when in doubt, fetchez la caméra la plus proche

Happy Saturday...here's where we're at here in West West, Vermont...all of these courtesy of the phone, because the Mighty Lumix (the little guy good for macros, particularly in awkward shots like underneath a flower two inches from the ground) is in Kevin's car in an airport parking lot. And the Nikon with its awesomeness is...oh, it's on my desk, but I'm lazy, so without further ado...

Maple leaves unfurling...

ahhh, the beaver pond, gradually getting bigger and bigger...

New discovery! Those fuscia party hats the gray birch wears? Turns out they're packed with leaves as well...

Must retrieve Mighty Lumix from the boy's car..

Today Today Today was the day the magnolia in the back yard went *boom*.

Saxifrage! This one deserves the Nikon. Stay tuned.

How many back-lit pictures of trillium can I take? 

A lot.

And now for the side view...

Not bad for the phone...

and now for something completely different.

In honor of International Monty Python Day – tomorrow – we’re going someplace new today. Up into the woods.

last year’s beech leaves.  not too many of these left.

A decaying stump serves as a nursery for moss and canada mayflower

sweet little canada mayflower!

I spent a lot of time with maples.

I found myself puzzling over how to tell the difference between red and sugar maple, when it’s past bud season (the buds are a no-brainer to tell apart) but leaves are not necessarily easily at hand either (because the trees are too tall and no branches are accessible.) In the following few pictures…

…I tried to figure out if the two distinctly different guys above are the same species, with the younger one (less furrowed) at right, or just Awfully Close Neighbors.

Maybe the trunk will provide a clue. To me, the bark is the same from one side to another, so I think they’re differently aged stump sprouts. When you chop down a tree – certain species, in particular – sometimes you’ll get a bunch of sprouts growing out of it that do well enough to turn into pretty big trees themselves.

So I think this is a stump sprout. The one on the right is older – you can tell by the more-furrowed bark.

farther up the tree, one trunk has split a second time. From left, we have the youngest, the middle, and the oldest, all accessing the same root system. Or so I speculate.

And now, for white birch.

Birch I

Birch II

(note: correct orientation is actually the other way – I just think it’s prettier in this direction)

 

Birch III

baby fern.

baby fern and jack-in-the-pulpit

Another decaying stump…this whole back part of the property has been logged, obviously, as everything in this state has been logged at one (or four or five) points along the way.

OH! An ash sapling. Already leafed out. The big trees haven’t leafed out yet. It’s like they’re taking turns with the maples, letting the maples go first.

An ash bud when it’s on a sapling. So cute.

Remember the fern I thought was maidenhair but I was totally wrong? [Except that later, I realized I was right? It is maidenhair fern.] Here’s what it looks like these days.

imagine the trauma that resulted in this. such a survivor.

Just Good Friends. An ash and a yellow birch.

And now, for a finale, back to beech.

I wonder what function the hair serves. As packing material separating the folds in the leaves when they’re still super-tiny and compressed?

jack-in-the-pulpit, starflower, and maidenhair fern

Company’s coming for dinner. No time to write. But I do have lots to show. So let’s dive in, shall we?

One magnolia bloom has completely opened.

Trout lily. The only one that’s flowered so far. That’s Charlie in the background.

A three-fer: Solomon’s Seal, false solomon’s seal in the center, and a sessile-leaf bellwort at right.

This!! is a jack-in-the-pulpit. A baby. No flower yet.

Maggie helped me find others.

This knocks my socks off: it’s maidenhair fern. It just came up today, I think. Can you see the incipient leaves are triangular?

Also, if you know what maidenhair fern looks like when it’s all opened up, you can see how the Y-shaped bit at left, above, will open up into the circular pattern that so characterizes maidenhair. (It’s like, the ONE fern I can ID.)

Another kind of fern…

This is an apple tree starting to leaf out…

A haze of fluorescent green…

…which turns out to be largely sugar maple flowers.

The first starflower I’ve seen this year…

A sea of Canada mayflower (Maianthemum canadense)…

…including one that’s formed flowers. They don’t flower every year, apparently. The first year, they have one leaf, and they come back the second year with two leaves and a flower. Or so I recall.

This is the mystery azalea (?!) in the yard, first chronicled here on April 15th.

I think the flowers look like tiny barnacles filled with spiders, but that’s just me.

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!