this is probably better than going to church.

But I wouldn’t know, since I don’t go to church. All I know is that looking around sets me right: this a most excellent planet. So here, partake of the goodies, and enjoy:

A couple of days ago, I went out twice – twice! – with the camera, but, as the hip people say, life was pain.

Hepatica are my undoing. There is something about light violet flowers that my camera and I have not been able to figure out.

I have equally bad luck photographing spring beauties, so today I headed up into the woods at home where I knew I’d find whole carpets of them. I was determined to get a good portrait.

Naturally, a little one insisted on stealing the spotlight.

I will say, I do love being able to focus on different places. For instance, let’s hone in on the texture of the petals…

…and now, let’s have a look at those stamens.

Yum. There were carpets of trout lilies as well – just the initial leaves, no flowers. And Canada mayflower.

But the show-stoppers today are the blue cohosh. The first ones to come up, which last I checked were two or three inches tall, have grown maybe eight or nine inches in the past five days.

And more flowers are opening up.

You can see the space alien hands are turning green.

On the other side of the driveway, another whole bunch are coming up.

Poignant, I think.

The Trillium Report

Trillium come in for a lot of abuse.

Chomp.

Is it safe to come out?

Others are faring better. At this stage, we get to see just how messy pollination gets.

It’s all tidy at first.

Then it gets sneezalicious.

Holy Crap Category

Today, we have what I will tentatively identify as some sort of blue-eyed grass, only the stamens look totally different from the rest of them. Let’s review.

Your typical blue-eyed grass naughty bits.

And, bonus, these guys look like they are going to be giving birth to tiny little watermelons.

Magnolia Newsflash

Susannah over at Wanderin’ Weeta has many interesting things to say about magnolia.

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.

I really shouldn’t be allowed out in public

The lilacs continue to open up, slowly by slowly… (Syringa vulgaris)

I think you’re supposed to be on the inside of the flower.

Vlad the Impaler, reincarnated as a daffodil.

Our lone miniature hyacinth, April 14th, and today, respectively. Baby’s getting big!

Little clusters of what might be blue-eyed grass continue to pop up here and there.

I want to BE that color.

Now this bug knows what he’s doing. Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica).

These little buggers haven’t opened up yet, so I’m still clueless. Whatever they are, there are a lot more of them today than there were a few days ago.

As well as a whole army of trout lily leaves, which somebody seems to have been munching on:

That’s another spring beauty in there.

Also still a mystery: these super-fuzzy guys, that create little white flowers.

No news on the magnolia front.

I went up into the woods and Charlie followed me. Since we’ve got evil monsters in the woods, and I didn’t want Charlie to get used to the idea of hanging out up here, I carried him inside and then headed back out again.

I found a new cache of white blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium albidum) on the west side of the house.

After all of these forays, I went for my run, which was inexplicably much faster than my run of two days ago. On my way out, I stopped to chat with our neighbor, who was busy grading the private road we share (“hooray!”, says the trusty Honda!). He said the trapper walked the land and estimates there are nine, count ‘em nine, beavers working the pond and stream. He’ll trap some but not all of them – the goal is to have enough beavers around to maintain the dam that forms the pond, but not enough to wreak havoc on the field.

On my way back from my run, I saw something so splendid that I ran inside to get the camera. We maintain a largely shoes-off household, so I took off my running shoes, and on my way back out, naturally, I opted for the easiest footwear possible:

Am I a hottie, or what? What on earth could possibly be worth going out in public looking like this?

The first fern fronds of the season, that’s what!