the tiniest flowers are sometimes the most ornate

when is white campion not white campion?

when it’s pink.

the rhododendron flowers are all done. a few forlorn bees buzz around, making sure they haven’t missed anything.

on the side of the road, a smattering of asiatic dayflowers.

I’d wade into the weeds more, but the poison ivy threatens:

remember deertongue, from the other day? here’s how those wriggly spermies break free of the stalk:

let’s have another look at those teensy flowers:

fancy magenta headdress (stigma?)

 

...dangling little slippered feet (anthers?)

just so we’re clear about this, that whole structure takes up less than half the length of my index finger’s nail.

this is the last of the golden alexander that’s still golden...

 

most of it looks like this by now:

 

and now for today’s new (to me) species...drumroll please...

wild garlic!

the jack-in-the-pulpit report: still green.

...whereas the false solomon’s seal berries are partway to red. they don’t start off bright green like the jacks – more of a pale greeny yellow, followed by rusty speckling, like so:

 

some sort of panic grass. I am loathe to speculate on species – I’m not even completely sure it’s a panic grass.

OK, time to suck down some of the library books that have all been released from the purgatory of On Hold to my hot little hands, at the same time. Ready – set – go!

mutant jack-in-the-pulpits and whatnot

So apparently there is something in the water down here in tropical Connecticut that makes for absolutely mutant plant growth. I should back up a bit. A few weeks ago, I went for a walk, cranky as can be, looking for a bit of grace and redemption. Nature was happy to oblige, as she generally is. Poison ivy positively infests the roadsides around here, and where I was walking was no exception.

Flowering poison ivy, dripping from a roadside maple tree.

So there I was, grumpy me, thinking nasty thoughts about all the poison ivy. I had my eyes trained on the side of the road, hoping to see something interesting. Suddenly, I spotted a 3-leaved plant that I knew was NOT poison ivy. It was a jack-in-the-pulpit. Jacks are comparatively rare on our Vermont property – last year, we had a handful of them, and I kept pretty close track of ‘em. None of them produced berries: they all got rained out in a single storm and were destroyed in mid-June. So I was psyched to see this:

Hello!

Whereupon, I was seeing them EVERYWHERE. There must have been a hundred jacks inside a quarter mile. I’m not even kidding. This was on May 21st. The flowers are pretty much toast by now – they range from fading...

 

...to kinda rotting-looking...

 

...to magic green berries!

Those will eventually turn scarlet.

 

Each of these leaves is 10 inches long.

And they’re HUGE! The plants are HUGE! The wildflower guide says they get up to three feet high, and yeah, this appears to be the case. Our Vermont jacks were tiny compared to these monsters.

Also seen today...

Wild rose:

 

A neighbor’s collection of rhododendrons, maybe 12 feet high, practically vibrating with bees:

 

A possibly-syrphid-fly on jewelweed.

 

Solomon’s seal!

(“!” because I’ve seldom seen this on our place in Vermont – we had a single one along the shared driveway, and it got taken out in an Unfortunate Road Regrading Incident.)

...not to be confused with false solomon’s seal:

Here’s the same exact shot, focused differently.

“Art”.

gainful employment – and it’s in the woods

Here’s something I’ve never seen before, though it must have been all around me on any number of occasions:

It stands to reason that if deciduous trees produce buds for next year’s leaves and flowers, coniferous trees must as well. This is a cluster of this year’s new needles, so fresh that the bud coating (no doubt there are more technically correct terms for all this) hasn’t even fallen off yet. Awesome!

Other back yard beauties include some buttercups...

The lawn is littered with fuzzy-leaved asters. Here’s hoping the landlord is negligent in his lawn-mowing duties. He can’t possibly be as negligent as we are – I believe we mowed our lawn in Vermont last year 2.5 times.

In other news, I have a summer job at an aerial forest park. So far, we’ve only been open on weekends, but as soon as school lets out, we’ll be open seven days a week. So what’s an aerial park, you ask?

Sort of like a ropes course, without the ropes. A lot of cables and bridges or other obstacles, strung between trees.

There are five courses, each of which starts from a central platform. Some are easier than others – lower to the ground, and not quite as technical – while others demand that you climb a ladder before you can even get started.

...like so.

Kevin and I first heard about this park because it turns out our next door neighbors down here own the land the park is on. So we headed over there a few weeks ago while it was still being built...

I immediately thought, “I gotta get me some of this.”

And lo, I am now a “course monitor”. I am charged with fitting customers into full-body harnesses, showing them how to use their carabiners (think, “safety clips” – you’re always clipped into something in case you get into an argument with gravity), and wandering around on paths under the courses, providing moral support. And if necessary, actual rescue.

I’m easily twice the age of most of my coworkers.

 

Don’t ask what that is in my hair. It involves a mutilated balloon animal. It’s a fun crew to work with, I’ll leave it at that for now. And, I DO have boobs. I swear. I prefer running bras, what can I say.

So yeah, rescuing people. I’ve gotten some training in how to safely lower folks off of platforms both low and high (low = you can get a ladder to them and high = you cannot), as well as off the middle of an element (an element is anything strung between two trees, typically a bridge of some sort.)

Here are two of my coworkers, preparing to practicing a bridge rescue. After I took this shot with my cell phone, I worked my way out to where they are and practiced rescuing and being rescued myself. I was nervous, but I got over it.

Here’s a view from where I was stranded for several minutes while my neighbor’s son, who helped build the place, came to my rescue (a piece of equipment needed to be installed before I could proceed – I was the first person, aside from the guys who built it, who ran this particular course and they’d just overlooked something.)

I believe this is the element I was waiting to do.

I love this stuff. I’m not especially afraid of heights, but I do get an adrenaline rush the first few times I encounter a particular element. And, I still haven’t done all five courses yet: I’ve been waiting for the construction of the fourth to be completed before trying both it, and the hardest one. That last one gives me the willies. It’s going to take more upper body strength than I have, but I’ve looked at it from the ground for a while and I have A Plan to Deal with That.

What I’m loving about all this? The in-the-trenches experience of fear, and overcoming fear through action. Really, there’s no point in standing around on a platform going “oh.shit.” You just have to move, and keep moving. Somewhere there’s a life lesson in this.

Me being me, I’m always on the lookout for our wee little woodland friends. The wildflower diversity is not great on this site.

Canada mayflowers abound. I’m going to work on a series of macros that feature blurry park elements/platforms in the distance. The one above was my first try. What do you think?

A fair number of them are flowering, bonus.

There are some starflowers.

And, last but not least, I’ve seen a few of what I believe might be sessile-leaved bellwort.

 

 

Alas, I’ve noticed some poison ivy.

Speaking of which, I have NEVER seen so much poison ivy, generally speaking, as I have down here in Connecticut. Damn!

In other news, Kevin-my-Kevin (which is Kevin’s new nickname now that my new boss turns out to be named Kevin as well) is returning home this evening from a bizness trip to Spain and Italy. Boy, am I looking forward to seeing him!

Admit it: you’ve always longed for a double-chocolate, bacon-studded whoopie pie.

Right? This was the “Chef’s Choice” invention of my dear friend Jenn of Howling Hog Barbecue in this weekend’s Championships of New England Barbecue competition, held at the Harpoon Brewery. Somewhere in that tasty filling is beer, the mandatory ingredient for all Chef’s Choice entries. “Kept it moist,” claimed Jenn.
What’s even more interesting than a double-chocolate, bacon-studded, beer-infused whoopie pie?

A deep-fried double-chocolate, bacon-studded, beer-infused whoopie pie. This is what happens when you are stationed next to another BBQ outfit – Feeding Friendz – which spent today selling deep-fried oreos for $4 a pop.

“HOT!!!” declaimed Chef Jenn.
The resulting mega-calorie payload of doom was deemed tasty, but it was noted that the inner layer of chocolate filling was destroyed in the process.
So that’s how I spent my afternoon, hanging out with the good folks of Howling Hog.
On my way back to my car, I crossed over police “do not cross” tape to get a look at some milkweed.

This pod’s maybe an inch long, at most. You can still see the dried-up flower petals on its tip. At home, later on in the day, I visited with some milkweed close to the house to see if any flowers had been fertilized. It didn’t appear so.

I had fun looking at the leaves, though. Back to Harpoon Brewery:

I admired a thistle.

And found some outrageously huge poison ivy.
Back on the home front, the honeysuckle berries look pretty ripe. Of interest to me today: instances where the paired berries did not conform to the guide book.

Normally they’re the same size as one another.

These two got fused together.

I visited some yarrow.


As well as a brand new black-eyed susan.

So yes, I’m going with the idea that in compound flowers, it’s not unusual for the rays to start off tightly rolled. Makes for efficient use of space inside the bud.

Here’s one a little farther along. I love the blurriness of this one, caused by my camera’s grumpiness about late afternoon shade.

And here is one that is almost done: see how the petals are fading?

Check out what the flower parts look like at this stage. Not for the first time, I am reminded of persian lamb’s wool.


Some digitalis (foxglove) is still going strong.


And a cinquefoil is looking mighty interesting. Definitely going to keep an eye on this one. That assumes we continue in our regimen of Not Mowing Our Lawn, of course, as this little guy is right in the middle of the lawn.