It's been a while, hasn't it. It's been a very soggy May, so when I found myself home early enough from work with some scant sun this afternoon I had to get out there...soak up some spring....why yes, I will happily settle for a dandelion!

The willow down by the culvert is in full-bore explosion. Here's one just starting to open up:

The Mighty Lumix (the camera I had with me today) is who chose to focus on the yellow bits. The Nikon lets me choose where to focus, but I left it at home. Lumix it is, then. The cool thing about the Lumix is, it's small enough for me to use it to get shots I can't actually get to with my own eyes - such as the underside of mushrooms. I'll only know what was there, once I transfer the pictures to my laptop. 

This explains the happy discovery of an ant on a somewhat older willow bud: Hello!

The internet informs me that these are both the staminate (meaning male) flowers of a willow. Excellent. Onwards.

Boy, am I rusty: I failed to confirm species. Beech, I believe. So fuzzy! Who knew? (Well, I did, but it still makes me grin to see it every year.)

shroom condos. See, the Mighty Lumix can do these things for me.

And now, for the pièce de resistance:

THE FIRST JACK I'VE SEEN THIS YEAR!

midweek splendor; beech explosion; ferns are weird

Here’s what’s going on in the mystery woodland next to the house. Ferns are coming up!

Let’s take a closer look.

They are apparently made of tiny blobs welded together.

Plus a bunch of fuzz.

Let the records show that we have a flowering trout lily on our own property. It hasn’t turned inside out in ecstasy, the way we saw the other day:

Back to our woods: we have a bunch of these things:

I’m guessing sessile-leaved bellwort. Seeing a flower would be helpful, but so far, none seem to be even on the horizon.

You’re not tired of blue cohosh yet, are you? 

This is pachysandra, which has been sneaking into the vinca’s territory from its homebase around the magnolia tree.

BOATLOADS of miterwort this year.

And this is why I have the macro lens. These flowers are maybe 1/8” across at best.

Starflower! Let’s hope it makes a flower this year. Only found one last year.

Later on, I took a walk on my lunch break at work and headed up into the woods.

Birch catkins. Nutty stuff.

Violet innards.

Beech bud explosion, in slow motion.

First, they just lengthen. You can see how the end of each scale is paler than its base – the darker base color is where it’s newly exposed from the bud lengthening.

At some point the leaves just want out. 

Yippee! Freedom! I did this same series last year. On May 9th. Yep, it’s an early spring.

Two points if you know what this is! I don’t! I thought at first it was a violet, but do they get spurs this long? Do I have photos of the leaves? I do not. Whoops. And no, it’s not a ladyslipper. I think.

There’s nothing ordinary about a dandelion.

 

I spotted this cutie in a stormwater retention pond. Happiness!

spider and tadpole eyeballs

The usual forays occurred today.

No, I don’t get tired of these, thanks for asking. Eastern blue-eyed grass.

This spider was, no kidding, chasing me. I’d back off, it would follow. It hid under a leaf for a while, no doubt contemplating how many bites it could get out of me. I lifted away the leaf and trained the camera on it. And realized I could see an eye. Or two. Glaring at me balefully.
The Trillium Report:

A few are actually open, and the pollen’s already making a mess on the petals. Not shown: a trillium with bite marks in the petals.  Others haven’t quite opened.

And of course, some are just popping up from the underworld now.

Blue cohosh update:

One of them has already popped open a flower!

Others, not so much. Those three beige stalks are last year’s stems. These things get pretty big, almost shrub-like.

A dandelion! With a, um, help me out, Karen – a pollinator of some kind. Bee? Fly? I like how it’s dusted with pollen.



Willow buds continue to express themselves gleefully.
We’re on our way to the wetland across the road, incidentally. How do you know this? The willow. Willows enjoy hanging out near water.
Plenty of tadpole action today. Most of them were burrowing into the muck at the bottom. This one came up towards the surface into the sun.

I love its eyes – you can see the pupils. No news on the various egg masses.

There’s a great moss colony on a rock over here.
In the afternoon, a friend came over and we headed up into the woods for an adventure.

This is a crappy picture – it’s a spring beauty, and there were masses and masses of these. They deserve better than this – I’ll get better pictures another time. We saw loads of trout lily leaves and canada mayflower, too.

A sugar maple sapling from last year, just a few inches tall – it has one terminal bud, just unfolding into a couple of leaves. Hi sweetie!

Here’s its cousin, a striped maple.

failure can be beautiful

I must have had settings on the camera a little off today without realizing it. But you know what? I find these pictures beautiful anyway. Without further ado…

Eastern blue eyed grass – a whole rash of which popped out yesterday.

Vinca aka myrtle.

Another vinca, just starting to unfold.

daffodil.


Black-eyed Susan. Scrum-diddly-umptious. I hope everyone’s having a great weekend!

Glory be to the universe…

…the Siberian irises are opening. For that which we are about to receive, may we be made truly thankful.

I’ve been puzzling over the phenomenon of fern tips seemingly entangled with one another.

Observe the cluster**** above. But, I have seen the error of my ways. Maybe.

Some of them had no trouble opening up. But others are neatly tied up in a knot, several leaves from the tip. The tips are fine, but a handful of leaves down are just…all wrapped up in a ball. It’s not that they are entangled with each other – they are entangled with themselves.

A close-up. That veiny-thing, shaped like a “Y”, those are a small handful of leaves that have been twisted around into an impenetrable mess. I was unwilling to dissect it. There were several of these, in the same circular family of ferns.  I think an insect or other being has hijacked this real estate and has constructed a safehouse of sorts. I have no idea. This is amateur naturalism, folks. If you were looking to Learn a Fact, you have come to the wrong place. This is the place you come to if you want to watch me muddle through life and puzzle it out. SCIENCE!  Love it!

But I digress. Another new flower:

Dame’s Violet or Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis). It’s in the mustard family.

I believe…this is milkweed (Asclepius something-something). Which would be awesome. We have a bunch more this year than last year. Anything to help our buddies, the monarchs.

Attempting to catch the spider…

FAIL.

That’s more like it.

The alleged red baneberry has gone from ants in the pants to incipient whatever (presumably, if I’m correct about the baneberry part, bright red berries).

White baneberry and Canada mayflower have similar issues: they throw up stalks that will later need to support a cluster of berries, so lately their flowers stalks have lengthened to make way for babies.

Here’s the Canada mayflower. This one is, regrettably a little blurry; on my recent runs, I’ve gone past whole huge stands of these in the woods. But I never have my camera with me then.

The crowfoot has lost its petals and is starting to fire up the oven.

May 19th.

Today (sorry for blurriness. I thought it was worth it anyway.)

The Solomon’s Seal flowers look like hell. But they also look like something good is happening in there – berries – so I won’t worry about it…

I really need to learn my ferns.

Best blue cohosh berry shot I’ve had in a while. They usually tremble just enough to be consistently blurry. Are the two green ones the only viable ones, or just the first? Stay tuned.

The False Solomon Seal is ridiculous. The stem of the plant is actually defying gravity and pointing up. So much for my worry that their flowers were just weird green bumpies!

A new flower to report

Tall buttercup (Ranunculus acris).

The white baneberry (Actaea pachypoda) has dropped all the petals and the berry production line is in full swing.

Although it actually looks more like a spider condo.

Golden Alexander still going strong. The petals are starting to curve over the innards.

A BIRD! Maybe a song sparrow? (I’m just going by the pattern of face stripes). I was just thrilled to be allowed to get his picture before he took off.

Finally, if you will recall my epic fantasy series starring the dandelion, I have a few great examples of successful puffball formation, where you can see the remnant falling off. (The remnant is my name for the crap of leftover petal and sepal tips, which needs to completely fall off for a successful puffball to form.)

A remnant that needs to be falling off…

…and one that has fallen off. I honestly don’t know how it’s still attached. Should have looked.

C’mon, one more buttercup…

What’s up with all that hairy stuff?!

And, another new flower!

This one’s the anemone (Anemone canadensis). This spot is where the wood turtle was hanging out for an afternoon / overnight last week.

There, that should hold us all for another day or so.