midweek splendor; beech explosion; ferns are weird

Here’s what’s going on in the mystery woodland next to the house. Ferns are coming up!

Let’s take a closer look.

They are apparently made of tiny blobs welded together.

Plus a bunch of fuzz.

Let the records show that we have a flowering trout lily on our own property. It hasn’t turned inside out in ecstasy, the way we saw the other day:

Back to our woods: we have a bunch of these things:

I’m guessing sessile-leaved bellwort. Seeing a flower would be helpful, but so far, none seem to be even on the horizon.

You’re not tired of blue cohosh yet, are you? 

This is pachysandra, which has been sneaking into the vinca’s territory from its homebase around the magnolia tree.

BOATLOADS of miterwort this year.

And this is why I have the macro lens. These flowers are maybe 1/8” across at best.

Starflower! Let’s hope it makes a flower this year. Only found one last year.

Later on, I took a walk on my lunch break at work and headed up into the woods.

Birch catkins. Nutty stuff.

Violet innards.

Beech bud explosion, in slow motion.

First, they just lengthen. You can see how the end of each scale is paler than its base – the darker base color is where it’s newly exposed from the bud lengthening.

At some point the leaves just want out. 

Yippee! Freedom! I did this same series last year. On May 9th. Yep, it’s an early spring.

Two points if you know what this is! I don’t! I thought at first it was a violet, but do they get spurs this long? Do I have photos of the leaves? I do not. Whoops. And no, it’s not a ladyslipper. I think.

There’s nothing ordinary about a dandelion.

 

I spotted this cutie in a stormwater retention pond. Happiness!

the turtles hatched! the turtles hatched!

I was waaaayyyyy too tired after Saturday’s lawnmowing extravaganza to contemplate doing my 14 mile run yesterday – I figured I’d do it today, instead. Yesterday, I just kind of lazed around in a mental fog, feeling alternately vaguely guilty on the one hand, and accepting of reality on the other. I managed to do laundry – that was about it. As I headed up to bed last night, I checked today’s calendar, almost on a whim. Whoops: I’d made plans to visit with a friend who lives an hour and a half away, who’s moving to Wisconsin… tomorrow. Totally spaced on it. It would be my last chance to see her and her family for an unspecified amount of time.
Time to cowboy up! I set the alarm two hours early and naturally, barely slept as a result. Alas for my whiny self – I know from experience that lack of sleep does not seem to influence the quality of a run. So, despite my completely unfocused eyes, I headed out the door and within two minutes of running, came across this wonderful, wonderful thing: 

25 freshly hatched turtle eggs! At first I panicked, thinking some evil monster (perhaps of the raccoon variety?) had found and devoured breakfast. But I saw no footprints…other than deer, a couple hundred yards away. Deer: well-known enemy of the baby turtle…? I think not. This is right on the side of the road here, and the green stuff is pretty much growing IN one of the tributaries to our pond – the one that runs parallel to the road. Thus, the babies didn’t have to cross the road to get to water…

…which is good, given that in the past few days I’ve seen not one, but two, dead baby snapping turtles on the side of the road, about a half mile south of where these nests were.
The run, incidentally, was great – 14 miles in 2 hours, 32 minutes. It was slower than my incredible speedy gonzalez 12-miler a couple of weeks ago, but I was plenty satisfied.
My friend has been living up in New Hampsha, where they still have lilacs in bloom.

(Yes, there’s a bug in there.)

Some of their daylilies are just thinking about opening…

…others ARE open.
I have deeply exciting news on the buttercup front. You know me: I love the intermediate stages, the whole lovely unfolding process of things. In the case of the buttercup flower, here is what I’d already discovered:

We’ll call this one, “before”.

…and this one, “after”.
Welcome to “intermediate”

The seeds in the center are half-baked, not unlike the cheesecake currently living in the refrigerator.
AND, in other exciting news, I saw some Canada mayflower forming berries. We have a ton of these ourselves, but they’re buried in ferns, goldenrods, and nameless shrubbery I have yet to identify – they’re basically completely inaccessible at this point.
Don’t be fooled by those leaves, they’re vinca.
Let’s play, spot the bug:

Clover. Over to the right center is the bug.
Time for some orange porn:


That cheesecake? It’s an early birthday present to the love of my life, he of the horrendous allergies who is currently one big pile of sneeze over on the other side of the room. (He mowed our lawn today and got walloped with grassiness.) I’ll bet that cheesecake will still taste good, baby!