spring peeper, ripening jewel weed, dive bombing dragonfly

The half marathon – the first-ever Monadnock Half Marathon – last Saturday went pretty well. It was hot and humid, and after about four or five miles I began feeling like my head was on fire. I ran with a nurse from the chemo unit where I volunteer every week giving Reiki to people – somehow I conned Carol, who’d never even done a 5K before this year, into giving this a shot. She was a champ! Every time we got to a water station, I poured half a cup of water over my head and drank the rest.
At about mile 10.5 we came to a pretty big hill – comparable to the steepest one I’ve got along my regular routes – which normally, I run up. (“Run” in the liberal sense of the word. A decent speed walker would overtake me.) But all of us within sight took this hill at a walk. Fortunately, it was pretty much downhill from mile 11 to the end.  And whaddaya know, I beat my previous best time by a handful of minutes. Although I trained to do just that, I’d given up hope of making a decent time when we went through that ghastly heat wave a few weeks ago and I realized the inherent silliness of trying to set a personal record in New England, in August, on a hilly course. VICTORY!
That was my third half marathon. The next one is an informal one this fall on Hilton Head, when I’ll be on vacation with my family. It won’t be a USTAF-certified course – it will be whatever my brother, sister-in-law, and I invent, and we’ll just persuade my mom, my sister, and sweet Kevin into standing in strategic places with water bottles.
Yesterday I lounged about indolently. Today, while hunting for monarch caterpillars, I found someone else entirely hiding under the wavy curve of a milkweed leaf:

It’s a spring peeper (Pseudacris crucifer)!  This completely made my day. He was panting quite visibly, so I zoomed in a made a short film of it. Naturally, he stopped breathing while I filmed, and – trying to hold the camera steady – so did I. It was a frog vs human show down. He won. I stopped filming, and he resumed breathing.

This is what a black-eyed susan looks like when it’s all done flowering.
New species alert! This is boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum):

It’s similar to joe-pye weed – different leaf configuration, but same general idea – only it’s white, instead of pink. How many petals would you guess these flowers have?

Answer: five. They’re joined together in little cups, and the stringy things are presumably the stamens.
There’s a disturbing amount of purple loosestrife in the wet areas. Disturbing, because they outcompete the native cattails.

They’re pretty, sure…but evil.


I came across this dead dive bombing dragonfly.

Isn’t that wild?
Oh, I lied, I did do something yesterday. I’d noticed a big branch had fallen into the brook that we cross over to get to our house, so yesterday we waded in and dragged it up onto the bank…where I noticed a whole SLEW of jack-in-the-pulpits. We positioned the branch to not squash any of them. Today I went back with the camera.

That’s the branch in the background.
OK, back to today. My other goal for today (aside from finding monarch caterpillars – FAIL), was to capture the moment when a jewel weed flower opens. Victory! Let’s review:
Not Yet Open:


Open:


VICTORY! Just opening up!


And, another time-lapse special, here we have bud to seed, all on one plant.

Let’s have a closer look:

I found a whole slew of sensitive fern spores, still green:

Like money in the bank.
And got another new-to-me species, willow herb perhaps Epilobium coloratum.



In other news, the roundleaved dogwood berries have been ripening. July 5 – they were still green.

A month later, the berries are ripening and stems going red


And just a few days later, they’re nearly all BLUE!

time-lapse of bittersweet nightshade, magnolia monstrosity, and a beetle orgy

Hello! Happy Friday. To kick things off, let’s admire the ripening berries of the bittersweet nightshade flower.

This was flower cluster #2 on a plant that had four flower clusters.


#1, closest to the stalk, started the earliest: all but one of the berries have gone red:

Cluster #2 are the rainbow berries I started with – all stages of ripeness are represented. Farther out toward the end of the stalk, cluster #3’s berries are still green, and at the very end of the stalk we have cluster #4, still flowering:

Who invents this stuff?


Day lily stamens. I’m reminded for some reason of Beaker. 


Tiny orange whale? Or a jewel weed flower still wet with placental goo?
I am a bit preoccupied with various things, among them the debatable wisdom of running a half marathon tomorrow when I clearly have plantar fasciitis. It’s not that bad, overall, but it still hurts at times. I have been doing various stretching exercises – toe dips and raises off stairs, pulling my foot back to get at the back of my heel, rolling my foot over a frozen bottle of water (thanks, Katie!), and others it would be easier to demonstrate than try to describe. I’m experimenting with naproxen sodium (generic Aleve) instead of ibuprofen, just for the hell of it. The upside is, one pill lasts 8 or 12 hours. The downside is, it seems to take 1.5 hours to kick in. And, finally, I have an appointment with a podiatrist the week after next.
Who am I kidding. After training all summer, I’m not going to NOT run tomorrow.
Today’s other discoveries include:
A mystery plant I first saw out by the mailboxes a week or so ago turns out to be making inroads into our lawn. Once again, I tout the virtues of not mowing the lawn.

Here I am peering up under the little flower capsules. Each little green capsule is about 1/8” across, maybe? So those creamy-colored not-yet-open flowers thingys are truly teensy.
It was good that I spotted it in the lawn, because the stash that was down by the mailboxes has been destroyed. The town came through and mowed about five feet on either side of the entrance to our private drive – they’re entitled to and all, since they stash a couple of fire engines at the substation there – but boy, what a shame. Utter devastation. For anyone else, “oh, it’s just weeds”. But these plants are my buddies – the St Johnswort and fringed loosestrife, the Queen Anne’s Lace, all the not-quite-identified-yet grasses, wild rose, goldenrod, pineapple weed…fortunately, the cattails were spared. And there’s still plenty of stuff left. Still though…sigh.
A new flower sprung up in the side yard – a kind of phlox.

Cheerful little guys, no?
From the side, they’re trumpets:


The magnolia tree is growing an alien:

You can’t tell me that’s normal.
Here’s that milkweed pod that used to be the size of my pinky’s nail – it’s nearly two inches long now, and what are those white blobs? At first I thought, “it’s leaking whatever that stuff is that’s in milkweed!” but then I looked at this picture all blown up on the laptop and…

…is that a momma bug next to the egg sacs?

I tried and failed to get a picture of the tadpoles out in the ditch.

This was my consolation prize.

And now for the orgy. Avert your eyes if you’re sensitive to these things…

Once again, who am I kidding. This blog is all about the naughty bits. Bugs, flowers, it’s all good.

june is busting out all over and bonus dragonfly

Let’s start with Pieris bush – the one whose flowers looked like spider-filled barnacles. The berries are just popping.

A few days ago - May 28.

Today

Similar story for the Solomon’s Seal.

And now, for the Siberian Irises:

Black raspberry canes, the bane of my existence, are flowering. Which means that as usual, I’ll forgive vast swathes of them, since I do tend to forage in the yard at the end of summer…

“pick me! pick me!” (dogwood.)

And this is why I can’t find any of the trillium to show you how their seeds are shaping up. It’s just a jungle out there. Front and center: blue cohosh.

In the meantime, over by the gardenshed, the rhododendron is exploding.

As well as a third azalea, to go with the red and the coral azalea.

This modest-looking dragonfly was hanging out on our front steps. Based on bugguide.net, I’m going with Chalk-fronted Corporal - Ladona julia