canada mayflower, rhodies, bleeding heart green beans, hummingbirds

Right next to the entry way of our house, at the base of a pale lilac rhododendron, the previous owners and/or nature sprites planted a whole mess of Canada mayflower. On May 18th, they were at this stage:

Just starting to open up.

They’re at this stage now – slightly faded, not yet Obviously Magnificently Preggers.

The scrawny kind of bleeding heart – I don’t know the official name – is likewise just starting to fade. Here’s one with a just-opening rhodie behind it...

I’m more partial to wildflowers, in theory, but it’s hard to resist the show being put on all around the house. I mean, what’s not to love about a humongous rhododendron right at your own front steps? It’s like being in the woods in West Virginia.

I’m not the only fan.

Those bleeding hearts make long green bean pods.

We also have the fat white kind. I’m new to them, more-or-less – still trying to figure out the order of events.

This might be the last of the bunch to get going. Oh crap, this is out of focus. Oops.

Eventually the bottoms go sproinnnngg...

OK, now I’m just geeking out and documenting the process, even though this isn’t the best shot...

Around the south side of the house, a batch of fat pink ones are the furthest along.

Also on the south side of the house, we have purple fireworks. I think they’re in the chive/onion realm.

At one point, a family of cardinals got all up in my grill. Or maybe Maggie’s grill. They were upset about something.

Note: a macro lens might not be the best choice on a bird. Speaking of which, the hummingbirds are eating us out of house and home. Seriously. They go through 2.5 cups of sweetened water in about five days.

Sir H. There are at least three or four couples right around here. I spy on them from the kitchen. They hesitate when they see me and often work their way around to the one hole opposite the feeder from my vantage point at the sink. But I’ve managed to get a few shots, mostly of females, who are slightly not-as-wary. Perhaps they recognize a kindred spirit in me.

I’m awfully fond of them.

gainful employment – and it’s in the woods

Here’s something I’ve never seen before, though it must have been all around me on any number of occasions:

It stands to reason that if deciduous trees produce buds for next year’s leaves and flowers, coniferous trees must as well. This is a cluster of this year’s new needles, so fresh that the bud coating (no doubt there are more technically correct terms for all this) hasn’t even fallen off yet. Awesome!

Other back yard beauties include some buttercups...

The lawn is littered with fuzzy-leaved asters. Here’s hoping the landlord is negligent in his lawn-mowing duties. He can’t possibly be as negligent as we are – I believe we mowed our lawn in Vermont last year 2.5 times.

In other news, I have a summer job at an aerial forest park. So far, we’ve only been open on weekends, but as soon as school lets out, we’ll be open seven days a week. So what’s an aerial park, you ask?

Sort of like a ropes course, without the ropes. A lot of cables and bridges or other obstacles, strung between trees.

There are five courses, each of which starts from a central platform. Some are easier than others – lower to the ground, and not quite as technical – while others demand that you climb a ladder before you can even get started.

...like so.

Kevin and I first heard about this park because it turns out our next door neighbors down here own the land the park is on. So we headed over there a few weeks ago while it was still being built...

I immediately thought, “I gotta get me some of this.”

And lo, I am now a “course monitor”. I am charged with fitting customers into full-body harnesses, showing them how to use their carabiners (think, “safety clips” – you’re always clipped into something in case you get into an argument with gravity), and wandering around on paths under the courses, providing moral support. And if necessary, actual rescue.

I’m easily twice the age of most of my coworkers.

 

Don’t ask what that is in my hair. It involves a mutilated balloon animal. It’s a fun crew to work with, I’ll leave it at that for now. And, I DO have boobs. I swear. I prefer running bras, what can I say.

So yeah, rescuing people. I’ve gotten some training in how to safely lower folks off of platforms both low and high (low = you can get a ladder to them and high = you cannot), as well as off the middle of an element (an element is anything strung between two trees, typically a bridge of some sort.)

Here are two of my coworkers, preparing to practicing a bridge rescue. After I took this shot with my cell phone, I worked my way out to where they are and practiced rescuing and being rescued myself. I was nervous, but I got over it.

Here’s a view from where I was stranded for several minutes while my neighbor’s son, who helped build the place, came to my rescue (a piece of equipment needed to be installed before I could proceed – I was the first person, aside from the guys who built it, who ran this particular course and they’d just overlooked something.)

I believe this is the element I was waiting to do.

I love this stuff. I’m not especially afraid of heights, but I do get an adrenaline rush the first few times I encounter a particular element. And, I still haven’t done all five courses yet: I’ve been waiting for the construction of the fourth to be completed before trying both it, and the hardest one. That last one gives me the willies. It’s going to take more upper body strength than I have, but I’ve looked at it from the ground for a while and I have A Plan to Deal with That.

What I’m loving about all this? The in-the-trenches experience of fear, and overcoming fear through action. Really, there’s no point in standing around on a platform going “oh.shit.” You just have to move, and keep moving. Somewhere there’s a life lesson in this.

Me being me, I’m always on the lookout for our wee little woodland friends. The wildflower diversity is not great on this site.

Canada mayflowers abound. I’m going to work on a series of macros that feature blurry park elements/platforms in the distance. The one above was my first try. What do you think?

A fair number of them are flowering, bonus.

There are some starflowers.

And, last but not least, I’ve seen a few of what I believe might be sessile-leaved bellwort.

 

 

Alas, I’ve noticed some poison ivy.

Speaking of which, I have NEVER seen so much poison ivy, generally speaking, as I have down here in Connecticut. Damn!

In other news, Kevin-my-Kevin (which is Kevin’s new nickname now that my new boss turns out to be named Kevin as well) is returning home this evening from a bizness trip to Spain and Italy. Boy, am I looking forward to seeing him!

this is probably better than going to church.

But I wouldn’t know, since I don’t go to church. All I know is that looking around sets me right: this a most excellent planet. So here, partake of the goodies, and enjoy:

A couple of days ago, I went out twice – twice! – with the camera, but, as the hip people say, life was pain.

Hepatica are my undoing. There is something about light violet flowers that my camera and I have not been able to figure out.

I have equally bad luck photographing spring beauties, so today I headed up into the woods at home where I knew I’d find whole carpets of them. I was determined to get a good portrait.

Naturally, a little one insisted on stealing the spotlight.

I will say, I do love being able to focus on different places. For instance, let’s hone in on the texture of the petals…

…and now, let’s have a look at those stamens.

Yum. There were carpets of trout lilies as well – just the initial leaves, no flowers. And Canada mayflower.

But the show-stoppers today are the blue cohosh. The first ones to come up, which last I checked were two or three inches tall, have grown maybe eight or nine inches in the past five days.

And more flowers are opening up.

You can see the space alien hands are turning green.

On the other side of the driveway, another whole bunch are coming up.

Poignant, I think.

The Trillium Report

Trillium come in for a lot of abuse.

Chomp.

Is it safe to come out?

Others are faring better. At this stage, we get to see just how messy pollination gets.

It’s all tidy at first.

Then it gets sneezalicious.

Holy Crap Category

Today, we have what I will tentatively identify as some sort of blue-eyed grass, only the stamens look totally different from the rest of them. Let’s review.

Your typical blue-eyed grass naughty bits.

And, bonus, these guys look like they are going to be giving birth to tiny little watermelons.

Magnolia Newsflash

Susannah over at Wanderin’ Weeta has many interesting things to say about magnolia.