Showing posts with label eastern blue eyed grass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eastern blue eyed grass. Show all posts

Saturday, April 7, 2012

spider and tadpole eyeballs

The usual forays occurred today.
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No, I don’t get tired of these, thanks for asking. Eastern blue-eyed grass.
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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:
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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.
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And of course, some are just popping up from the underworld now.
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Blue cohosh update:
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One of them has already popped open a flower!
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Others, not so much. Those three beige stalks are last year’s stems. These things get pretty big, almost shrub-like.
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A dandelion! With a, um, help me out, Karen – a pollinator of some kind. Bee? Fly? I like how it’s dusted with pollen.


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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.
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I love its eyes – you can see the pupils. No news on the various egg masses.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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Here’s its cousin, a striped maple.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

yowza. bloodroot, frog song, TRILLIUM…

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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!
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Back at home, I visited the lone hyacinth, last seen here on March 22nd. It’s opened up a bit, eh?
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The lawn is dotted with eastern blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium atlanticum).
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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…
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…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.
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Not Yet.
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Alllmost…

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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.
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 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. DSC_0225 (2)
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:
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And-and-and I spotted something green amidst the clutter of leaf litter and and and it’s TRILLIUM.
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Stay tuned on this puppy, it’ll be glorious. (Trillium erectum.)

Saturday, March 31, 2012

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…
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Eastern blue eyed grass – a whole rash of which popped out yesterday.
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Vinca aka myrtle.
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Another vinca, just starting to unfold.
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daffodil.

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

Thursday, March 29, 2012

gray and cold out, but undaunted

Three minutes of looking around at the end of the work day can be quite profitable:
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eastern blue eyed grass

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

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siberian iris shoots. just you wait.

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

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

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