pussy willows exploding, gray birch party hats, and big news

You can't always be fluff.

You gotta speak out at times.

Like, say for instance, this pussy willow. 

Ta-da! Goodbye, fluff...hello, delight. 

oh god, this makes me so happy.

I wonder if the southern sides tend to ripen up more, as would be suggested here:

Meanwhile, along the side of the road, near the edge of a former-and-soon-to-be-future beaver pond, we have speckled alder beginning to rock out. 

See the one in the middle, at the top, starting to expand?

BAM, I'll tell you wut.

I really, really, wanted the Nikon and its zoom lens today, but I hadn't used it in a while and the battery needed to be recharged. I can't wait to get all up in this alder's grill with it. Right now it all just looks like a confusing mess.

Not a great great shot, but I'm starting to remember there are little individual niblets in there. I'm guessing anthers, again?

Back to the gray birch's party hats:

Once you've noticed these, you can't un-see them. If you know you have some sorta birch with catkins happening in your world, go take a look and see if any of its buds are exploding like this. 

Sometimes you get lucky and see two right up next to each other. I'm not sure how they avoid reproducing with themselves. 

In other news, THE BEAVERS ARE BACK. Ever since That Bitch Irene blew out the dam on our pond, we've had...no pond. The beavers never really left left, they just went a little upstream for a few years and then a little downstream for a few years. A few days ago our neighbor noticed some activity and lo, he told me about it today. 

Hallelujah. The pond's coming back.

a warm day + brain melt

First time I've used the Mighty Lumix in a long time; I had to fiddle with it to remember its settings.

Yellow birch, hop hornbeam; toes intertwined.

An 80+ degree day after weeks of 40s or below; I have the added discombobulation of having a cold, and hence, no energy.

gray birch female flower, aka the party hat. these little fuscia ganglies mystified me for years before I stumbled across an understanding of what they are.

The male flowers - the catkins - are a little easier to spot. 

this makes me jones for the macro lens of the nikon. I'll have to haul it out.

onwards to the pussy willow...

...complete with bud scale. 

Then I realized the SD reader in my laptop isn't working, so I wound up using our backup laptop - an old one we stream tv on, it's running the loathed Windows 10 - loading pictures up into google drive, and then getting them onto my laptop from there. lo, what a hassle.

I feel like shit.

Rumor has it the spring peepers will be singing soon. Yes, please.

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.

the unfolding of spring: blink, and you’ll miss it.

I don’t know about you, but my brain melts at temperatures above 80 degrees. It’s Vermont. It’s March. Good Lord. The process of documenting spring’s awakening is UPON US, baby. The frogs started hollering yesterday afternoon. All kinds of things are happening-all-of-the-sudden, and here I am, with a melted brain. Here’s what I was able to capture today:

The lilac buds started opening. Today. Last year, the buds were closed on April 6th, and it took them until April 22nd to get to the stage shown above. This year, they went from closed, to open, in two days.

The lone miniature lawn hyacinth poked up.

So did these guys. I never did really ID ‘em last year – I think I went with white blue-eyed grass.
Here’s one of my world-famous time-lapse sequences of buds opening up. I believe this is an introduced species – Cornus mas, or a cherry dogwood.

The terminal bud.

The next set of buds. No news.

The next set of buds…hello!

…the next set of buds…

An explosion of yellow. I swear, I’m going to have to just camp out next to this and try and spot how this happens. Sproinnnggggg!

Ta da!


Along the driveway, the wild rose is leafing out today. Last year? Late April.
As for the gray birch – already, the buds are sporting their magenta headdresses while nearby, the catkins open up. This is a process that started last year on April 11th. So yeah, it’s been an accelerated spring.



I’ve got my work cut out for me, to run around and keep up with all of this – wish me luck!

the first day for canada mayflower, sugar maple, chokecherry, primrose

Since yesterday’s post had zero pictures, I’m giving you a double dose today.

ALL the lilac buds seem to have popped – even the laggards.

Sea o’ myrtle (Vinca minor). That’s a forsythia in the background.

The primrose (Primula vulgaris) just bloomed today.

Cheerful little bugger, innit?

The unidentified-pretty-in-pink Playtex tampon applicator flowers are still lovely…

…unlike the wild ginger flower (Asarum canadense), which by the way, is not related to the tasty ginger we eat.

Remember how I thought it looked a little carnivorous? See the insect on the right side? Heh heh! If anything, that guy’s a pollinator.

Ferns continue to open up…

Onwards to the trees. Today, sugar maple (Acer saccharum) buds started to open up.

Isn’t this wild? That’s a leaf, all neatly folded up. Surely some of the buds will have flowers – today, I only noticed leaves.

Beech buds are not yet opening, but they are HUGE. Don’t believe me?

This one’s the size of my thumb.

Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana) buds – boom, open, bam. Some buds are for leaves…

…and some are for flowers.

Witchhazel buds don’t so much open, as unfold. Their buds are naked, meaning, there are no protective scales. You can see those are leaves, right? They just need to fluff out a little. Today, they look green for the first time. And yeah, those are flowers, but not new ones. They flower in the winter.
And now for the gray birch (Betula populifolia) report. Oh, by the way, the reason I stick the scientific names in here is for the hordes of people who find this blog via searches for these species names. It really does happen – I get hits on this blog from all over. Most folks don’t stick around for long – as wonderful as I am, all they want is my flower and bud porn (insert heavy sigh here). Jeez, stick to the topic, Sarah. OK, first up, here’s a bud opening up today – see the wee little leaves?


Those are definitely leaves. I STILL don’t understand what that fuscia red stuff is for. Maybe…maybe it was just an exuberant “get ready, world!”

A wildflower called Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense) JUST came up this morning. How do I know? See the specks of soil on the leaf? It was raining yesterday. If this leaf had been here yesterday, it would be clean. You can see a few more of them in the background, on the left.
Remember the blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides)? How the other day, it was blue, stem to leaf to flower? Yesterday, I noticed the leaves were greenish-blue – today, they’re green. And all the flowers are open!



Somebody’s nibbling on the trillium (Trillium erectum). See the top center? Chomp chomp, nom, nom.



And now for a different kind of fern…the fuzzy ones… I’m lousy at fern ID, maybe that can be a summer project…

This is a willow (Salix something) that I just had to capture, because it just looks all blown to hell – almost like a fistful of clover sprouts. Huh.

And now…

Daffodils! Don’t they look like spectators at an event!