bring apple blossoms to my grandmother when the words that appear below “wrote themselves.” Anyone who writes with any regularity has had this happen. You don’t know where it comes from but it’s a wonderful thing when it happens so you don’t fool with it. You don’t edit it; you leave it just as it wanted to be. So here it is again, for mother’s day. Though it seems to be about a certain boy I think it’s really about the love that fills all children.

My grandmother loved flowers of all kinds but one of the flowers she loved most were apple blossoms, because of their wonderful fragrance. She lived upstairs and had trouble getting down to see the apple trees that grew near her house so each spring I would cut some of the flowers and bring them to her. Sometimes I would sit on the grass, leaning back against the trunk of one of her old apple trees, daydreaming as I looked up at the blossoms, choosing the best branches; the ones with a few flowers and lots of buds that I’d cut for her. The fragrance of the blossoms on this day brought me back to that boy, who was made of all of the things his senses revealed; the grass he sat on, the tree he sat under, the sun shining through its leaves and the bees pollinating its flowers. He was the rain and the wind, he was the universe distilled; he was the blue, the green and the pink. He was the fragrance. He was the bird on the branch and the soft hum of the bees. At ten years old he was all that ever was and all that ever would be, and at the same time he was nothing at all. He was simply the love that made him want to bring these flowers to his grandmother and he was nothing else, because when you distill the universe down to its very essence love is all that is left.

Blueberries are just starting to bloom and I’d guess we’ll just have to wait and see if they do better than last year. Last year was very dry and what few wild berries I saw were small and shriveled. Many looked as if they had been freeze dried.

I found the blueberries blooming in the wetlands, so while I was there I decided to visit some places where I knew birds hung out. I pointed my camera at a great blue heron because it was actually moving. So often they play statue and don’t move and your patience runs out, but this one was quite busy preening.

Preen away I thought, but then the big bird started shaking its head wildly and opening its mouth wide, as if gagging. I was hoping it just had a frog in its throat.

And then it was time for statue mode. I thanked the bird and said I was going to see if the wood ducks were home. It didn’t move. If you feel that you need to learn to be more patient, just hang out with the herons for a while.

I didn’t see the female but the male wood duck was home and willing to let me take some photos. I was waiting for it to swim into the frame when a beaver came straight up out of the water in a sitting position, which I’ve never seen one do. The wood duck swam over to the beaver and had a few words, apparently.

The beaver disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, leaving behind a trail of bubbles, and the little duck was left looking discombobulated. Wood ducks and beavers eat different things so there is little competition between them. Unless that is, it comes down to who will be the star of the photo shoot.

The beaver had been munching on something and I was pretty sure I knew what: alder stems. They gnaw all the bark off and leave the wood behind, I’d guess to get at the nutrients the inner bark (cambium layer) contains. Seeing these sticks over the last couple of years told me there was a beaver living here but I hadn’t actually seen it until it placed itself in what would have been a photo of a wood duck.

Beavers take the small trunks of alder almost back to the ground and this makes the bushes, which contain a lot of water and are full of energy in spring, quickly grow new stems. I’ve often wondered if this is where mankind got the idea of coppicing. Coppicing is a pruning technique that cuts trees and shrubs down to ground level, causing new shoots to grow rapidly from the base. It is used as a form of forest management and usually done to produce more wood for fuel or for industry or, in the case of beavers, more food. In Europe it is a technique that has been used since before recorded history, but I’m betting the original idea came from the beavers.

In the woods sessile leaved bellwort is blooming. The word sessile describes how one part of a plant joins another and on this plant the leaves are sessile on the stem, meaning they lie flat against the stem and do not surround it. The bell shaped 6 petal flowers are butter yellow and dangle beneath the leaves. This plant is also called wild oats and it can grow in huge colonies. It’s usually very easy to find in spring. I look for it in floodplains near rivers.

Lady fern fiddleheads are coming up and not doing much afterwards this year. I wanted to show you a photo of the fern with all its fronds unfurled but I couldn’t find one. Everything is moving very slowly because of the still cold / cool damp weather we’re having. The easiest way to identify this fern is by its dark scales which persist even after the leaves appear. It gets its common name from its sori or spore cases, which are said to have a covering (called an indusia) that looks like a lady’s eyelid. I’m guessing that someone spent just a little too much time peering into his microscope but that’s just my opinion, for what it’s worth. Native Americans roasted the roots of this fern and ate them.

Dandelions are having a great year and the bees are very happy about that.

Garlic mustard is also having a great year and there aren’t too many people happy about that. Garlic mustard is very invasive. If you aren’t sure if that is what you’ve found just crush a leaf and smell it. If it smells like garlic you’ve found garlic mustard. A cluster of white, four petal flowers at the top of a tall, 2 foot stalk is pure garlic mustard.

I saw my first Jack in the pulpit blooming this week. This plant is in the arum family along with skunk cabbage, water arum, and many others, Arum flowers appear on a spadix surrounded by a spathe. The spathe of a Jack in the pulpit is the beautiful striped part seen in the above photo. This is the “pulpit” that surrounds “Jack.”

I always lift the hood of the spathe to see “Jack,” which is the spadix, and to see the beautiful dark stripes. The spadix is where the plant’s flowers and berries will grow. Another name for this plant is tcika-tape, which translates to “bad sick” in certain Native American tribal language. All parts of the Jack in the pulpit plant contain calcium oxalate crystals that cause painful irritation of the mouth and throat if eaten, but Native Americans knew how to cook the fleshy roots to remove any danger. They used them as a vegetable, and that’s why another name for the plant is “Indian turnip.” Yet another name for it is “bog onion,” and that tell us that it likes low, damp places.

The only time the leaves of striped maple shine is right after they open. They’ll stay this way for just a short time and then change to a dull, matte green. Why this happens is a mystery (to me) but I think it has to do with sunlight absorption. Too much is just as bad as not enough, and trees do regulate it. This tree’s leaves will grow large; about hand size, which will be good for gathering light. They are an understory tree so as soon as the leaves appear on the trees above them, they’ll be in shade for the rest of the season. The “striped” part of the name comes from the bark, which has long, vertical stripes. It is also called snakebark maple.

The Native American Abenaki tribe used this tree’s bark to treat colds, coughs, and flu. They also made whistles from its wood and this leads to another common name: The whistlewood tree.

Red trilliums are enjoying the cool weather so they are going on and on. I’m guessing you’ve seen enough of them but I wanted to show this one so you could see the markings on its petals. This one isn’t special though. All this trillium’s petals are like this but we don’t see it unless the light is right. It’s always about the light, and that’s why I try to see flowers in different kinds of light.

There’s so much going on in nature that we don’t see but it isn’t because it is hidden or secret. It’s simply because we aren’t looking in the right place or in the right way, or at the right time. The markings on this trillium’s petals illustrate that very well. Fifteen minutes difference either way and I probably wouldn’t have seen them. And I know they’re there.

There are many different species of forget me nots (Myosotis.) Some are native and some were introduced and all have cross bred so there are many hybrids. There is a lot of confusion surrounding these plants, with some insisting they are native and some insisting they came from Europe. I try to stay out of all that and just enjoy their beautiful blue color.

It is said that the plant gets its scientific name Myosotis from the way the leaves resemble mouse ears, but if you look at these plants you see that the leaves don’t resemble mouse ears at all. No mouse I’ve ever seen anyhow. Sometimes even scientific names miss the mark.

Johnny jump ups (Viola tricolor) are loving the cool weather, as are all the other violets. This plant though much loved, is not native. Viola bicolor is the American wild field pansy. Viola arvensis is the European wild field pansy. Johnny jump ups (Viola tricolor) are an “old world” Eurasian wild pansy which has been grown in the U.S. since the 1600s. Used medicinally, they would have been one of the first plants on the first ship, so they’ve been here so long people think they’re native. Johnny jump ups do escape cultivation but they don’t last long in nature. They are a plant that needs our attention to survive and people seem happy to help.

Creeping phlox (Phlox subulata) is native to North America but it acts like an invasive somewhat, because it just pops up in lawns everywhere in this area. Here it was growing in the lawn of a cemetary, which is common. It is sometimes called moss phlox or moss pinks and luckily it doesn’t seem to mind being mowed. Many people wait until it’s done blooming to do their first spring mowing.

We have a native azalea called the early azalea, but this one in a local park bloomed a week or two ahead of it so I call it the very early azalea. It isn’t at all like our wild azalea but beautiful nevertheless.

PJM Rhododendrons bloom sometimes along with Forsythia or shortly after and seeing the purple and yellow flowers in spring has become common. The PJM in the name is for Peter J. Mezitt who founded Weston Nurseries in Weston, Massachusetts. These are also called little leaf rhododendron. They’re quite pretty but like Forsythia, overused.

This tulip caught my eye when I was walking the grounds of the local college. Out of the hundreds of tulips that grow there, this is the only one I’ve seen with this color and shape. I’m not a great lover of tulips after having to spend so many years fussing over them but if I was going to choose one for my yard I think this would be it.

Go out, go out I beg of you
And taste the beauty of the wild.
Behold the miracle of the earth
With all the wonder of a child.
~Edna Jaques

Thanks for stopping in. Happy Mothers Day tomorrow to all the moms out there!

Our native flowering trees are off to a slow start this year because of the still cold nights. I was looking at white ash flower buds the other day and found them all brown, and when touched they crumbled to dust. But from what I’ve seen the native shadbush trees (Amelanchier) don’t seem to have suffered at all. There are many trees in bloom along roadsides at the edges of forests right now. Five petals with a green sepal between each pair make this tree easy to identify.

Shadbush, which is actually a small tree, is pretty enough to have been worked on by hybridizers and many cultivars are available. You can find them in use around businesses, schools and other places where more fussy species wouldn’t stand a chance. They’re another “plant it and forget it” plant that’s good for a low maintenance garden. Imagine a beautiful garden you can spend more time enjoying than working in. It is possible by researching the needs of what plants are chosen. Native plants are always better at taking care of themselves. Shadbush gets its common name from the way it blooms when the shad fish are running in the rivers. That means right now. Their berries, which appear in June, attract lots of birds including cedar waxwings.

Hobblebushes have also started to bloom, and their big, bright white outer petals have appeared. Those outer petals are sterile, there to fool insects into stopping in and finding the smaller, less showy fertile flowers in the center. It’s a successful strategy because these native viburnums are loaded with fruit each year. These large shrubs are found at the edge of the forest or in sunny spots within the forest, often in large colonies or thickets. Their large, light gathering leaves mean they can stand quite a lot of shade. The viburnum family of plants is huge, and there are always a good selection of “plant it and forget it” plants available.

I was surprised and happy to see that red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) hadn’t been damaged by frost. It looks like the flower buds might open before mid May this year but despite the cold weather a few things are happening earlier than average. I’ve already had to mow the lawn for instance, even though for years as a gardener I always planned on having the garden beds cleaned up and edged by May 15th, when the mowing started. I had to mow nearly a full month early this year and I’m already seeing dragonflies in April, which in my experience is unheard of.

In that last post I showed mother goose off her nest in the wetlands. Or at least I showed a goose, and I saw an empty nest, and I wondered where the goslings were. I had read that the female goose stays on the nest for 28 days without leaving it, not even eating or drinking until the eggs hatch. But she wasn’t on it that day and here as we can see, she is back on it. So I went back to read a different site and found that the mother goose will leave the nest for brief periods each day to feed. Apparently I just happened to stop in during one of those brief periods. It was a warm sunny day so maybe she felt the sun would keep the eggs warm, I don’t know.

While I was thinking about mother goose a little muskrat swam by and it reminded me of a story a trapper told me. A man told this trapper he had seen a small baby beaver with a round tail. “It was so young its tail hadn’t flattened out yet,” he said. But no, it doesn’t work that way. Muskrats have round, rat like tails and beavers have wide flat tails, no matter how old they are. The tails are the same from birth onwards. It can be tough sometimes to know if you’re seeing a beaver or muskrat swimming by but in general muskrats are a lot smaller than beavers. Once they’re out of the water just look at the tail.

A red winged blackbird landed quite close and eyed me suspiciously. It takes them a while of seeing you in the same place at the same time each day before they feel comfortable ignoring your presence. Apparently I’m not at that ignoreable stage just yet.

I had been wondering if we’d see migratory shorebirds again this year in the wetlands and I saw one this week. On Wednesday I watched this shorebird for about an hour, and I’m calling it a greater yellowlegs. There has been some beaver dam removal going on lately due to flooding concerns so the water level is very low in places., and that’s just what this bird likes; mudflats. They eat “small fish, insects, worms, snails and berries,” and judging by this bird’s movements, it was finding plenty to eat.

I’ve read that “the greater yellow leg’s bill is about 1-1/2 times the length of its head and slightly upturned while the lesser yellowleg’s bill is about equal to the length of its head and is straight.” I would guess that the bill on this bird is nearly 1-1/2 times the length of its head.

Greater yellowlegs “have darker barring on their flanks and a long, skinny neck that is clearly distinguished from its head, while lesser yellowlegs’ heads blur slightly into their neck.” That looks like a long, skinny neck to me. One other thing greater yellowlegs are known for is their “habit of wading in deeper water than other sandpipers.” I watched this bird go in up to its tail feathers several times. It was the first time I’ve seen them do this.

By the way, “greater” is only relative to “lesser.” This bird is actually small at only 12-14 inches long.

I try to get things right for you but in truth I know very little about birds other than the common back yard types I’ve grown up with, so don’t be afraid to speak up and tell me I’m full of beans if I’ve missed something.

I saw an explosion of violets right after I said I hadn’t seen any. Violets of course also mean strawberries, so I had to look for them.

And there were the strawberry plants, just coming into bloom. These will produce strawberries so small that it will take a dozen to equal one store bought berry in size, but in flavor there is no comparison. Once you’ve tasted wild strawberries no other berry will ever taste as good. The full moon in the month of June was known to many Native American tribes as the “Strawberry Moon” because that was when most strawberries began to ripen. The berries were picked, dried and stored for winter use, or added to pemmican, soups, and breads. In the garden strawberries easily reproduced vegetatively by runners (stolons,) but the fruit was so plentiful in the wild that colonials in North America didn’t bother cultivating them until the early 1800s. They’re still quite plentiful today if you know where to look.

Violets and strawberries signal that it is bloom time for many of the other small “weeds” like henbit. Henbit is in the mint family and I’ve heard the entire plant is edible, but I’ve never tried it. I like the clown faces on its tiny, very hairy blossoms. Henbit gets its name from the way chickens peck at it and eat it.

Goldthread (Coptis groenlandicum) gets its common name from its thread like, bright yellow roots. This plant usually grows in undisturbed soil that is on the moist side. Each flower is just about the size of an aspirin. I like the tiny styles curved like long necked birds and the even smaller white tipped stamens. The white petal like sepals last only a short time and will fall off, leaving the tiny golden yellow, club like true petals behind. The ends of the petals are cup shaped and hold nectar, but it must be a very small insect that sips from that cup.

Native Americans used goldthread medicinally and told the early settlers of its value in treating canker sores, which led to its being nearly collected into oblivion. At one time more goldthread was sold in Boston than any other native plant, and it was most likely sold under its other common name of canker root. Luckily it has made a good comeback and I see lots of it in certain places.

Bluets (Houstonia caerulea) are blooming as they usually do, when the violets and strawberries do. Individual flowers are small; only about 3/8 of an inch in diameter but the plants can sometimes form large colonies. In my own yard I’ll see a small tuft of flowers here and there when it is cool in spring. Like dandelions they do not like summer heat. Another name for the plant is innocence. The Native American Cherokee tribe used a tea made of the plant’s leaves and roots to cure bedwetting.

Spring Beauty plants that grow mostly in shade often have the deepest color so I always look for those first. This particular clump was beautiful but before I found it I saw plants with pure white flowers, so they have quite a color range. Each flower lasts just three days. It won’t be long now before we have to say goodbye to these beautiful plants.

Before they pass on spring beauties will carpet the forest floor in places. Note how these plants grew together with trout lilies. This is common.

Trout lilies bloomed in among the spring beauties. The leaves on these plants were huge, and as beautiful as the flowers. Spring beauties often bloom as much as two weeks ahead of trout lilies now in this area, but it used to be just the opposite. I’m not sure what prompted spring beauties to start blooming earlier or trout lilies to bloom later but I’m always happy to see them both right after winter.

When the fern fiddleheads come the coltsfoot flowers go. Though the flowers are sometimes mistaken for dandelions the seedheads look nothing like a dandelion seedhead. Coltsfoot seedheads look more like cotton.

Red trilliums are having a good year and I’m seeing them everywhere. Not even falling trees can stop them. Soon will come the beautiful painted trilliums.

I’ve seen lots of yellow jelly fungi and I’ve seen plenty of black jellies as well, but this was the first time I ever saw them growing together. This seems like an odd time to see them but they do like the cold of early spring and late fall. I’ve even found them in winter, though they’re mostly water and are often frozen solid. I once found some dried out black jelly fungus that looked like small black flakes. When I brought it home and soaked it in warm water it puffed up and looked like puffy black pillows.

Another example of how (and when) fungi grow. This tree fell and got caught up in the crown of another one and ended up at a near 45 degree angle, but the polypores on it were paralell to the ground. How could this be? If they fell with the tree wouldn’t they be at the same angle as the tree? Yes, they would have been at that angle but they aren’t because they grew after the tree fell. Mushrooms want their spore bearing surface pointing towards the ground. I believe they do this more to protect that surface from rain than to make sure the spores fall to the ground. The spores are blown by the wind, so “pointing them” at the ground would be a waste of energy, and nature doesn’t waste energy.

Something fascinating that was discovered by scientists in the 1950s is that mushrooms can “make their own wind” to be sure that spores are dispersed. According to what I’ve read “This happens through a process called ‘evaporative cooling.’ Mushrooms release water vapor into the air, which cools the air around them. This cooler, denser air creates tiny air currents that help lift the spores and carry them away from the mushroom, ensuring they spread to new locations. This self-generated wind is a unique and fascinating adaptation that helps these fungi reproduce and thrive in various environments.” Think of it; mushrooms breaking wind.

I love looking at fern fiddleheads in spring because they remind me of the great life force that flows through all things. This is a cinnamon fern and in no time at all it will be three feet tall. They appear, they flourish for a time, and then they’re gone. And it all seems to happen in the blink of an eye.

Skunk cabbage is at that stage where it resembles cabbage, but eat it and you’ll have a mouth burn that you’ll never forget due to the high amount of oxalic acid crystals the leaves contain. That’s too bad because it would be very easy to pick enough for a meal.

Oddly enough Forsythia is having a great season, and that is odd because the shrub is known for the tenderness of its buds. Too cold and you’ll see no blossoms, yet here are plants filled with blossoms all over town when native trees like ash have lost their buds to the cold. These particular shrubs are pretty much abandoned and haven’t had any care in many years, yet look how they blossom.

I found a river of dead nettle in bloom at a local park. Unlike true nettle dead nettle has no sting, and that’s where its common name comes from. Dead nettles are native to Europe and Asia, but they don’t seem to be at all invasive here. Another “plant it and forget it” perennial for a low maintenance garden, it’s a great ground cover for shady areas. It is also an excellent source of pollen for bees and these plants had several bumblebees foraging among them.

Bradford pear blossoms (Pyrus calleryana) are quite pretty but their scent has been compared to everything from rotting fish to an open trash bin. All I can say is you don’t want to stick your nose in one of these flowers. I still haven’t forgotten doing so a few years ago.

Bradford pears have weak wood and lose branches regularly. Birds love the tiny pears it produces, which means that it can be quite invasive. In the wild it forms nearly impenetrable thickets and out competes native trees. The tree is originally from east Asia. If you happen to be planning on buying an ornamental flowering tree there are far better choices among native trees.

The Poet’s daffodil is a flower which by today’s standards might seem quite plain but it has an amazing story to tell. It is such an ancient plant that many believe it is the flower that the legend of Narcissus is based on, and it can be found in botanical texts from as early as 371 BC. It is one of the first cultivated daffodils and is hard to mistake for any other, with its red edged, yellow corona and pure white petals. The spicy fragrance of poet’s daffodil (Narcissus poeticus) reminds me of the paper white narcissus which has a fragrance strong enough to make some people sick. I usually find it in bloom once other daffodils have finished, but it came early this year.

The Roman poet Virgil wrote of a narcissus blossom that sounded very much like Narcissus poeticus. When I see this flower it always makes me think of ancient Rome and Greece where toga wearing poets admired its beauty, just as I do today.

While I was admiring the poet’s daffodil this robin sang beautifully in the maple tree above me. Then it started calling to another bird at quite a distance “Here I am, over here.” It sat on the limb and sang and let me take photos, and when I got home and looked at them I saw that it had only one leg. But still it sang. Of course it sang, of course it smiled. Birds have no burden. They have no yesterday or tomorrow, they only know right now. No regrets, no worries; just this very moment, and at this moment the sun was shining, its friends were calling, the warm soft earth was full of earthworms, and everything was right within its world.

It was by watching birds that I first learned a few years ago how to let go of the great burden of time that we humans often carry. They showed me that right now is truly all there is. Yesterday and tomorrow are nothing but thoughts in the mind, and birds are free of such thoughts. The more attention we give to thoughts the more real they seem, but when there is no one paying attention to them they just fade away. It is much easier to give our full attention to what is happening right now; then we can enjoy the peace of a quiet mind.

I went to the grounds of the local college to see what new flowers had come along and I saw tulips. Hollyhocks were waiting their turn.

I’ve seen ants, flies, moths, butterflies and even dragonflies, but this bumblebee was the only insect willing to pose. The weather is still up and down and stitching together more than two warm, sunny days in a row seems to be beyond its ability. I was hoping May would level off but so far the forecast isn’t off to a very good start.

I meant to do my work today, but a brown bird sang in the apple tree, and a butterfly flitted across the field, and all the leaves were calling. ~Richard le Gallienn

Thanks for coming by.

There are many spring wildflowers like this red trillium blooming now with more appearing each day, but we’re still on the temperature roller coaster. Two weeks ago we had snow on Tuesday, then we had 83 degrees the following Tuesday. This past Tuesday morning we had 26 degrees and a hard frost. The afternoon before, I got caught in a snow squall. So while the average temperature for this part of the state at this time is 60 degrees, I can’t remember the last time we had a 60 degree day.

If you look closely you can see a seed pod already forming in the center of this flower. Here and gone quickly; that’s the spring ephemeral, so it isn’t just about where they are but when they are. If you don’t know when, where doesn’t matter.

This is the kind of place most of what you’ll see in this post can be found. Deciduous trees that haven’t yet grown their leaves let abundant sunshine reach the forest floor, and that short sunny window in time sets off a quick explosion of spring ephemeral wildflowers.

But the leaves are also coming quickly. Bud break is defined as when the tip of a leaf can be seen protruding from the open bud scales. This maple bud has gone a bit beyond that definition but it’s a beautiful thing to see. Spring is the only time of year you can see something like this, and it lasts for just a very short time.

Before you can say Rumpelstiltskin the buds have become leaves. These red maple leaves were quite small but they grow fast at this time of year. In just a few days they’ll be full size.

Red maple seeds, called samaras, are also forming by the millions. And millions of people never even notice. If more people paid attention to things like this instead of what others were saying and doing, this world would be a much happier place. Nature, when we give it our undivided attention insists that we be here now, in the present moment. When we marvel at the beauty of what we find in nature, there is no room for past and future. This is how nature teaches present moment awareness. Nature shows how the true richness of life is found only in this now moment where everything is always fresh and new. Right now, no matter where we are or what we’re doing, has never happened before.

Thoreau said it this way: The meeting of two eternities, the past and the future… is precisely the present moment.

This is how striped maple buds open to reveal their new leaves. They almost always split lengthwise.

And this one fits the description of bud break perfectly. Striped maple leaves usually appear in early to mid April.

Bloodroot is blooming beautifully this year but the flowers don’t stay long. A day or two is really all you can expect. The plant gets its common name from the blood red sap in its roots. Native Americans used the sap medicinally and as a dye. They often collected enough to dip their hands in so they could put a hand print on their horses. They also marked themselves with it. Early colonists were taught by Natives how to use the plant to treat asthma and throat ailments.

Native Americans knew far more about plants and nature than we ever will, and they knew how to treat certain plants to remove any harmful properties, but today’s scientific research has shown that bloodroot contains alkaloids that can cause cancer, so until we learn how to remove them it shouldn’t be used internally. Bloodroot is in the poppy family.

Bloodroot is one of our most beautiful spring wildflowers but showing the fine pinstripes in its petals can be challenging. Eight petals is average for a bloodroot blossom but more or fewer petals are often seen.

The night before I took these photos we had a heavy rain that shattered the bloodroot blossoms, so the flowers you see in these photos had just opened. As I said, they don’t last long. Usually if you start looking for them about a week before April 20th in an average year, you’ll find them. I often find them blooming on April 19th, for some reason.

I’ve waited years to see what the opening buds of the bitternut hickory look like, only because I forgot every year to go back and look. This year I remembered and found that they look like tiny clasped hands, as you can see. Nature is just an endless source of surprise and amazement.

These buds had me a bit confused at first because I couldn’t see any signs of bud scales, and that’s because these are naked buds. Naked buds have no bud scales but instead are very hairy. The hariness protects the bud inside, just as bud scales do. Witch hazel also has naked buds.

In spring everything is so awake and alive and filled with energy, like these cinnamon fern fiddleheads. Cinnamon ferns and interrupted ferns are usually the first to appear. Many more common ferns like Christmas fern, lady fern, sensitive fern, evergreen wood ferns, and ostrich ferns will follow.

One of the plants I’m not thrilled about seeing in spring is the small flowered, or kidney leaved buttercup (Ranunculus abortivus) That’s because I know I’ll stand with it for fifteen or twenty minutes trying to get a usable shot of its tiny flowers. Then when I get home I know I’ll most likely find that not a single one is worth showing. The one seen here taken by cell phone is a good example of that. I find these plants growing in wet places in the woods in less than ideal light and they’ve always been a challenge.

But this year the Olympus camera I use for macros, set to “microscope mode,” was able to pull it off and this flower’s tiny details can finally be seen on this blog. Each flower has “five yellow petals, five green sepals (which had dried up on this flower,) a cluster of green carpels in the center, and a ring of stamens with bright yellow anthers.” A carpel consists of three parts; the stigma, style, and ovary and that green center is where the seeds will form when pollination is complete. But none of that is the reason I had such trouble getting a shot of this flower. The reason it was so challenging was because it’s only a quarter inch in diameter; about the same diameter as a pencil eraser.

Ostrich ferns are usually the last fern to appear so I was surprised to see them so early. I thought the two days in the 80s we had must have convinced them it was time to break ground, but then temps in the 20s made them pay for coming up so early. An ostrich fern fiddlehead should be pea green like the one on the left. The dark, soft looking one on the right I think has been frost bitten. This matters because when you walk into a restaurant in New England and order a dish of fiddleheads, this is what you’ll get. And you’ll pay top dollar for them too, so they shouldn’t be frost bitten.

The only other fern that has a groove in its stem that I know of is the sensitive fern. I’ve been fooled by them before when I found them in the fiddlehead stage, but their groove isn’t anywhere as deep as the one on the ostrich fern fiddlehead seen here. It’s much more shallow. There is quite a color difference between the two ferns as well, with sensitive fern being darker colored and generally smaller in size. This matters because sensitive ferns are toxic, so it isn’t good to eat too many of them.

I wanted to give you a good close look at a scouring rush (Equisetum hyemale affine) so you could see why they always make me think of socks. The outside of the stem looks like it’s covered in the same stretchy knitted material that is used for socks. Each New hollow stem segment grows from the ring-like sheath of the segment below it. The rim of the sheath can be white, gray, black or brown but always ends in tiny black teeth, which are deciduous and can break off. Fertile stems form colorful, spore bearing, cone shaped fruiting bodies at their tips.

These bamboo-like plants are in the horsetail family and can grow to be 4 feet tall. They almost always grow near water. The stems contain silica granules and were used by pioneers to scrub pots, and that’s where the common name comes from. These are ancient plants that have been on earth for an estimated 280-380 million years.

Another plant in the horsetail family is the field or common horsetail. These are usually found in wet sunny areas at the edge of the forest and often grow in large groups. The fertile spore bearing stem seen here ends in a light brown, cone shaped structure called a strobilus. Since it doesn’t photosynthesize at this point in its development the plant has no need for chlorophyll, so most of it is a pale, whitish color. When it’s ready to release its spores the cone opens to reveal tiny, mushroom shaped sporangiophores. I was surprised that this one hadn’t opened yet.

The prominent midrib, two lateral veins, maroon bases, and crepe paper look of the leaves are all used as identifying features for plantain leaved sedge. The leaves can be up to a foot long and an inch wide. In my experience this sedge is rare because I’ve only found it in one place. Many sedges grow under the leaf bearing trees in the forest, not seeming to mind the dim light. In general, they like cool shady places where the humidity is high.

The flowers stalks (culms) of plantain leaved sedge are about 4 inches tall and have wispy, white female (pistillate) flowers below the shaggy, butter yellow terminal male (staminate) flowers. Sedge flowers are actually called spikelets and the stems that bear them are triangular, hence the old saying “sedges have edges.” Sometimes you can feel these edges easier than you can see them.

Trout lilies are having a great year and I’m seeing lots of flowers. I know places where the entire floor of the forest is carpeted with thousands of these plants for as far as the eye can see but that doesn’t mean they should be dug up. Trout lily seeds are dispersed by ants, which eat the rich, fatty seed coat and leave the seeds behind to grow into bulbs. Each trout lily plant grows from a single bulb and can take from 7-10 years to produce flowers from seeds, so if you see a large colony of blooming trout lilies you know it has been there for a while. Some colonies in this area have tens of thousands of plants in them and I’ve read that such huge colonies can be 300 years old.

My favorite part of a trout lily blossom has always been the maroon / bronze coloring on the backs of the petals. It’s just another of those pleasant surprises that nature is so good at.

Wood anemones (Anemone quinquefolia) close up on cloudy days, so I always look for them when the sun shines. It’s common to find them growing alonside spring beauties and trout lilies because all three plants like the same conditions. They often grow in large colonies in this area but the flowers pass quickly and so do the plants. There will be no sign of them by midsummer. Though these plants are in the buttercup family and are toxic Native Americans made an anemone infused tea to relieve many different ailments, including lung congestion and eye disorders.

Usually when I’m walking through the woods I’m thinking only about what I see but there are plants that can make me think of the past, and one of those is myrtle, or Vinca. Back when this land was being settled this plant would have come here on a wooden ship. Then, ever so slowly as it grew for the person who owned it pieces would have been given to neighbors who then grew it in their yards. That’s why when I find this plant in the woods I sometimes find old cellar holes, along with other plants that were traded, like peonies, daylilies, and lilacs. Many of these plants still bloom beautifully though they might not have had care for a century or more.

Another plant that always takes me back in time is the trailing arbutus, also known as Mayflower. This one always reminds me of my grandmother who always wanted to show it to me but couldn’t because so many of them had been picked and dug up. I as thinking that she would have loved this one because the flowers were pink. This plant is known to have pink flowers occasionally but most of the ones that I’ve seen were white. I think this is only the second time I’ve seen a pink flowered plant.

Two or three posts ago I said that I had read that the only duck that quacks is the female mallard. That didn’t sound right to me and it came back to me every time I heard ducks quacking, so I decided to find out for myself. I went and found a male mallard one day and said “Come on boy, speak!” The sounds he made sure sounded like quacking to me so I decided to go to the highest authority I knew of; Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab. They say “The male (mallard) does not quack; instead he gives a quieter, rasping, one- or two-noted call.” I listened to the male’s call while I was there and it still sounded like quacking, but to be honest I don’t really care if this bird quacks, moos, oinks, or sings the blues; it just does what it does. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t telling you misleading fairy stories.

In other waterfowl news, mother goose is off her nest. I showed her and her mate on the nest a few posts ago when he was sticking out his tongue at us, if you can remember that. I saw at least one egg in that same shot but I’m assuming the goslings have hatched because on this day neither she nor her mate were paying any attention to the nest. The question is, where are the goslings? I didn’t see a single one, and I hope that isn’t bad news.

There are days when if it is too cloudy or too cold I don’t see any turtles, but as soon as the sun shines there they are. There must be hundreds of thousands of them in the waters that pass through this town.

I haven’t seen any of the smaller birds lately. It seems like they’ve disappeared from the wetlands, which is odd. Last year there were various species of migrating warbler and many year round birds there at this time. Maybe it’s the weather.

Now is the time of the illuminated woods … when every leaf glows like a tiny lamp.~ John Burroughs

Thanks for stopping in.

In that last post I was complaining about how cold it was when I was trying to get shots of a ring neck duck. Last Tuesday we woke to snow but this week on Tuesday when I was taking shots of this red trillium bud it was 83 degrees and so humid I was having trouble breathing. I suppose these whipsaw weather changes get harder for the body to manage as you get older. But won’t it be nice to see trillium in bloom again? It’s one of our most beautiful wildflowers, and it won’t be long.

Native hobblebush flower buds are moving along quickly. They’ll bloom in May unless these warm temps keep up. Then it’s anyone’s guess. Hobblebushes are one of our many native viburnums but they probably have the largest flowerheads, with beautiful large pure white sterile flowers around the perimeter and smaller fertile flowers in the center. Some say the buds resemble a bunny at this stage, and I have to agree. Their common name comes by way of how their stems can lie on or close to the ground. Horses used to get tangled up or “hobbled” by them. I’ve been tangled in them myself so I’ve learned to step carefully when I’m in a hobblebush thicket.

I also looked at some beautiful tree buds that day. The Norway maple does indeed have beautiful buds but it’s also invasive and its sale and planting has been banned in New Hampshire. This includes popular landscape trees like “Crimson king” maple, but so many were planted they’re still easy to find. I love the purple and green colors of these buds, and their hairiness. That hairy bud sheath should open to release the flowers any day now by the looks of the way it was splitting.

I went to the local college campus to see what the lilacs were doing. They have a large variety of different bushes and this one was just opening its bud scales to show the grape like clusters of flower buds. I used to love watching them turn into lilac flowers when I was a boy. I’d go out every day to see how they had changed from the previous day.

Squirrel was sitting in an oak tree pretending not to watch me look over the lilacs, but I learned all about them as a boy too. It was watching my every move.

I didn’t see it at the time but it looks like that front leg has been injured at the “knee.” If so it’s most likely from fighting with another squirrel. That’s just a given on the grounds of the college. They all want to claim the best oak.

This was the first magnolia blossom to open on this one particular tree and I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. It has flowers that are bright white on the inside and plum colored on the outside. When the tree is filled with flowers it’s a beautiful thing.

Then, less than a week later I found this magnolia in full bloom. This is the oldest magnolia I know of.

Every blossom on the old tree was pristine with no frost damage, and that was a surprise. Though some magnolias have heavenly fragrances, this isn’t one of them. I stuck my nose in this flower but I didn’t keep it there long. Phew.

This is the first Johnny jump up I’ve seen this spring. This wild form of the modern pansy has been known and loved for a very long time. It is said to have 60 names in English and 200 more in other languages. In medieval times it was called heart’s ease and was used in love potions. Stranger names include “three faces in a hood.”

The first violet I’ve seen this year is a yellow one and that’s a first. I’ve always seen purple violets and the white “confederate” violet before seeing the yellow. I believe this is a round leaved violet. You can just see parts of two round toothed leaves in this shot. The round leaves on these plants never completely unfurl until the flowers are out and that’s a characteristic of the round leaved violet. Yellow violets are rare in my experience but I found one or two plants a few years ago and now there are several in this group.

On the same day I saw the first yellow violet I saw the first yellow bird. Some birds like bluebirds have beautiful markings on their back and wings and now as I see, so do goldfinches. This is the first time I’ve seen this side of them.

This forest of grape hyacinths appeared on the college campus. They are earlier than any others I’ve seen and I think that’s because they get warmth from the foundation they grow beside. Concrete absorbs heat from the sun during the day and releases it slowly at night. This keeps plants warmer than they would be if planted away from the concrete. Grape hyacinths aren’t related to grapes or to hyacinths; they’re actually in the asparagus family (Asparagaceae) as are true hyacinths.

I can’t say this hellebore is my favorite color but there are some fascinating things going on in its middle. Another name for hellebore is “Lenten rose” but since Lent ended on April 2nd this year they were a bit late.

Glory of the snow has come into bloom, as usual after all the snow has melted and any threat of snow is minimal. I think I’ve seen them with snow on them once in 15 years, so I’m not sure how they came by their name. But names don’t matter. They’re beautiful, and that’s all that really matters.

In the wetlands turtlefest 2026 has just begun. For some reason these painted turtles climb up on the banks of this stream together each year and you can if the sun is shining, find many hundreds of them all along this side of the stream. This is just a small sample. My camera can’t cope with getting them all in one shot.

The red winged blackbirds are nesting now so there are long hours when all you hear is them deep down in the cattails. Seeing the males come up out of the cattails is fairly common but seeing a female is always a gift. This one came up right in front of me so I had a chance to see how beautiful she was. I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen orange / red on one. It made me wonder if this might be where the name “red wing” actually originated.

As you can see by the male’s patch of colors on its wing it could hardly be thought of as a “red wing” but when I looked it up I found that the patch, called an “epaulet” was indeed where the name comes from. I also read that their numbers are declining, but you sure wouldn’t think so if you walked through any wetland in this area. These birds are so vocal, when they leave later in the year the sudden silence seems like a real shock to the system.

The males are acting differently this year though, enough so I had to used this photo of a rained on bird from last year. They used to land right beside me in bushes as the one shown did. I can even remember a male red wing walking all around my feet as if begging for food as I sat at a picnic table, but this year they seem very stand offish and are staying just out of the reach of my camera. They’ve lost their trust, at least in me, and I suppose that’s a good thing. It isn’t good for any wild creature to lose its fear or wariness of man, and it isn’t good for us to teach them to do so. It never seems to end well for them.

One evening just before sundown a friend alerted me to the presence of some special visitors to this particular piece of wetland; a family of Wilson’s snipe. I call them a family because it appeared to be a larger mother and three or four slightly smaller chicks. The one I’m calling mother stayed hidden in the cattails and called out barely perceptible instructions to her young, as any mother would. It looked to me as if, were I to cup my hands together, one of these little birds would have fit perfectly within them.

They’re described by Wikipedia as a “Small, stocky shorebird which forages in soft mud, probing or picking up food by sight and eating insects, earthworms, and plant material. Well-camouflaged, they are usually shy and conceal themselves close to ground vegetation, flushing only when approached closely.” Three people were standing just a few yards away watching them and taking photos on this day and they didn’t even flinch.

Identification aids include a “dark stripe through the eye with white stripes above and below” which can be clearly seen here. This is a bird which, though not rare, is apparently rarely seen.

This one seemed to say “Yuck, this sticky mud is just too much.” They did fly but only for a short distance. I was happy to be able to get a shot of their beautiful markings before they disappeared into the cattails.

Thoreau said “You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.” And that’s very true. I’ve seen some remarkable creatures appear just by sitting in the same place each day. I’ve always thought that they are just as curious about us as we are of them. They want to see us and get to know what we’re about.

We think of buds as being out in the open and easily seen but buds are forming underwater as well, as these yellow pond lily leaves show. Once the leaves flatten out on the water surface and begin converting sunlight into food the flower buds will form and before long all the streams, rivers and ponds will be dotted with the familiar round yellow flowers. They show about a month before our fragrant white waterlilies appear.

The reason trees like red maple are so successful is because of their staggered bloom times. If part of a forest sees a frost that kills off millions of flowers one night, the next day more trees will be flowering in another place, and this ensures not only their survival but their ability to move into new areas. I’m still seeing red maples blooming beautifully a month or more after I saw the first flower buds starting to open.

These male flowers are all about pollen production and you can see it in the green / yellow colors on the stamens. The wind will take it to the female flowers and another generational cycle will be complete when the samaras fall to the ground.

This shot might make some want to sneeze and tree pollen does contribute to allergies, but not everyone is allergic to tree pollen. Grass pollen season is coming and that seems to affect more people than other pollen types. After that it’s ragweed. I’m one of the “lucky” ones who is allergic to dust mites and mold spores, so I get to sneeze year ‘round. If you think you might have allergies why not get tested? It’s a quick and easy procedure, and from then on you’ll be sure of what type of pollen if any bothers you.

This is the first trout lily blossom I’ve seen this year. You can see how the plant got its common name by its parts. The plant is a true lily and the small six petal flower looks just like the much larger native Canada lily we’ll see later this summer. The leaf is said to look like the body of a trout, so this name makes perfect sense. (Many of them don’t) I hope to see lots more of them.

The male red-brown stamens of box elder have appeared and are growing fast, so that told me it was time to look for the unusual female flowers. They’re harder to find each year because people keep cutting the trees down. And that’s because box elder is considered a weed tree. A “trash tree” that its best to be rid of. It lives where people congregate and grows where other trees won’t, like in a crack in the sidewalk. Personally, I don’t understand why we can’t just enjoy seeing them and leave them alone.

I had to go to a construction site to find this female tree and because of where it is growing I doubt it will be there next year. Female trees flower just as the leaves begin to appear and its pistillate flowers are long, sticky, and lime green. What you see here is something very few people ever see. By showing them here I hope to show how beautiful these trees are, not to mention the shade they provide, and I hope people will have second thoughts about cutting them down.

“But they have no value,” I’ve heard people say “their wood isn’t even any good for firewood.” Their value lies in the fact that they are here, and whether or not we understand why they’re here doesn’t enter into it. Who are we to say they have no right to be here? I would ask why do we have a right to be here? We humans cause more harm to this planet than other species and that’s because we can’t learn to let go of the past and just live for right now.

“But my grandfather used to say…” Yes but what is that bird saying? What does the flower say? What does the river say? What is this astoundingly beautiful paradise we live in saying to you right now; right at this very moment?

It has been a brief season for willows but their time of flowering seems just about over from what I’ve seen. Like the maples their bloom time is staggered and the smaller flowered varieties often bloom later, but this heat isn’t going to help them stay in bloom.

It’s also just about time to say goodbye to the hazelnut carkins that contain the male flowers. They had a hard time this year because the cold made their tiny flowers refuse to fully open until just recently, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the hazelnut crop was meager.

But I could be wrong. On one recent day I saw a bush with more female flowers in bloom than I’ve ever seen blooming together. But it takes two to tango, so if the male pollen doesn’t reach them it won’t matter how many there are waiting for the wind to play its part.

I thought I’d leave you with a shot of the most beautiful hellebore flower I’ve ever seen. It lives in a friend’s garden and though nobody knows its name it is very similar to a variety called “Whirlwind Romance” which can be found at WaltersGardens.com online. Hellebores are another “plant it and forget it” perennial. You can fuss with them if you want, but you don’t have to. They’re perfect for a low maintenance garden.

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.

Yes “April showers” can come as snow or rain in this part of the country, and our surprise this week was waking up to an inch of snow Tuesday morning. As this scene shows it barely covered the grass. There was a small slice of blue among the clouds and the slice of blue expanded and let the sun shine, and all the snow was gone by mid afternoon. As I’ve mentioned in past posts, there is an old saying among New England farmers that this kind of spring snow is “poor man’s fertilizer.” Science has shown that nitrates from the atmosphere attach to snowflakes and fall to earth, and then are released into the thawing soil as the snow melts. The nitrates help feed plants, so the old saying is true. The lawns should be greening up in no time.

On Monday, the day before the storm, I finally saw willows blooming. Male willow flowers produce large amounts of pollen so they’re important to many bees and other insects in spring when there isn’t much food available. These are the (staminate) male pollen producing flowers in this photo and you can tell them from a distance first by their bright yellow color, and second by the way the catkins often curl like a banana as they open.

Male and female flowers appear on separate bushes and a single male flower consists of two yellow stamens at the end of a long white filament. There are hundreds of flowers in each fuzzy gray catkin.

Once you’ve seen both male and female plants and are familiar with their flowers it’s also easy to tell a female (pistillate) bush from quite a distance when it is in flower because the flowers are a paler, greenish yellow. Quite different than the bright yellow male flowers.

A single female flower consists of a pistil, wider at its base and narrowing at its tip, with two stigmata that form a U shape. Though the plants rely chiefly on wind for pollination insects lend a hand on warm spring days. If pollination is successful each female flower will become a seed pod. In general, plants with catkins can be considered wind pollinated.

This is what willow catkins look like just before they burst into bloom. The dark bud scales open to show the golden light at the base of the furry catkin at first, and then a day or so later flowers appear. It’s always such a pleasant surprise to see them like this.

The small female catkins of alder grow at the tips of the branches. When the time is right the tiny bud scales open to release the red, hair like threads that are the female flowers. If pollinated these flowers will become small cone like fruits called strobiles. I have a lot of trouble seeing these flowers so I have to let the camera show me what it sees.

The male alder catkins dangle just below the female flowers, so with alders the wind doesn’t have to work as hard as it does on willows. I’ve always thought that alder catkins were the most beautiful among the common catkins I see. The male flowers were just starting to open on these examples.

The ice on the old abandoned road through Beaver Brook Natural Area finally melted so I was able to get in there and see some of my favorite buds.

I was surprised to find striped maple leaf buds already out of the bud scales. The whitish, velvety sheath that protects the leaves can turn orange, pink, or a combination of colors as it grows. What they do is always a surprise, and also always beautiful. Now that the bud scales have opened they’ll grow fast so I’ll have to check them regularly.

I was also surprised to see the bud scales of red elderberry open. These purple and green chubby little buds are beautiful in my opinion. The unusual thing about red elderberry is how its leaf and flower buds are found packed within the same bud scales. The tiny things that look like fingers are the leaves. Like striped maple these will grow fast now. They’re one of those “hidden jewels” in nature that are in hidden in plain sight. Sure we can look, but can we see?

Native foam flowers grow easily at Beaver Brook. They like to grow in damp and sometimes even wet places, and their abundant blooms are what give them their “foamy” common name. Shady, damp places can be problem areas in gardens, so these plants might be a solution. There are many cultivars that have been developed and I think most nurseries sell them now. Plant breeders have concentrated mostly on the foliage from what I’ve seen and some of the dark maroon leaves with lighter green veins they’ve come up with are beautiful.

The male staminate buds of the box elder tree always open a week or so before the female pistillate buds, which are found on a separate tree. The anthers are the reddish brown bits just peeking out of the bud scales in this shot. The box elder is in the maple family and is considered a “soft” maple, but its flowers don’t show until several weeks after those of red and silver maples.

It never seems like spring to me until I hear the plaintive but beautiful mating call of the black capped chickadee. Fee-bee! he calls again and again until he finds a mate, and once that has been accomplished it’s back to his happier sounding chickadee-dee-dee. These little birds don’t sit still very long. In fact they’ll follow along with you by flying from tree to tree, all the way through the woods, hidden but singing the whole time. I think this is the only shot I’ve ever gotten of one.

Monday was cloudy and cold; 35 degrees with a 10 mph wind, so I thought I’d quickly stop by a small pond to see if I could find any willows in bloom. Instead I found about a dozen ring neck ducks, all males except for a lone female. I thought my fingers would fall off before I got a shot of one. It’s not great but it’s the only shot I’ve ever gotten of this diving duck.

According to New Hampshire Audubon there is a neck ring on a ring neck duck, but “it is narrow and brown and almost impossible to detect between the glossy purplish head and black breast.” These ducks migrate in spring and fall, stopping to feed in ponds like this one. This pond is filled with fragrant white waterlilies in summer and I’ve read that these ducks dive down and pull lily tubers from the soil and eat them. This tells me there might not be quite as many lilies blooming here this summer.

In the wetlands this beautiful pair of wood ducks appear to have taken up residence in the same spot a pair of wood ducks nested in last year. If its quiet enough you can hear their peeping, whistling calls but if you hear quacking you’re hearing mallards, not wood ducks. The female mallard is said to be the only duck that quacks, and you sure don’t have to strain your ears to hear her. Wood frogs also quack but that’s another story for another day.

While I was in the wetlands I looked for skunk cabbage leaves. They were there but it looked as if they had been badly frost bitten, which is something I haven’t seen before. I usually think of skunk cabbage as being tough as nails. This is also the first shot I’ve ever gotten of the mottled spathe, flower filled spadix, and new leaves all showing at the same time.

I also saw my first great blue heron of the year while in the wetlands. I was there late one afternoon thinking a beaver might come by. Beavers are active in late afternoon / early evening because they like to go to bed with a full belly. I have no scientific proof of that but it seems to make sense after watching them for hours over the last couple of years. Anyhow, a beaver did swim by but it was too far away for my camera. I thought that I had missed my only chance so I turned to leave and just then a great blue heron landed, close enough to get a shot. It walked for a bit and stopped. Then it kept bending as if to strike but straightened up again and walked a bit more. What wasn’t working for the bird worked for me, and though I can’t show you a beaver I can show you a heron.

Along with skunk cabbage coltsfoot flowers are one of our earliest blooming wildflowers. I think they’re liking this cold because we’ve been down into the teens and I haven’t seen damage on any of them. Of course they close up at night and that must help protect them. A coltsfoot flower has tubular disk flowers in the center and strap like ray flowers around the outer perimeter. You can see two of the disk flowers open in the center at just past 3 o’clock and right at 6 o’clock.

I wanted to show you a dandelion blossom here so you could scroll back and forth and see that a dandelion blossom is quite different from a coltsfoot blossom. Dandelion flowers seen from the side are mounded in the middle and coltsfoot flowers are flat. Dandelion flowers (actually flower heads) have no disk florets, only ray florets. Dandelions almost always have leaves while coltsfoot leaves only appear when the flowers are about to set seed. It’s really very easy to tell the two apart. Just stop for a minute and look closely.

One of the most toxic plants in a New England forest is the false hellebore (Veratrum viride), and they’ve just come up. They are easy to identify because of their deeply pleated bright green leaves but people still confuse them with wild leeks, known as ramps. In 2019 a college professor and his wife wanted some spring greens for breakfast at their cabin in Vermont. The greens they chose, instead of the ramps they thought they were picking, were actually false hellebore. They spent 2 weeks in the hospital and almost died. If you are going to forage for wild food you really should know your plants. In this case it is simple: ramps smell like onions and false hellebore does not.

And ramps (Allium tricoccum) look nothing like false hellebore. Note how the leaves are a dark, matte green and have no deep pleats. They look like scallions when pulled up and taste somewhere between onions and garlic. They are considered a great delicacy and are a favorite spring vegetable in many parts of the world, but they’ve been over collected so harvesting has been banned in many parts of the U.S. and Canada. They’re slow growers from seed and a 10 percent harvest of a colony can take 10 years to grow back. They take 18 months to germinate from seed and 5 to 7 years to become mature enough to harvest. That’s why, when people write in and ask me where to find them, I can’t tell them.

It was a little strange I thought, that the first spring beauties I found had been chewed on but then a week later these were pristine. I was lucky to find these open and in shade because their color is always more vibrant in the shade. It doesn’t take much sunshine to wash the color out enough to make them appear white. This photo shows why I love these little aspirin size flowers. They’re very beautiful.

The pea size bud scales of the Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas) have opened to reveal too many tiny yellow flower buds to count. I’m always surprised by how much nature can pack into such a small space. Cornelian cherry is an ornamental flowering shrub related to dogwoods. Once pollinated the flowers will become sour red fruits that have been eaten by man for about 7000 years. In northern Greece early Neolithic people left behind remains of meals that included Cornelian cherry fruit.

I saw the first open daffodil of this spring on the college campus. Hundreds more have probably joined it by now.

It’s amazing how a simple blue stripe on each white petal of striped squill (Puschkinia scilloides, var. libanotica) can change everything. With that this little scilla size flower becomes extraordinarily beautiful. Since the first time I saw it years ago I’ve looked forward to seeing it each spring more than any other flowering bulb. In my opinion it tops them all, and just look at how simple it is. Maybe its beauty lies in its simplicity?

This magnolia’s buds have opened enough to reveal their beautiful plum color. It’s always a gamble when they open so early.

The beautiful plum color is seen again in the spring shoots of old fashioned bleeding heart. Some of these had been nipped by frost.

This Forsythia is the first one I’ve seen fully opened but soon they’ll be seen on every street in town. If you get tired of Forsythia just imagine spring without them. Yes they are overused, but they spread enough spring cheer to make that okay.

Forsythia is named after the Scottish botanist William Forsyth. It is native to Japan, Korea, and China and is said to have first been seen by a westerner in a Japanese garden in 1784. From there its beauty has spread around the world.

The fully opened Tommy crocuses reminded me of tiny radar dishes, beaming a message of love up to the life giving sun.

But where are the bees?

If you forget every word you’ve read in this post that’s fine, but please don’t forget to stop now and then to see how beautiful this life is. Everywhere in every moment there is beauty. There are no secrets in nature; it’s all right there for us to see.

To the attentive eye, each moment of the year has its own beauty . . . it beholds every hour, a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thanks for coming by.

Just one warm, sunny day per week. That’s about all we see so far this spring, and the rest are cool and cloudy or rainy. But that one day is enough. The sunlight warms the water in the ponds and stimulates plant growth enough to keep spring rolling along. In the wetlands just the other day, it was in the evening, I noticed that the painted turtles had come up out of the mud. This one had its shell to the setting sun and seemed to be sniffing the air. It won’t be long before there will be thousands of them basking in the sunshine.

It was loud in the wetlands that evening, with wood frogs quacking and spring peepers peeping, and red wing blackbirds making all the noises they could make. This common grackle looked like a red wing blackbird from across the pond but the camera showed the truth. In addition to all the noise the wind was blowing at a good clip; you can see how its feathers ruffled, and this bird was acting quite nervous. It kept swiveling its head this way and that and I wondered if it feared a red wing attack. Red wing blackbirds have put me in my place more than once, so I thought it might be wise for the grackle to leave. That was a fight I doubted it would win and apparently this bird thought the same, because finally it flew off and let the wind carry it up into the top of a pine.

Mallards seemed to be calm enough with me there but he kept an eye on me while she fed and then she did the same while he fed. I thought it would be better if they could feed together, so I left.

When I went back to the wetlands a day or two later I saw that a pair of Canada Geese had built a nest out of cattail stalks there. And as they almost always do here, they built it in plain sight. If you want to see what a goose tongue looks like just click on the photo and take a look at that goose on the left. Then if you pan over to the right and look carefully you’ll see a goose egg in the nest. I’m sure there are more but that’s the only one I can see. I think the one sticking out its tongue is the male and I think that because that was the one chasing off any interlopers that happened by. There is another nesting pair across the pond to the right and I watched some mighty loud, wing flapping fights between the two males on this day.

I thought I’d go up to Beaver Brook Natural Area again to see if the ice had melted off the road. At first glance it looked like I’d be able to get in to see the striped maple, hobblebush, and red elderberry buds and maybe even some red trillium shoots but right around that corner on the shaded section of road there was still lots of ice. I’ll have to try again.

After striking out at Beaver Brook I went to a familiar rail trail. This is the small trestle that crosses Ash Brook, which is notable for its many name changes as it winds its way from the northern part of Keene to this southern point, where it finally meets the Ashuelot River. I spent many happy hours out here as a boy.

Any time now this trail will become green with new growth including many of our most beautiful wildflowers, but on this day I saw only a few things worth noting. One was this invasive Oriental bittersweet vine which appeared to have climbed this small tree without harming it. Oriental bittersweet is like steel wire and it grows so tightly on trees that the tree has no way to expand as it grows. Most trees become deformed and eventually die from “strangulation” so I wondered what power this tree had over the vine.

This small tree has no such power over the bittersweet vine and it is slowly being strangled. We can easily see the deep spiral grooves in the tree’s bark, caused by the tree being forced to grow out around and over the vine. Oriental bittersweet grows very tightly to the tree’s trunk and refuses to expand as the tree grows, and this is what happens. If the tree lives it will eventually “absorb” the vine but it will live a deformed, shortened life.

I saw what I call a woodpecker tree; a dead hemlock full of holes. Nothing special about that except one hole that was very out of the ordinary. Do you see it?

Smaller woodpeckers make golf ball size round holes and pileated woodpeckers make large rectangular holes, but what makes a square hole? My guess is a pileated woodpecker was interrupted while making a rectangular hole, because of all the gouged out wood above the square. That bird had to dig quite deep before it reached the hollow heart of this tree but the reward was probably great. Nice big carpenter ants, I’d guess.

I’d like to be able to say that I took this shot of a male pileated woodpecker but no, it was taken by Josh Laymon, and found on Wikipedia. I’ve played “ring around the tree” with these birds many times, so I know what went into this shot so I’ll say well done Josh.

I wanted to show this because pileated woodpeckers are native to North America and I know that many readers of this blog are from other countries. This bird is crow size and “pileated” is Latin for cap, which points to its bright red hairdo. It’s the biggest woodpecker in this country and its diet consists of mostly insects, so it has to eat a lot of ants. Of course that means it has to make a lot of holes. Note how it braces itself on the tree by using its tail. Their hearing must be amazing if they can hear insects crawling inside a tree. These birds will cut a dead, pulpy tree in half and shred it into pieces after it falls, so intent are they on finding insects. I see what’s left of their work in the woods all the time. They’re always an exciting bird to watch but they’re hard to get close to.

I just read about an ancient inscription found on a Sumerian clay tablet. The Sumerians settled in Mesopotamia 5000 years ago and the inscription is an exchange between a father and son. It reads:

Father: Where did you go?
Son: Nowhere.
Father: Then why are you late?

I enjoyed reading that because it pretty much sums up my time spent out here as a boy, and the kinds of interactions I had with my own father. This place was my nowhere.

From the article The Invention of Zero: How Ancient Mesopotamia Created the Mathematical Concept of Nought and Ancient India Gave It Symbolic Form. By Maria Popova

Or, see the book The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero by Robert Kaplan

Once I got off the rail trail I thought I’d see if the willows were flowering yet. They weren’t, but what were those things all over the manure piles in that cornfield? I wondered as I drove slowly by. This farmer uses manure on the cornfields every spring so seeing several piles was no surprise. It was seeing all the little bits of blueish / pinkish gray all over the piles that was a surprise. I had never seen that.

I parked and walked through the slippery mud of the cornfield to one of the manure piles and saw mushrooms, which was the last thing I expected on this rainy, 38 degree April 2nd. Of course the manure pile was warmer than the air due to all the decomposition going on but still, I don’t expect to see mushrooms this early. The mushrooms were shaggy inkcaps, and there must have been thousands of them growing on several manure piles. Shaggy inkcaps get their name from the way they liquify, starting at the bottom of the bell shaped cap and continuing until the entire body has become a pool of black, ink like liquid. This liquid is full of this mushroom’s spores, and this is its method of spreading them. I’ve found them before but the closest situation to this one was when I found them growing all over a wet bale of rotting hay.

I’ve been watching the buds on this Forsythia and they’ve just about doubled in size each day lately. Soon they’ll have nowhere else to go but into flowers.

The Forsythia in that previous shot lives in a local park, and at one of the entrances to the park is a stone unlike any stone I’ve seen. Since I used to be a mineral hunter I’ve seen a lot of stones but what sets this one apart from others I’ve seen are the indentations in it. I can’t swear they were made by an animal but they always remind me of cat paw prints. And then I think back; far back to when this stone had the consistency of clay, and I think about an animal walking across it and leaving its tracks. But maybe that didn’t happen. Maybe there was a berry bush hanging over a clay deposit and berries fell and made the marks. Or more likely, maybe there were softer minerals in the matrix that have weathered away. But now here we are with what was once malleable mud solidified into this stone, big enough so I doubt even three men could roll it over. Where did it come from? Was it found here, when what was once a gas station parking lot was turned into a park? It remains a mystery and in nature, mysteries abound. You have to learn to let go of the need to know; to just be okay with the mystery. You let the mystery be what you’ve found this day.

I tried to get a shot of a dandelion blossom in February but it was cold and I was shivering so the shots I got with my phone that day were terrible. I knew there would be another chance so this is the second dandelion I’ve seen blooming this year. Dandelion is the only wildflower I’ve seen blooming in all twelve months of the year. It’s tough enough to grow in the crack in a sidewalk, just as this one was.

The Taraxacon part of a dandelion’s 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. That’s something to consider next time you lay down that expensive chemical fertilizer on your lawn.

Since I didn’t pay much attention to the foliage these tiny flowers could belong to hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) or Pennsylvania bittercress (Cardamine pensylvanica.) Either way, gardeners have nightmares about them because native or not they can quickly overrun a garden if left to their own devices. Flowers are white and have four petals, which points to the mustard family. They appear quite early in spring and are so small that the entire bouquet shown here could hide behind a pea. They’re a challenge for any photographer and any camera. It took several attempts over a few days before I could show you what they look like, but I like a challenge.

Here was something I hoped I wouldn’t see. It’s still too cold for magnolia blossoms. I’ve seen every flower on this tree paper bag brown in the past.

For those who have never seen a saucer magnolia seed pod.

Pale yellow has never been one of my favorite colors but these recently appeared crocus blossoms wear it and I’m sure I’ll see a lot of it on Easter Sunday.

I was happy to see this beautiful crocus called the vernal crocus. Some call them “Tommys” due to their scientific name, which is Crocus tommasinianus. My favorite thing about them is the delicate shading inside. Actually that pale yellow one might also be a Tommy crocus. That just goes to show the only difference between them is what I think about them.

And then there was scilla, another spring favorite, blossoming everywhere on the college grounds. I love its beautiful blue color.

We’ve seen these crocuses here a few times now but there is no such thing as too much beauty in my opinion, so here they are again. I’m still not seeing bees on the flowers.

Hyacinths are showing some color. One more warm sunny day should coax them into bloom, but warm sunny days are hard to come by this year. Planting hyacinths is a great way to get fragrance into the spring garden.

I got home one day and saw a flash of color. One of the reticulated irises that my blogging friend Ginny sent me from Maryland. “Reticulated” points to the net like patterns found on the small bulbs.

Then across the bed were these beautiful reticulated irises, also from Ginny. Thanks again Ginny! I was so busy with eye testing and operations last fall I never did get to rake the leaves out of this bed but they came right up through them. Once they and the other bulbs in this bed have stopped blooming I’ll have to do a proper clean up.

I went to a place where I know coltsfoot plants grow on April first and there was a blossom peeking out from under last year’s leaves. Coltsfoot flowers are often as big as a dandelion but these were quite small. If you aren’t sure if you’ve found a coltsfoot or a dandelion just look at the stem. Coltsfoot stems are scaly and dandelion stems are smooth.

Seeing the coltsfoot in bloom told me that I might have a shot at finding spring beauties also blooming and sure enough, there they were. I’ve been visiting the spot where they grow for a week or so now and had seen no sign of them. For some things in nature that’s just they way it happens, all of the sudden there they are.

They were beautiful as always. They’re one of my favorite spring ephemerals, but something had been nibbling on them. No matter; before long there will be thousands of them carpeting the forest floor. They and the coltsfoot are good signs that things are warming up.

In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth. ~John Milton

Thanks for coming by. I hope everyone has good weather for Easter and has a happy day.

In the last post I showed how the buds of red and silver maples had broken to reveal the male anthers within. A week later and as we can see here, they’re out fully. It looked like a few of them were just starting to produce pollen.

The pollen the male flowers produce will be taken by the wind to the female flowers, which at this point resemble tiny, very sticky red threads. They will, if pollination is successful, become the winged samaras we’re all familiar with. And how they’ll fly; millions of them.

There are a few more flowers to come. This shot is of a single branch, so there must be many millions of flowers on a single tree. And then there are uncountable millions of trees in just New Hampshire alone, so it’s probably safe to say red maples will be with us for a while.

I tried to get a look at the male American hazelnut flowers that are borne on catkins. You can just see them peeking out in yellow under the Manta Ray shaped bud scales there in the center and on the left. Over time depending on warmth, those bud scales will open more and the golden yellow flowers, three under each bud scale, will become more evident. As I’ve said in the past, a catkin is really just a central stalk with tiny flowers growing in a spiral along its length. By using spirals nature can pack the most “stuff” into any given space, and once you start noticing spirals you find them everywhere.

The female American hazelnut flowers have appeared just in time to catch the male flower’s pollen. I mention this because it isn’t always so perfectly choreographed. I’ve seen years when female flowers appeared much earlier than the males, and have also seen males shedding their pollen before hardly any female flowers had appeared. There are lean years with hazelnuts, and I would guess such misfires are at least part of the reason.

I usually show this photo from a few years ago in spring so you’ll have an idea of just how small female American hazelnut blossoms are.That’s a standard size paperclip.

If hazelnut pollination is successful big bunches of edible nuts will be the result. Sometimes the bushes are bent over, so heavy is the harvest. In other years, not so much. I think hazelnuts also experience mast years much like oaks and pines. Birds and animals seem to love hazelnuts but they always leave a few behind and usually when I look at the leftovers they have tiny wormholes in them. So all the nuts do get eaten, even when it looks like they don’t. I like the movement frozen in the bracts that surround the nuts. These can sometimes be quite colorful.

Alder catkins are some of the prettiest, most colorful catkins in the area but they take a little longer to open. It won’t be long though before the bushes at the edges of our ponds look like they’ve been strung with jewels of gold and maroon. The yellow flowers are already starting to show.

I went to the wetlands to see what was happening and almost immediately stumbled onto a pair of mallards having a swim. Right after I had taken two or three shots the water exploded and off they flew, quacking loudly. I was sorry to have disturbed them at this time when shallow water is hard to find.

As you’ll see by some of these photos, last year’s eye operations have done nothing to improve my ability to focus a camera but I will say once again that this is not a photography blog. It’s not about showing you magazine worthy photos. It’s about you wanting to go out and see the things you’ve seen here for yourself after you’ve read it, and that’s really all it’s about. Bring your camera.

Bitternut hickory (Carya cordiformis) I would say is unique in the spring forest because of its sulfur yellow bud scales. The scales are said to be valvate, but valvate bud scales don’t overlap and as we can see, these scales do overlap. These scales almost seem to form a cap like a magnolia but I could be wrong. It’s not a tree I’ve spent a lot of time with because I rarely see them. In fact if you look on Wikipedia you see bitternut hickory’s northernmost range stopping at the Massachusetts / New Hampshire border. These trees can be large and they go by a few different names including yellow bud. They’re a member of the pecan family but though they produce nuts they’re inedible, as the name bitternut would suggest. I’d bet Native Americans had a use for them though.

The buds of nannyberry (Viburnum lentago,) which is a native viburnum, are good examples of a valvate bud, with bud scales meeting but not overlapping. It’s buds always remind me of a great blue heron. Native Americans ate nannyberry fruit fresh or dried and used the bark and leaves medicinally. They also used the berries in jam with wild grapes, which sounds delicious. According to the book The Origins of English Words nanny berry is also called sheep berry and that name comes from its fruit, which is said to resemble the shape of sheep droppings. The nanny part of the name comes from the nanny goat. Squirrels and birds are said to eat the fruit but I see huge numbers of them still on the bushes well into winter. These native shrubs sucker and can form large colonies or thickets. Sometimes it seems like they produce so many berries even the birds and animals can’t finish them all.

Oak marble galls are usually near perfect spheres. Some galls form on the undersides of leaves, some on the tree’s roots and others like those shown, on the twigs and stems. All are caused by different wasps or mites which will only lay their eggs on the leaves, roots, or twigs of their favorite species of oak tree. It is said that oaks carry more galls than any other tree, and that’s easy to believe. One of these galls had been pecked at by a bird, which most likely ate the insect larva inside. Iron sulfate mixed with tannic acid from oak galls made ink that was the standard writing and drawing ink from the 12th century until well into the 20th century. Some still use it today.

The beavers have been busy, as they always are.

I keep looking for female skunk cabbages but this year all I’ve seen are male plants. I’ve always wanted to see skunk cabbage fruit but so far I’ve had no luck.

This is the strangest thing I’ve found in a long time. I found it on the ground at the base of a white pine and at first I thought it was some type of mineral formation, but when I picked it up I found that it was as light as if it were made of Styrofoam.

It wasn’t until I turned it over and saw that it had a piece broken off it that I realized it was made of hardened pine sap. It fit comfortably in the palm of my hand and it was very colorful, with lots of blue on it. I’ve seen blue sap on pine trees many times but I’ve never seen it form into anything like this. I should have kept it but I put it back at the base of the tree. Someone else must have come along and taken it, because it’s gone.

What I try to do when I go into nature is to not expect anything. I like to just be quiet and let nature show me. On this day in the wetlands a friend and I sat at a picnic table and nature showed us a song sparrow singing in a bush right beside us, a muskrat swimming in front of us, mallards swimming, pileated woodpeckers flying overhead, and hawks and turkey vultures doing the same. At one point there was so much going on the two of us couldn’t keep up with it. I got home and thought about what a gift this day had been, and that’s the secret of going into nature without expecting anything; you’re never disappointed. Everything is an unexpected gift, just as this little bird’s beautiful song was.

Parts of the wetlands in deepest shade are still frozen.

The tunnels made under the snow by moles, voles or mice were quite deep. It seems to me that years ago I read that the deeper the tunnels the longer the snow cover stayed in place, but don’t bet the farm on my memory.

What a surprise I got when I rounded a corner and saw a pair of wood ducks. I almost forgot I had a camera with me. They’re beautiful birds and it’s always a pleasure to see them, but they’re also very skittish, so as soon as they saw me they turned and began swimming away.

The male bird in the lead was stunningly beautiful. His beauty shouts, while the female’s whispers. I like the teardrop marking around her eye. But this was it; right after this shot off they flew with the female in the lead. I was hoping I’d have a chance at better photos but there will be more opportunities. Last year there was at least one pair nesting in the wetlands.

I should say, so I remember what happened next year, that this week I first heard wood frogs quacking and spring peppers peeping. Ice out on Wilson Pond in Swanzey and also in all the waters seen in this post happened on Friday March 28th. As of that day, no spring beauty flowers had yet appeared.

I was thinking that maybe it was time for this robin to do a little more flying and a little less eating but I didn’t want to be the one who said it out loud. Its sideways stare made me wonder if it hadn’t read my mind.

This chipmunk seems to have decided to give up burrowing and live in manufactured housing instead. He lives beside one of the paths I walk at the local college and usually all I see of him is his straight up tail as he runs to his downspout, but this time he turned and had a peek to see what I was about. I wasn’t surprised; chipmunks are very curious and will often run along beside me in the woods, chattering constantly to warn all the other critters that I’m on my way. I would think this one would recognize me by now. We’ve certainly seen each other enough times.

Something unexpected at the college was this chickweed (Stellaria media) in bloom. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it bloom so early. Chickweed is a much hated weed by gardeners but I had come for flowers and here they were. I’ll happily treat the peasants just like kings and queens. Each small flower was about the diameter of a pencil eraser.

The reticulated iris are up now. I like reticulated irises but this particular variety has leaves that grow much taller that the flowers so your view of them is partially blocked. But I shouldn’t complain. I really should just be grateful that I can see them at all.

The early snowdrops are opening and it looks like this year their time in the garden will coincide with all the other spring bulbs. That’s something else unexpected, because they’re usually later than other bulbs in this spot.

Here we can see what the leaves, wiry stems, and open flowers look like on snowdrops. Normally you don’t see such long wiry stems on these plants. They might have been trying to stretch their way out from under the snow.

Another surprise: Not only were the standard size purple crocuses in full bloom, some were already passing on. In some years we’ll have a cold spring and then “instant heat” so it seems like winter has turned right into summer. Since spring is my favorite season I always feel cheated when that happens, and I’m hoping it isn’t going to happen this year.

I thought I’d see bees swarming all over these flowers but I didn’t see a single one. That could be because we still see nights in the 20s. This morning it is a cold 21 degrees.

Each day, each moment is fresh and new, and never before seen. One day I walked through this section of the college grounds and didn’t see a single crocus. Two days later and they were everywhere. The same thing could happen with the bees. They do seem to just appear out of nowhere. And isn’t it wonderful to be able to take a walk in spring and see the flowers? I hope all of you are out enjoying the season.

Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower, the whole of the world is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower, the truth of the blossom:
The glory of eternal life is fully shining here.
~ Zenkei Shibayama

Thanks for stopping in.

One thing worth noting since the last time we met is the day when the temperature reached sixty degrees and it poured rain all day. That took care of most of the snow that was left and slowly, it’s becoming easier to get around on foot. But of course, now the rivers are full and flood watches and ice dams were in the news, especially up north. Here in Keene the Ashuelot River is about as full as it can get but I haven’t seen any heavy rain in the forecast and each rain free day gives it time to drain off a bit, into the Connecticut River and on to the Atlantic. Around and around the circle of life goes, without beginning or end.

That bush growing on the riverbank you might have noticed in that first shot is actually a tree stump with new shoots coming up from it. It’s a box elder, which some call soft maple, and it has some of the most beautiful blue spring branches I know of. It also has beautiful flowers but we won’t see them in this spot because rather than just letting the tree grow someone comes along and cuts all the new shoots each year. One unusual thing about the box elder worth noting is that the oldest known Native American flute was made from its wood. It’s also the first tree I ever planted; a “weed tree” I yanked from my grandmother’s foundation and dragged home and stuck in a hole when I was about 10 years old. It grew like it lived at Kew Gardens, and was just recently cut down.

Just to illustrate how cold it still is I took a photo of a sapsicle. A plow truck had hit a small tree and broken a branch and the dripping sap froze into a sapsicle. The really odd thing about it was, this was the second one I had seen on this day. The other one had kind of yellow / brown sap but this was clear, and it was pouring from the tree in a stream. If this had been a sugar maple I would have had a naturally sweet maple ice pop.

Large numbers of Canada geese hugged the river banks because that was the only place the water was shallow enough for them to tip up and reach food.

This one just stood on a submerged log and watched. And honked. There was a lot of loud honking going on.

In the park by the river there is a Cornelian cherry, which is a member of the dogwood family. It blooms in early spring (usually in March) with clusters of blossoms that have small, bright yellow bracts. As the small tree takes up more moisture the buds begin to swell and this opens its hairy, two part valvate bud scales. Once the outer bud scales have opened yellow can be seen within, and before long all the tiny flowers can be seen tucked inside the buds. One or two warm sunny days and suddenly, all the flowers will come out of the buds to feed the insects. It’s always hard to believe that 8-10 flowers came out of a bud the size of a pea.

I looked at red and silver maples while I was there and many of this one’s buds had opened. If this doesn’t get you excited you might want to check your pulse because this shouts “spring is here!”

In a few of the buds I could see the pink / red male anthers starting to swell. Before long they’ll all be dangling out of the buds and the wind will take their pollen to the deep red, sticky female flowers. This is what I love about spring; the constant unfolding of new life all around you. That eternal unstoppable force. It makes me want to jump in the air and click my heels because I feel that same life force moving through me like an electric current coursing through my body. I want to yell “Put on your dancing shoes Martha, it’s time we had ourselves a spring fling!” And we’d swing to our own music right there under the maple tree with all the squirrels watching, wondering if we were nuts. What a grand and beautiful life!

An early azalea bud looked nice and plump. I can’t even begin to describe the beautiful pink, heavily scented flowers that will break from that bud. A very old name for this plant is the pinxter flower. According to Wikipedia “Pinxter” is Dutch for the word Pentecost, a name used for the seventh Sunday after Easter. This is typically around the time when the flowers bloom in other places but here in southern New Hampshire I don’t see them until June, and that leads to another name: “June pinks.” Whatever you choose to call it if you happen to bump into one of these large understory shrubs in the woods you’ll never forget it. It’s a beautiful thing and its fragrance is unlike anything else I can think of.

Hellebore buds resembled small pink eggs nestled in the center of the plant.

Lilac buds appeared to have been carved and sanded, and then given a rich mahogany finish. Lilac buds are beautiful things and I’ve loved looking at them each spring since I was a very small boy. Buds with many scales that overlap like shingles are called imbricate buds. A gummy resin often fills the spaces between the scales and makes the bud waterproof. I’ve done several posts on different kinds of buds in the past so if you’d like to learn more about them just type “Buds” in the search box at the top of this page.

Another thing I’ve loved seeing since I was a young boy is puddle ice in spring. There are always things to be seen in it, like the leaf shapes I saw in this example. For a small boy it’s magic. Give me a frozen over puddle on my way to school in spring and I could tell you how amazing and beautiful life was all through the day.

Speaking of ice, I went up to Beaver Brook Natural Area to look at more buds but when I got there the old road was covered with ice as far as I could see. I could have put on spikes and walked it but what is the hurry, I asked myself. I’ll try again next week. We’re running about average now in the 40s during the day and in the 20s at night, so spring is happening at a slow crawl. It’s great maple sugaring weather but the plants and I are just waiting for some real warmth.

I went to a small swamp near Beaver Brook and looked at the willows that grow there but once again I couldn’t get close to them, this time due to wet ground rather than deep snow. I’m hoping I can get closer when they flower so I can show them to you.

The bead like spore cases of sensitive ferns warned that if I went any deeper into the swamp I’d probably end up with wet, muddy feet. They’re always a good sign of impending wet ground; a kind of natural “Pass at your own risk” sign.

The dogwoods are beautiful this year. They always light up the swamps in spring.

Any low spot in the woods is filled with water now. This usually happens each spring and these small, temporary ponds are called vernal pools. Though they’re often gone by July they’re considered a type of wetland. Several species can be found in these pools including frogs, toads, turtles, salamanders, and even fairy shrimp. When spring peepers start peeping toward the end of March much of that huge sound will come from vernal pools.

What looks like a river in the wetlands is actually a stream, swollen by rainwater and ice melt to twice its normal width, even reaching into the forest. I came here thinking I might see some ducks but I didn’t see even mallards. They should be along any time now. Last year in April this place was filled with birds and waterfowl of all kinds. I’m looking forward to seeing the wood ducks again.

There are still lots of staghorn sumac berries left and they should attract smaller birds like bluebirds, cedar waxwings and warblers to the wetlands. They’ll make do with these low fat, low energy fruits until the insects arrive. I’ve already had a tick on me so hopefully the turkeys are finding them as well.

In one spot in the wetlands I found myself tangled up in blue; the beautiful powder blue canes of black raspberry. This is another of those “spring things” I’ve loved seeing since I was a boy. They used to grow in profusion along the Boston and Maine railroad tracks where I played.

As usually happens on these early spring outings, I ended up at the local college looking for flowers. All the crocuses were closed up because of the clouds and cool temps on this day. If you’d like to see them open just scroll back to that last post.

I checked in with the vernal witch hazels and took some awful photos of them, this being the best of a bad lot, but I wanted to show that in spite of temps in the 20s at night their petals have not been frost bitten. They need a slight warmup for their flowers to first open in spring but once open they seem quite cold tolerant.

I got a surprise from seeing snowdrops up and budded. I was surprised because snowdrops are usually not one of the first spring bulbs to bloom here. In fact they often lag behind even daffodils. I also saw buds on the reticulated iris, and the tiny red threads of female hazelnut flowers, just barely peeking out from the buds.

Welcome to the first full day of astronomical, or what I call calendar spring. On this day fifteen years ago I started this blog. As you can see by this post, you don’t always need to see flowers for spring to begin getting a hold of you. There is great beauty everywhere, all the time, and I hope all of you are seeing it.

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 coming by.

I think if I whisper it might be safe to say that spring has arrived. You can look at spring meteorologically, which means spring starts on March 1 and ends on May 31. Or you can look at spring astronomically, which means spring starts on the vernal equinox (March 19, 20 or 21) and ends with the summer solstice (June 20-21.) Not surprisingly most meteorologists use meteorological spring where there are four nice neat, 3 month packets of time with no days left over to juggle. I tend to just let nature tell me when spring is here. For a New Hampshire native, seeing sap buckets on a sugar maple is one of the first signs that spring is really here. There are lots of unseen things happening right now.

Open water is another sign that things are warming up. In this spot open water means a tough slog to the skunk cabbages that grow here. A foot or more of snow and wet black mud under it kept me from the plants until this past week. On Monday the temperature shot up to 62 degrees under sunny skies, and on Tuesday it was a record breaking 72 degrees. Snow and ice melted quickly and spring seemed to catch up to itself.

On Wednesday it was a little cooler at 57 degrees but I saw a way to get down into the swamp without getting lost in a snow drift. Once there I saw skunk cabbages everywhere. These two were nestled down in a bed of last year’s fern fronds. The spathes of skunk cabbage seem to always be yellow and maroon, with one color dominant.

I looked to my left and saw a maroon dominant spathe that was wide open, with the flower studded spadix clearly visible through its opening. I find that it’s usually easier to see the spadix in maroon rather than yellow colored spathes, but its being this easy was a first. Those tiny flowers, usually the first true wildflowers to show themselves, were already shedding pollen. So far I’ve seen a fly, a hornet, a bee, and a moth. Surely one of them will feast on this pollen.

A spring post wouldn’t be the same without skunk cabbage so I was glad I had decided to go into the swamp. Until I had to climb out of it that is; then I questioned my decision making process. But it hadn’t been a process, really. “Don’t think about it, just do it” I told myself, just like any 18 year old would. The trouble with that is, 18 was over 50 years ago, and this body lets me know it.

Though I haven’t heard of “ice out” on any local lakes and ponds the ice on the Ashuelot River broke up fast. This ice is all gone now and the river has swollen to fill its banks. That’s the trouble with snow melting so fast; there’s nowhere for all that water to go. Spring flooding used to be a given in parts of the region and it still happens occasionally.

I had the same trouble getting to see willow catkins this year as I did with skunk cabbages. I knew where they were but the snow was just too deep, so I decided to see what the poplar catkins were doing. Their catkins look much like willow catkins when they open, and they were just starting to show some gray.

The poplars looked like they had seen a rough winter, and it was easy to believe that. It was the first real winter we’ve had in probably four years. Three full months of cold and snow, just like it used to be.

The same day I was looking at poplar catkins the clouds looked like they were being poured out like cake batter. I was hoping it wasn’t going to snow again.

Finally, on the same day I made it into the skunk cabbage swamp I was able to reach a willow that was showing catkins. I have many favorite spring flowers, and one is willow. Seeing the bushes lit up with those beautiful bright yellow flowers gets the blood pumping as if you’d had a shot of spring tonic.

The reason we ended up with so much snow in this immediate area was not because we had blockbuster storms. In fact I don’t think we had more than ten inches in any one storm, but we had a lot of nuisance storms. As can be seen on the limbs of this maple, nuisance storms drop just enough snow to have to shovel / plow. Each morning for a full week I looked out and saw that another 2-3 inches had fallen overnight, which meant shoveling the walks and clearing off the car again. Because it was so cold this snow didn’t melt, so its easy to see how an average of 2 inches of snow each night can pile up. Before you know it you have over a foot of snow in your yard, and then if a ten inch snowfall comes on top of that it’s going to be a while before you see bare ground. That’s just what happened here this year.

One day I went to look for hazelnut catkins along a rail trail and saw a chipmunk sitting in the snow. This was a first for me but early to mid March is the time they usually come out of their burrows. Rather than hibernate they go into a state called torpor which, according to Wikipedia, is “A state of decreased physiological activity in an animal, usually marked by a reduced body temperature and metabolic rate. Torpor enables animals to survive periods of reduced food availability.”

This little critter looked to be wondering where the mild winters went, just like the rest of us. I don’t think there was any snow on the ground at this time last year and now here it was sitting in a drift.

Later on in the week, thinking that the snow must have melted I revisited the rail trail. It looked like the hard packed snow had turned to ice, so I decided to give it a pass. Walking on ice used to be a challenge I was willing to face but now it just seems like I’m flirting with the possibility of broken bones. Near the rail trail is a large cornfield that was mostly free of snow and there were a few Canada geese walking through the stubble, looking for dropped kernels from last year’s harvest. This is something that has gone on in this cornfield each spring for as long as corn has been planted here. Geese, ducks, and many other birds come here to rest and look for corn, just as I remember them doing when I was a boy. It’s as much a sign of spring as anything else in this post.

On Thursday I got home and parked the car and opened the door, and all I could hear were male red wing blackbirds whirring and whistling. It was the first time I had heard them this year and by the sounds of things a lot of them had come back at once. I heard them but I didn’t see them, so I’m using this photo from a couple of years ago so nobody will have to guess what they look like. The pose shown is typical for this bird. Males return first and stake out the best nesting sites in cattail beds, and then the females return and approve or disapprove. The nest is almost always near water so our swamps and ponds are very noisy in spring. Red wing blackbirds are another good sign that spring is here but if they miscalculate and it gets too cold for them, they’ll leave and come back when it warms up again. That happened last year.

When I finally caught up to some hazelnut catkins I saw they were doing just what they should in March. They had lost their stiffness and were much more pliable. They’ll grow longer and larger in diameter and turn a golden color before their tiny triangular bud scales begin to open. The three male flowers under each of those bud scales will begin producing pollen and at about that time the tiny sticky thread like, scarlet female flowers will appear. If you’d like to see shots of those just type “female hazelnut flowers” in the search box at the top of the page. There’s one that shows a paperclip for scale.

These shrubs are very common in this area. If you haven’t watched this process it’s one of those “spring things” that are great to see, especially for kids. Just pick a bush full of catkins and take a look every other day or so, and watch spring unfold.

I went to the local college campus to see if any spring bulbs were blooming but first I had a look at the spring blooming witch hazel shrubs. These are some of the earliest shrubs to bloom in this region, and most are very fragrant. You can smell them from quite far off when the breeze is right. Some say they small like clean laundry just taken off a clothesline, and I couldn’t argue with that.

This is what they looked like on the last day of February. The buds had color and I thought they’d bloom any day but it was cloudy and cool with cold nights, so they didn’t bloom until the tenth of March.

Even the long petaled varieties were blooming. This was a surprise, because they usually start blooming a week or two later than the others. The unusual warmth must have encouraged them. The warmth didn’t last though; by Thursday it was cool again and that’s perfect weather for the spring bloomers. I’ve seen these vernal witch hazels bloom for weeks in cool weather. At night they roll their petals up like a window shade but they can still get frostbitten.

These looked to be more orange than yellow. There is quite a range of colors including reds, pinks, yellows, and various shades of orange which appear as bi-color blossoms with the sepals one color and the petals another. If you scroll back to the one with long petals in the previous photo you see that the sepals are brick red and the petals are bright yellow. These plants are all hybrid cultivars, I believe.

There are lots of red pines on the college grounds so I stopped to see one. That’s a large terminal branch bud in the center surrounded by young cones. At their earliest stage those cones are kind of a rose purple and quite pretty.

I saw a budded daffodil, the first of the year for me. Will it blossom or get frostbitten? That’s always the question in early spring. They can’t take as much cold as crocuses or reticulated iris can.

There is a sculpture studio at the college where students create all kinds of things and often display them outside, as this head was. It looked to be an actual mask of someone’s face and seemed the right size, but who can say? There were several of them scattered here and there and this one peeked out from under a favorite magnolia. The students put their creations out before they leave for the summer, so though it might not seem it this is in fact another sign of spring for me. I always like to see what they’ve done.

And then there was this, the first crocus of spring, at least in my experience. Because of the bright sunlight this one was wide open. If it was closed we could have seen the beauty of its three deep purple outer petals, which seen against its three snow white petals make it a striking flower.

I can hear local people saying “What, all this snow and he’s finding flowers?” I can hear it as I write this because I hear it in person when I tell people I’ve been off taking photos of flowers. They see the huge snow piles and the shaded lawns still white with snow and think there is no way flowers could be blooming, but these early snow crocuses bloom as soon as they can in beds that get strong southern sunshine and no deep snow cover due to building design. Also, many buildings on the college grounds are heated by underground steam pipes which warm the soil. This corner of this one bed is always the first to bloom and I see many people stopping to admire the flowers. “Snow crocus” is a good name for these little flowers because I’ve seen them get snowed on after they’ve opened many times. They just shrug it off and keep on blooming. Soon they’ll be joined by reticulated irises.

I don’t remember these flowers from previous years but I’m sure they must have been there. They also have three dark purple petals on the outside but have a lot of yellow in them as well.

Yellow with orange centers are nice but the blues and purples seem to speak the loudest to me. The seed pods that appear in some of these shots are from the redbud trees overhead. There are three or four of them that are beautiful when they bloom. That happens in late April or early May.

These are the ones that grab me, but that’s only because they’re my favorite color. I also like their delicate shading. In truth they’re all beautiful, and even more so at this time of year when there is still snow on the ground. Soon their bigger cousins will begin to bloom and then the season will be in full swing. I hope you’re all seeing spring flowers, wherever you may be. Their quiet beauty asks for nothing; nature can do nothing but give.

It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what. ~ John Galsworthy

Thanks for stopping in.