sun + Nikon = happiness

Friday Friday Friday! The day I go put my hands on strangers. Doing Reiki. The signal-to-noise ratio wasn't ideal - a lot of patients not in their rooms, or passed out, or about to be discharged, or visiting with family - but I did have some great conversations, and I put two people to sleep, so I count it a win.

AND AND AND I started the day off with a run, first thing. I have three half marathons in mind for this season - I'll choose two of them and register this week. They're not for a few months, so I'll have plenty of time to build up my base again after a crappy stint of missing too many runs due to the Epic Boomerang Cold of '17, that gift that kept on giving. When I was first starting up again after missing oh my god, like two or three weeks, I could hardly do a tenth of a mile first thing in the morning. Grrr. Summer running requires being able to fall out of bed and into your running shoes; it just gets too hot to wait til consciousness and whatnot.

Coming across foamflower in our woods today was just, the icing on the cake.

And can you believe it, that's an iPhone shot, above. Then I remembered: THE NIKON.

Ahhhhh...o yeah, baby.

Then the dear boy and I went for a walk, where I found ANOTHER jack! So we're up to five now. 

Can you spot the boy? The very top tip of the jack is pointing to him.

Closer to home, let's check in on the magnolia, still going strong:

And I think we're ready now for the saxifrage as seen through the Nikon. Each of these flowers is no more than 1/16th of an inch. For our metric friends, < 2mm.

Last but not least, daffodil exploration.

yowza. bloodroot, frog song, TRILLIUM…

This is from a walk in the woods in town, not where we live. Tis bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)! Check out those leaves. So very modest. Don’t look! Don’t look!

Back at home, I visited the lone hyacinth, last seen here on March 22nd. It’s opened up a bit, eh?

The lawn is dotted with eastern blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium atlanticum).

Let the records show that our feral forsythia has finally started in – earlier than last year, to be sure, but later than the highly southern latitudes just a couple of miles from here.
When you’re lying in the leaf litter taking pictures, sometimes you come across unexpected riches, like…

…a whole stash of bonus hyacinth in the beginnings of the woods.
Have you ever wondered just exactly what an almost-open daffodil looks like? I know I have.

Not Yet.

Alllmost…

Check this out, it can’t decide if it’s white, or yellow. Sweet.
We’ve got some coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara) – normally our very first wildflower, but this crazy spring, it’s scrambling to keep its place in the line-up.

 Click here to see what it looks like when it goes to seed.
Hold on to your hats, the willow (species unknown) out by the mailbox is simply crazy.
This is soooo weird, because these guys didn’t get going until a MONTH from now last year, when other things were up and running that so far I’ve seen no sign of.
And now, for the audio portion. I visited the wetland across the way. Want to hear the quintessential sound of Vermont spring? (Hint: if you are not from around here, the correct answer is “yes”.)


I admit, I got distracted by the end by a tadpole, which I didn’t capture in the video. But here’s a tadpole for you:

And-and-and I spotted something green amidst the clutter of leaf litter and and and it’s TRILLIUM.

Stay tuned on this puppy, it’ll be glorious. (Trillium erectum.)

gray and cold out, but undaunted

Three minutes of looking around at the end of the work day can be quite profitable:

eastern blue eyed grass


the daffodils were undeterred after yesterday’s freezing rain kicked off the day. “screw it,” they said. “we’re opening up.”


siberian iris shoots. just you wait.


gray birch catkin. a reminder that we live on a strange planet.


gray birch female flower, I believe. (still learning whose bits are whose).


wild rose, which just started to leaf out last week, and has since thought the better of it and suspended the proceedings.

compare and contrast; also, bug sex

Oh, I have such a feast for you! Remember how I just discovered we have lilies-of-the-valley in the yard? I zipped out in between rain showers and got a peek at them.

Lily-of-the-valley (Convallaria majalis)

The other day, I was visiting with a friend who wanted to show me what he thought was a whole boatload of these in their lawn. Turns out what his lawn is blessed with is Canada mayflower – the cuties, seen first around here on April 29 and periodically since then. They usually live in the woods, not on people’s lawns, but as The Dude pointed out, until recently their lawn was woods, so there you have it.

This one’s little flower buds are finally opening up!

And now for compare and contrast #2: dandelion, and coltsfoot. From a distance, they both look like puffballs, but when you go in closer, you see that they’re structured differently

dandelion (Taraxacum officinale)

coltsfoot (Tussilago farfara)

In other news, I caught some bugs having sex on the white baneberry flowers. See how nature is full of delights?

I also witnessed an unusual pollinator:

I guess he’s probably eating the dandelion, huh. Isn’t it beautiful, close-up?

Last but not least, the daffodils are pregnant.

a 5K, two new flowers, and a spider

First up: the incredible athletic prowess around here. Yesterday, we ran in a 5K fundraiser benefitting the non-profit that Best Beloved is the executive director of  executively directs. (Apparently I’ll do anything to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition.)

Third, baby. I came in third in my age group, tenth overall. Actually, I did the same thing two years ago, she said modestly. Well, I was third in my age group then, but 23rd overall – this year was much faster.
But that’s nothing. Guess who came in first in his age group? Sweetpea. He won a prize, and I made him give it to me. A sweet CamelBak hydration system water bottle. C’mon! It was hot pink! That’s clearly mine!

I’m just awful to him.

We had a good time at the race. It was a gorgeous day – just enough clouds to make it interesting, and the apple blossoms are just about to open.

A lot of people worked hard to put it together, and there was a great turnout. The T-shirts are cool, too. Lime green! Love it.  We had fun hanging out at our table o’ brochures. Well, I was naughty and played in the adjacent woods a lot.

There wasn’t a whole lot going on wildflower-wise, but there was this:

shagbark hickory!

On the forest floor, squat-all for flowers, except for what I’m currently thinking is Solomon’s Seal.

CHECK OUT THAT SPIDER! I didn’t see it until I got the shot up on the computer.

…and I learned that baby pinecones look like raspberries.

And now for today’s report. Strap in, it’s a long one.

A violet. There’s that bearded thing going on…

One of these red ferns I’ve been seeing around…

Canada mayflower. (Maianthemum canadense). A queen on her throne.

Bluets! (Houstonia caerulea). It was hard to get a shot that doesn’t include Maggie’s paw, stepping on them.

Foreground: the informant. Background: the lookout. I’m not just making this stuff up, am I?

Back to another batch of bluets. Doesn’t this look like it’s floating in space?

yeah, ditto.

Here’s a flower ID project. I use Newcomb’s Guide. (Got it cheap years ago in grad school; for some reason this edition costs – on Amazon – a ton. Maybe something better’s come along, but some folks are still hanging on to this one. Who knows.) There’s a simple methodology for looking at a flower to figure out what it is.
1. how many petals?

four.

.

how are the flowers arranged? on a single stalk, arranged in terminal cluster

what about the leaves? two of them – opposite one another – each of them subdivided into three leaflets, each of which is toothed.

we have white toothwort.
You may recall we’ve been waiting for beech buds to open. We’re using our patented time-lapse technique to show the process in slow motion. (Um, the technique is where you just look for a bunch of different buds, occasionally on different trees, at different stages in the process. I tell you, I am made of magic.)

The end sets of bud scales finally can’t hold it in any longer…

A pair of leaves make their escape.

The rest of the scales give up any hope of stopping the explosion.

ta-dah! whew.

Can it be? another flower ID project?

Wow. Um. Never seen that before, up close. Thank you, macro lens! Tiny, bell-shaped? Five petals, each a trippy snowflake.

arranged along a stalk…

two leaves, partway up, opposite, each toothy.

ladies and gentlemen, we have miterwort (Mitella dyphilla).

Another violet. This picture is upside-down, since I held the camera upside down to get it (we’re pretty low to the ground here). I love the blurriness of it. usually blurriness bugs me, but I think this one’s cool. I know it’s just blurry, but I like to think my camera’s capable of capturing auras. Wouldn’t that be something?

happy mother’s day!