Shed Your Inhibitions

Tulip Tree -- Yellow Poplar -- Liriodendron tulipifera tepals

Some people have cats or dogs or even birds that seem to shed throughout the house. I have a forest that sheds throughout the yard and deck.

Overnight Summer

It happens every single spring. I ever so carefully and eagerly study the swollen tips of the tree- branches while I anticipate the new beauty that is yet to come. I am rewarded ever so briefly with the Easter colored flowers that blanket the trees and the shrubs along the roadside as I hurry off to work or back home at the end of the day. I see the grass on the roadside turn lime green with each spring rain. And every year, like a softheaded fool, I am so dumbfounded when I wake up that next morning and discover that every single tree has exploded with all its leaves meaning summer is well on its way.

Should I go to War?

This is my Lungwort (Pulmonaria x 'Berries N' Cream') or Bethlehem sage that I planted last year. I could not find it in the local nursery and they special ordered it for me. The variegated leaves with a hairy-furry surface are almost as interesting as the flowers which start out pink and change to purple. The blossoms remind me of the blue bells that grew wild in the foothills behind my house growing up in Colorado. This perennial spreads out about 2-3 feet. My specimen sits in a landscape bed that is right up beside the house and the plant is touted as deer resistant.

...Unlike my purple rhododendron which sits only four feet away in the same landscape bed and which had only one bloom that escaped the cropping of the deer. I am hoping that the deer and I can come to a better compromise once I live here full time. Of course, if they are fundamentalistic and uncompromising in their diet, we will work this out on less friendly terms!

Finally, it is now time for the wild sassafras (below) to be in bloom. If you tear or crush the leaves, they smell like root beer. Tea can be made with the leaves by pouring boiling water over a handful, letting them sit, covered, for 10-15 minutes and then straining out the leaves. I remember doing this when I was a scout leader... but I cannot remember if it worked.

Peeping Tom

Those who still wear gray and brown are embarrassed by the blatant offering of these deep red poutings so early in the season. They are not ready for this arousing display of a need to give and share such beauty. Is it too suggestive when winter winds still steal the warmth from the sun? Provoking and luscious, their time, like our youth, lasts only so long. It is your loss if you allow your eyes to linger elsewhere.

The "Name That Plant" Game

The small package has been opened but I am still trying to figure out what it is. Annie in Austin suggested one idea, and while the flower looks very much like it is related to a flax the rest of the plant doesn't quite fit and so here is a better picture of the whole plant. Anyone else want to play?

30 minutes later....

Ah HA...even though I should be planning an Easter dinner...I have been surfing and think I finally found the species...Veronica chamaedrys or Germander Speedwell!

Good Things in Small Packages

These little faces of goodwill and sunshine greeted me poking their noses over the rim of a leftover planter on the back of my deck. The plant was almost completely buried in oak leaves and then these little ones showed up like eager blue bunnies in the middle of March. I googled tons of images, but found nothing that was close enough for me to remember their name. Fortunately, I don't have to know the name to enjoy them.

Raspberry Kisses

Raspberry kisses
Marmalade dreams
Sugar sonatas
with fragrant sunbeams.

Exotic Spring

This time of year, this is the way I feel. Don't I wish I looked that way! Photo was taken from my recent visit to the Philadelphia Flower Show.

Changing the Lunch Shift

Off goes the woodpecker and in comes the titmouse.

Commonness

Exalted and honorable.
From the Miocene.
August and noble.
I perceive my smallness.
You were there.
I cannot comprehend
this intersection with
eternity.

Patience

My dear cardinal-friend, I can tell by your look that you are getting a little confused. First the week starts out cold and with light snow. In two days the weather is back up teasingly close to the 70 degree mark. Then, just as our blood begins to thin and run with joy, the cold winter wall pushes once again across our land dumping chilling rain and sleet and sending us all scurrying for shelter. Mother nature can be such a tease.

Spring Sproing

Technically this is an inside activity and belongs on my other blog. But I am so happy to see that my work a few weeks ago is being rewarded. Soon this window will be filled with bright red flowers.

What Caught My Eye

My inside hours on the weekends are filled with lists, such as cleaning, filing and sorting. Since I am only here on weekends, I tend to be a bit puritanical in my efforts toward completing these lists.

Still, while moving some plants closer to the window mid-morning yesterday, a very bushy gray tail caught my eye as it moved with a level and steady pace dusting across the fallen leaves on the forest floor. The rhythm of movement as well as large size made me question whether it was truly a very large squirrel. So I stopped and stared intently at the open space ahead and was rewarded with the view of a healthy gray fox. His ears and tips of the tail hair were a rusty red. He walked casually but also carefully with his nose to the forest floor in search of small gray snacks, I am thinking.

He was not cautious in his behavior and did not look up once during the steady pace across the ravine. Eyes on the ground, he even came closer to the house in one of his zags which gave me a nice chance to see his lovely anatomy better through the binoculars . My husband has said that in the early mornings he has seen the same fox head out on this same trail and then by mid-morning it appears he comes back from his shopping trip heading away from the river.

We have a small mound of top soil which sits on the side of the gravel turn-around. I can see his foot prints and bottom where he rests on the warm earth in the evenings waiting for a rabbit dinner perhaps.

Another regular neighbor has made his presence known.

A Ghost of a Morning

I am up early before the sun, as usual, even on this Saturday. As I smell the richness of morning coffee, I look out the window and see the pink and purple dawn coloring the lower sky, just above the silhouetted trees. Each morning is familiar but also like a new gift. A recognizable silhouette in the tree along the shore catches my eye. It is a very large hawk? - osprey are gone for the season. I get my binoculars and although the light is still faint I am sure that I see the shape of an eagle's head and the whiter feather's filling that shape. I lower the binoculars and move to another window to get a better look and like a ghost, the possible bald eagle is gone. I saw no spread of wings and no movement of branches...it has dissolved into the pink sky in a second. As I look out across the water I also see the ghostly movement of winter fog, hanging over the river like the smoke from a long ago camp fire. It also will disappear in a second.

Forcing Spring

There is a sugar crust of snow against parts of the gray winter woods. But inside my little corner of the world I am a-n-t-i-c-i-p-a-t-i-n-g! Those of you who like plants know what I mean. The spider lillies are forming little buds, but will be slower and arriving later.

Shrouds

A dark swooping shadow caught the corner of my eye during the early morning cereal at my table at the window. I had been spending the quiet weekend all alone and thinking how crisply blue the sky was after the winter thunderstorm which woke me and my three thousand neighbors, the Canadian geese, the previous night. I looked to the area against the blue sky and found this shaggy and brooding sentinel of death. Two comrades joined him in the barren gray trees within seconds. The last one's landing broke loose shards of bark and a dry branch went plummeting to the ground. The whole harshness of their arrival seemed apropros of their presence. In all fairness their role in the grand scheme as garbage collectors was important. But I could not see any beauty in that red-rimmed eye no matter how fair I tried to be in my thoughts. They remained for several minutes casting a mantle of melancholy over all.

Obligations

I am one of those people who find it difficult to throw out plants or bulbs when transplanting and I am always finding I have too much. Several years ago I had 40 (YES 40!) amaryllis bulbs that I had nurtured over the years brought back to life each January and February for pre-spring color in the house after the poinsettias faded. I gave 90% of those away at a plant sale when we sold our old house and moved and moved, etc.

Well now that I have new sunny corner windows--specifically designed for indoor plants, I am back again in the swing of propagation. All of the windows in my house have a layer of film that prevents direct sunlight from fading carpets and furniture while allowing the horizontal winter rays to warm the rooms. In this corner above, I just have the regular two layer windows so that full sunlight allows the plants to grow. Over time the wooden floor will fade differently than the rest of the room, but that is the price to pay for natures beauty. During the moves I saved a few amaryllis and blood lilys which come from South Africa. The blood lily which I purchased years ago at the Philadelphia Flower Show is a striking plant and after the bloom has waned, the plant itself is exotic and lovely.

All these plants have wintered over in my basement, too close to the heater this year. I train them to bloom in February, so I have to get them up and going this time of year and hope for the best.

Yesterday the weather was wonderful, in the high 40s and sunny. I went outside in the late afternoon and proceeded to separate bulbs and repot so that I would get larger and healthier blossoms this year and in the coming years. Alas, once again I am propagating. There were way too many bulbs---large medium and small to transplant as I untangle the birds-nest of roots. As you can see from the photo below I have quite a few bulbs of both types and I still have an amaryllis pot with 4 VERY large bulbs to separate and plant out today as well as a few pots of single amaryllis bulbs left in the basement for transfer next week.

Anticipation...I can almost see them smiling.

The Turn

The winter solstice has past, and although hidden to us in the code of the ages, the days are growing longer. Earth's smoothly spinning pirouette pauses in the quiet stillness of deep night and we can almost hear the sigh and see her frozen breath cloud the air. This ancient Earth turns every so slowly in a new angle. Its speed is indiscernible in the beginning but soon will be humming with the secretion of spring as it turns its face to the sun.

Sharing

This is the time of the year when glitter and succulence go indoors. Outside it is gray and dark and cold. Only the beautiful birds brave such weather. Maybe I will take an apple and cut it up and smear it with peanut butter and take it outside!

The Rhythm of Life

Three squirrels, one gray and two black, live in my daughter's backyard. Some days and evenings it sounds as though they live under the roof...perhaps they do? Like most animals, they have their habits and their patterns of behavior. In the photo above is the top-of-the-fence trail that they take dozens of times each day. The snow hill pattern on the ridge is a reflection of their leap length. They all actually leap the same length and formed this scallop shortly after our first snowfall of the season.