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.

here, have a rainbow

day lily


honeysuckle

orange hawkweed


calendula


black-eyed susan


katydid nymph

sensitive fern, fertile front thereof


possibly blue-eyed grass. never was quite sure about this one.


morning glory


thistle


siberian iris

lawn ornaments, monkey faces, and drunk bees

As if yesterday’s fabulous developments weren’t enough, last night was the first time we heard the spring peepers out on the pond. I can think of few sounds more thrilling to the soul than their song: they mean that without a doubt, spring is here. I may work on getting my own personal audio, rather than subject you to (gasp!) other people’s.
Today’s developments! Outtanowhere, we have some additional lawn ornaments. No, no pink flamingos, no crystal balls, no garden gnomes: we have beautiful flowers, randomly arranged at the edges of the lawn, thanks be to previous owners who apparently “garden”, this mysterious activity I’ve heard of:

These seem close to being a kind of blue-eyed grass, but for a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with unless you want to get all geeky with me offline, they don’t exactly fit the bill. The flowers are pretty big, for one thing – over an inch wide.

…unlike this kind, barely a half-inch wide.

Plus, we have a so-far lone miniature hyacinth


The daylilies continue to unfold.


You said something about monkey faces?

To plagiarize my own blog, this is Juglans cinerea – butternut, aka white walnut. Look at the leaf scar – the little monkey face. The dots and the smiley face are the cross section of veins that went into the stem of a leaf that has since fallen away. I’d last seen this out on the main road (or, what passes for a main road around here) but THIS guy is in our OWN SIDE YARD, just a few feet away from the mongo yellow birch that I love to stare at from the comfy chair upstairs. OH HAPPY DAY!

This is the mystery plant from yesterday – more of the flowers have opened up. I no longer believe it’s Empetrum atropurpureum, because the pictures I’ve found of that species online look way too….heathy. The leaves look kind of stubbier and sturdier than the delicate leaves of what’s growing here. So I am sans clue, alas.
As for the flowers, this will be WAY too much info for some of y’all, but I’m thinking, “playtex plastic tampon applicator” here.

You know I’m right.

OKAY, we just lost any boys who might have been reading this. Let’s keep the ball rolling by looking at the boy parts of the gray birch, as of today – if you’re new here, puh-leeze, go look at yesterday’s post – I’ve been keeping an eye on this.:

 

The catkins are really starting to open up, yeah? It’s only now that I realize my camera settings were dialed way down today so that I could send the concrete guy pictures of the newly-restained concrete floor without overloading his email with ginormous files. Mea culpa. (That’s another post.)
OK, I’ll leave you with one last story:

Help, I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!

(They are actually two different flowers, and two different Um Bees I Guess.)