sunshine and rain, marbles made of water

A classic Vermont afternoon: full sun and rain, simultaneously. Actually, it’s the first decent batch of afternoon sun we’ve had in d-a-y-s, so even though I was more of a mind to put my feet up with a glass of wine, I headed out to see what there was to see. But first, I’ll show you the one bit of sun we had a few days ago, in the morning:

Fast-forward to this afternoon:

Spiderwort! I had to scrounge around for it behind the ferns.


An opportunistic vine of one-seeded burr cucumber, taking on a raspberry leaf. Both are invasives, so let’s just watch them duke it out.

Wild rose.

Raindrops on Indian hemp. Or, as Best Beloved just commented, “a marble made of water”. That boy’s a genius.

An anemone that’s lost all its petals already.

Honeysuckle babies. These will turn orange, then red.
The mail contained a treat today:


It’s the medal from the half marathon I just did. I asked my bro’ to mail it to me, since there was no way the TSA agents would let me take something with a corkscrew on it on a plane.

fourth time around

Hello world. Yes, it has been days, I know. Question: what do you get when you cross a blackberry and a cigarette?

One of these things. I vaguely remember learning what this is a few years ago. But I forget. For some reason the name “horsetail” comes to mind. This is a couple of feet tall. They grow in segments, with prominent joints every so often:

For the most part, these are single stalks with just the one terminal flower cluster, but there was this enterprising soul:

I have just visited The Google, and I have learned all sorts of fascinating things about horsetail (Equisetum arvens). Yep, that’s what this is. In the summer, each of those joints has a gazillion threadlike leaves sticking out of it.  And? Apparently it synthesizes nicotine, under polluted conditions. So my twisted mind isn’t that far off-base after all, is it.
We also have a bunch of awesomely huge shelf mushrooms to show off today:

That big one on the top is fannnnntastic. Check this out:

Damn.
Say, don’t you find yourself wondering how to tell the difference between this year’s crop of sensitive fern spore stalks and last year’s? I know I do.

New at left, old at right. Oh hey, you can see the shelf mushrooms in the background.

New: still bunched up tight.

Old: each little…bud? it’s not technically a bud, but it sure looks like a bud – has opened up already.
And now for the color commentary.

Rosebud. You thought it was a sled. Think again.

Rosehips.


Willows have a different color strategy.


Since I’m on a primary color kick, here’s some sky, with bonus moon.
Last but not least,  I’ve gone and registered for my fourth half marathon! Woot woot!

Yes, California is a long way from Vermont, but I’ll be running this with my Fabulous Sister-in-Law, who got me through my first half marathon a year and a half ago. Last year, for this same weekend, I did the the Pittsburgh, which was great and all, but this one will be even better because there is a wine festival immediately afterward.

sorry for the delay

On Thursday night, Blogger was down, meaning I couldn't publish one of my usual scintillating posts replete with close-ups of flowers and what not. Grrr! (I'll post it tomorrow.)

On Friday, I caught a flight to Pittsburgh for the half marathon I've been training for the past few months. On the shuttle bus from the parking lot, I ran into the friend of a friend who was the first person to turn me on to Born to Run.  I figured that was some good karma. She gave me some good tips on running in the rain. It involves anti-chafing strategies. I'll leave the details to your imagination. I let her know that it was a conversation with her that had inspired me to sign up for my first half marathon last year, cause I figure we all appreciate knowing that we had an impact on one another, don't you think? We exchanged hugs and went our separate ways.

On Saturday, I visited my high school buddy Craig and his beautiful family. They run Half Crown Hill Orchard and we wandered around the property for a while, enjoying the gorgeous weather.

The property has been in Craig's family for years. I remember ice skating on a pond there back in high school. For a while, Craig's life took him to other places, but at some point a few years ago, he and his wife Suzan settled on the old homestead and got busy planting an orchard. Then they got busy with other pursuits, and the result is a 16-month old girl who is due for her first tractor-driving lesson any day now. You think I'm kidding. I'm probably not.

I missed the apple trees' flower season, unfortunately, but that only means I get to show you what wee baby apples look like - when they're so tiny, you can still see flower bits on their bottom ends.

The property also features a huge stand of aspen...

...and an equally impressive grove of wild-sown dogwood and honeysuckle. I wish I could attach the smell to this post, so you could breathe in the springtime sweetness. And I promise an allergy-free experience.

 You're just dying to see a close-up of a dogwood flower, right?

Here you go.

Honeysuckle. There was more than one kind. 

Eventually, I made my way home, and got myself into bed bright and early so that I could be sure to get some sleep before my 4:30 am wake-up call. No sooner were the lights out than my cell rang - another high school friend, and my ride to the race the following morning, was calling to let me know he'd pulled his hamstring playing a soccer game and would most likely not be able to run the race. Uh oh. But he assured me that his running buddy would give me a ride. So far so good.

I didn't sleep after 12:30 am, because what if the alarm didn't wake me? Sigh.

And then I got up and got my ride into town and ran 13.1 miles in continuous light drizzle on a course that went over three bridges and two rivers and through countless neighborhoods, each with their own distinctive offerings: Polish pierogies, hand-made sausage, ZZ Top cover bands, gilded onion domes, bagpipers, high school cheerleaders waving pom-poms, 8th grader garage bands, and best of all, yet another high school friend, Kristen, squinting at the thousands of us streaming by, wondering if she'd be able to pick out the girl with a long brown ponytail, when about a third of a field of 18,000 runners had long brown ponytails.  YAYYYY!!!

By about mile eleven, I hurt more than I recall ever having hurt before at this point in a long run. But there's one thing I have built up over the course of training: grit. Not for a second did I consider quitting. One foot in front of the other, ho hum, that's my strategy. Ho de doh...hum dilly lah... wackadoo.... that's a song I invented. It doesn't have much of a tune, but it does help the time pass. (I'm hard core: I run alone, and I don't use an iPod.)

By the time I crossed the finish line, the race clock said something like 2 hours, 45 minutes. If you figure that I didn't actually cross the start line for at least ten or fifteen minutes, and if you additionally cheat (as I do) and don't count my one bathroom break, I finished in a little faster than 2:30. I can't rely on my magic Garmin to tell me my time, because I screwed up with it about six times in various ways.

How to screw up with your Garmin: A Brief List

1. Forget to start the actual workout routine, which is the whole point of using it: the workout routine will beep at me after eight minutes, wait a minute, and beep again. Lather rinse repeat as many times as it takes to cover the route. This ensures I take my walking breaks.

2. Because every other geek on the course is also using a Garmin, and they all make the same freaking beep, get confused, and start walking too soon because you overhear someone else's beeps.

3. Get distracted by the unbelievable VOLUME of some of the live music, and miss the "time to walk now" beep. Start walking when the "OK, start running again" beep sounds.

4. Get distracted by seeing your friend! Press the "stop" button so it won't count the time you spend giving her a hug. Realize, you were about to start a walking break anyway. Fail to re-start the clock, but walk with your friend anyway for about a minute. Sort of. Or something. Realize your intervals are now hopelessly confused. Keep running, effectively missing your subsequent walking break. Wonder why you're so friggin' tired.

5. Finally - and this might be my personal favorite - neglect to press the stop button when you cross the finish line.

I paid good money for that thing - it's a shame it's smarter than I am.

mistakes and explosions

Bluets. Somehow I love this shot even more because it’s out of focus.

It’s amazing what pops up when you haven’t yet had to mow the lawn. No idea what this is.

We last saw the unidentified sapling I’ve been calling mystery witch on May 4th.  I am dismayed at what I missed over the past week, since I forgot to check in with it since the 6th.  

May 4th at left, and today at right. A riot of compound leaves. I swear, you miss just a few days around here and you'll be totally lost. Sheesh. Incidentally, I now realize that what I thought was an ash sapling yesterday is the same thing as this mystery witch – I only came across that guy when it had already leafed out, so I missed seeing it at the bud stage. But I thought to take pictures of mystery witch’s tinier buds today, and guess what?
 
The official mystery witch sample at left; the probably-not-actually-an-ash-from-yesterday at right. They look the same to me…
Onwards! Let’s break the rules and shoot into the sun.

I love doing this.

My current vote for Solomon’s Seal. The little pods are getting fatter. I don’t think they’ve flowered yet…stay tuned, I guess!
Another friend I neglected for a few days who’s suddenly all grown up – this is positively shameful, how I missed the day-by-day of this one:

At left, an ash sapling in the rain on April 5, and at right, that same sapling today.

Crazy explosive, huh? Here’s another example of crazy explosive, this time with the lilacs.

May 5th at left and today at right. Yowza. Another six inches of stalk and ancillary side bits have sprung up outta nowhere. In the meantime…

…the more established sprays of lilac flowers are just starting to show what they’ve been thinking about, color-wise.

and there is on last hold-out set of buds that are just now joining the party.

Remember her? It’s so easy, when the flowers start to fade, to forget about them. But they’re still quite busy! They’re developing seeds. So when I remember to, I like to check back in. I still don’t know what this is.
Onwards to the running report.
I did a simple half-hour run today – I’m in tapering mode for the half-marathon, which is happening THIS SUNDAY. Gulp. Today’s run was slower than what I’m used to, and painful – also something I’m not used to. 
On the one hand, I should be in decent shape – I’ve followed my training plan religiously, a plan I know from experience works, and all of my long runs have been eminently doable – no thoughts of quitting or throwing in the towel.
But on the other hand, the recent combination of a lot of ‘gardening’ (by which I mean killing innocent saplings and not-so-innocent raspberry canes) has made me sore in places I didn’t know I had. I overdid it with yoga last week. And then I did that 5K at quite a clip – maybe not such a good idea so close to race day. I don’t feel up to it right this second. I will by Sunday and I expect and hope it will be fine, but right this second? I repeat, “gulp”.
Happy International Monty Python Day!

If I’d known I would have this much company, I would have vacuumed.

Blog readership has exploded in the last 24 hours, courtesy of an unanticipated and unplanned trifecta of stealth PR. As I noted yesterday, this blog is being featured on Berry Go Round. But I also got a shout-out from my cousin Emily over at Daily Garnish. I think of her as my little firecracker sidekick from when we were little, but in truth she’s a powerhouse whose blog gets tens of thousands of page views. Per day.
Hi, everyone! If you were expecting a culinary blog, sorry! Although I did once post a recipe for emergency potluck squash soup, which I encourage you to read about here, if only to give you an idea of the full range of talent present in our family. Or lack thereof.
No, this blog is typically about southern Vermont’s flora and fauna, where flora = wildflowers, trees, moss, lichen, shrubs, and weeds, and fauna = the two black cats who wake me up at 5:30 am.
But first, the day’s run. The Pittsburgh Half Marathon is in two weeks, and today was my final long training run. Fourteen miles, baby, fourteen.
I honestly don’t know what I did before I had a Garmin, because this route was totally improvised. By the time I finished, I was more than a half mile from home, and I swear, if a car had passed, I would have hitchhiked. I was pretty beat.
Three ibuprofen and a bowl of homemade mueslix/yogurt/blueberry mix later, I’m as good as new.
Oh: with my Jeff Galloway-inspired mini-walking breaks every eight minutes included, I averaged a perfect 11 minute mile pace. I feel ready for Pittsburgh. Yeah!
ENOUGH OF THIS RUNNING STUFF!
ONWARDS TO THE FLOWER REPORT!


The magnolia tree buds are FINALLY popping open.

And the lilac is sending out sprays of flowers – not yet opened.

This is the smallest one I could find. Look! Tiny space aliens in their spacepod!

This is trippy. It will be fun to watch them evolve. They’ll end up that medium mauve color (you know, as opposed to white, or dark purple). One thing I love about these flowers is, they’re fractal. Everything about the lilac is opposite: paired opposite buds, which explode into opposite leaves, and as you can see here, even the structure of the flowers is opposite. These remind me of pictures of mitosis, at the four-cell stage.
Moving right along, Charlie followed me into the magic mystery woodland…

It’s so much more open after the Death and Destruction Project of 2011, isn’t it? There’s a lot to report.

Starting with a new flower! It wasn’t open two days ago or I would have noticed it while I dragged dozens of helpless victims saplings out on to the lawn. This is bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis). There are just these two, so far. The second they’re pollinated (by ants! who knew?) they’ll drop their petals, so enjoy them while you can.
And, the pachysandra around the magnolia tree is making inroads into the woods, and will be competing with the vinca:

Have you ever seen this stuff flower before? I don’t think I ever have, and that’s with having grown up with pachysandra in part of our front yard. Hm. Should I care that it’s making inroads into the woods? Should I be killing it off? It’s so cute…I prefer to save my rapacious energies for errant raspberry canes…

Things are going well for the blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides) – the pollen is spreading hither and yon, making a mess everywhere. There is a TON of blue cohosh this year. There’s also a ton of sessile-leaf bellwort (Uvularia sessilifolia):

Soon we’ll see some little flowers tucked away under there – stay tuned.
Speaking of flowers I’ve been waiting to see, I thought I saw an errant daffodil deep in the woods, and I’m glad I got a shot at it (blurry, but hey, I zoomed in from far away), because now that I look at it..
That’s a trout lily! (Erythronium americanum) See the mottled leaf, just at the bend where Charlie’s tail lifts up? Yay!
I’m noticing that in general shape, this kind of bellwort is similar to false solomon’s seal.

Same basic shape – arcing stem, long leaves arranged just so…This is false solomon’s seal. But here’s what really jumped out at me in this photo:

The jack-in-the-pulpit! Yowza! Love these guys. (Arisaema triphyllum). I had an extravagance of these last year.

Even the ash tree buds are starting to open up, for real, this time.

 

At left: March 15. At right, today, May 2nd.

Today’s trillium shot. Yes, those are my legs in the background. Every skilled photographer knows about holding the camera upside down to get a shot of something facing away from you, right? What I love about this shot is the pattern of veins in the petals. They remind me of the unfolding buds of this mystery species, which I speculate might be in the walnut family:


I’ll leave you with a final zen moment. A sapling reduction program for this part of the world is being planned…just as soon as I recover from this run.