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”.

milkweed flowers! brown-eyed susans! teensy teensies!

The sun finally came out and I gave my soul an airing this afternoon.

The first milkweed flowers!

This will be fun to watch unfold.

A sumac flower head. We’re over by the pole barn, incidentally. Kevin recently discovered something like 15 bird nests up in the eaves. So far we haven’t dragged a ladder over to investigate.

Wild rose, gotta love it.

And a sorrel. Yes, just your garden-variety lawn weed. Yet lovely to behold.

One of my favorite flowers: the brown-eyed susans. They are more commonly called black-eyed susans, but the ones I’ve seen are really dark brown. Anyway.

These fuzzy leaves are a new plant just coming up. Nearby, another b.e.s. has several flowers started:

itty bitty

baby

and big sis

I spent a while lost in the zen of letting the camera auto-focus in a field of grass.

and now for two shots, identical but for the area of focus:

un.

deux.

Tiny purple danglies – fabulous.

No clue. I’m guessing something in the sunflower-ish world, but I have zero evidence for that, so let’s just watch it play out over the next few days and I’ll get back to you.

And now, for the tiny flowers portion of this post.

A bluet. I’ve OD’d on bluets plenty of times, but this may be the first time I noticed the Y-shape of the stamens.

Cutest name award: mouse-eared chickweed.

No idea what this is. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before – TINY TINY TINY.

Or how’s this for tiny? 1/16th of an inch across. Damn.

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.

gray and cold out, but undaunted

Three minutes of looking around at the end of the work day can be quite profitable:

eastern blue eyed grass


the daffodils were undeterred after yesterday’s freezing rain kicked off the day. “screw it,” they said. “we’re opening up.”


siberian iris shoots. just you wait.


gray birch catkin. a reminder that we live on a strange planet.


gray birch female flower, I believe. (still learning whose bits are whose).


wild rose, which just started to leaf out last week, and has since thought the better of it and suspended the proceedings.

the unfolding of spring: blink, and you’ll miss it.

I don’t know about you, but my brain melts at temperatures above 80 degrees. It’s Vermont. It’s March. Good Lord. The process of documenting spring’s awakening is UPON US, baby. The frogs started hollering yesterday afternoon. All kinds of things are happening-all-of-the-sudden, and here I am, with a melted brain. Here’s what I was able to capture today:

The lilac buds started opening. Today. Last year, the buds were closed on April 6th, and it took them until April 22nd to get to the stage shown above. This year, they went from closed, to open, in two days.

The lone miniature lawn hyacinth poked up.

So did these guys. I never did really ID ‘em last year – I think I went with white blue-eyed grass.
Here’s one of my world-famous time-lapse sequences of buds opening up. I believe this is an introduced species – Cornus mas, or a cherry dogwood.

The terminal bud.

The next set of buds. No news.

The next set of buds…hello!

…the next set of buds…

An explosion of yellow. I swear, I’m going to have to just camp out next to this and try and spot how this happens. Sproinnnggggg!

Ta da!


Along the driveway, the wild rose is leafing out today. Last year? Late April.
As for the gray birch – already, the buds are sporting their magenta headdresses while nearby, the catkins open up. This is a process that started last year on April 11th. So yeah, it’s been an accelerated spring.



I’ve got my work cut out for me, to run around and keep up with all of this – wish me luck!