Spring Has Sprung

Illinois is the Prairie State, but if you're lucky enough to have access to a wooded area, this is the perfect week to explore it.  Spring ephemerals are in their prime, and, as their name implies, their beauty is short-lived....

Hepatica

Hepatica is in full bloom right now.  I love this wildflower especially, not just because it's an early treat, but because they come in so many colors -- white and pink and purple and blue -- sometimes all right next to each other.  Bloodroot is also in full bloom in the woodlands, its large white flowers standing out against the brown of last year's leaves and green of emerging leaves.   It's leaves -- themselves an interesting shape -- are still curled around the stems; the stems show the red liquid inside that gives the plants their name. 

Bloodroot

Just starting to bloom are trout lilies -- their splotchy, trout-skin leaves are all over -- spring beauties, and anenomes.  

May apples and trilliums have not yet flowered, but their unique foliage is popping up.  

If you only have access to prairies, there are some early flowers there, too.  Pasqueflower is in full bloom right now, with its purple flowers and fuzzy stems.  This is always one to which I look forward; Leopold's quotations makes it seem significant to me.  I know I quote him each year at this time, but I'll still remind you of this passage from ASCA: "For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech."

Prairie Smoke is also starting to bloom!

Also... the first tick of the season was seen a week and a half ago, but they're out in full force now.  I pulled several off kids today.

Spring Beauty

trout lily

Pasqueflower

Anenome

Can't Keep Up!

Things are happening so fast out there that if I had enough time to blog every single day, it still wouldn't be enough.  I'd need to blog every hour to keep up with all the changes.  we're supposed to get some cooler weather starting tomorrow, so maybe that'll put the brakes on.

The bloodroot, which started to flower on Sunday,
can't handle the heat (perhaps) and by today have
dropped their petals!

We're at that point where, if you look across a field at a tree line or forest, the whole thing takes on a lime green glow... a haze of tiny leaf-outs and tree flowers in the springiest of greens just hangs there.  Our catalpa has started leafing out.  Maples are all flowering now, including the green-yellow flowers of sugar and Norway maples.  Serviceberries look green... everything is just popping out green.  Meanwhile, here are some blooming updates... though I apologize for the photos, I couldn't really see the screen too well and didn't realize they weren't coming out!  Plus, I'm at the stripey-world computer.

Our sedges are flowering rather strikingly.

Blurry celandine poppies bloomed this morning!  So lovely...

We're Blooming and Leafing

There is a lot going on right now.  And a lot of it is going on early.  Most people I talk to make some comment about how the weather is freaking them out.  My response is something along the lines of, it may be freaky, but we can't do anything about it, so let's enjoy it... because if you ignore the fact that its mid-March, it's perfect weather... not too hot for an early morning run, warm enough to read outside all afternoon, but not so warm that you get uncomfortable weeding, and then cool enough in the night time for sleeping under the covers with open windows.  

BUT... if you want to add more data to the freak-out part of it... I could include photos of about a hundred things, but no one would bother to scroll through them.  Here are some highlights. 

Violet

 Violets flowered today, which have previously been noted in early April...

Bloodroot

The bloodroot started to open... over a month earlier than last year (April 21 they looked like this), and a couple of weeks before 2010 bloom-time.

Hepatica

Hepatica isn't quite open but it's close, I mean, this flower will be open tomorrow.  Again, this is exactly how they looked on April 21 last year.  Same with the trillium and mayapples (Aprilapples, this year?), below.

Trillium

Mayapples poke through the soil.

Ginger leaves emerging from the earth.

Other things to report...

• A lot of surprising leaf-outs, including...
• Crab apples leafing out (3/16)
• Willows catkining and leafing out (3/17)
• Wasps extremely active (3/18)
• Currants leafing out (3/17) 
• Maple-leaf viburnum leafing out (3/18)
• And today, there were tons of millipedes undulating their way across the trail.  I was trying to avoid them, but it became too difficult, and eventually, I had to just decide that some myriapods are in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Spice bushes flowering (since last week, but I liked this photo:) 

In My Yard...

Bloodroot is blooming. I am pleased -- there are 7 flowers in 3 bunches, all doing very well despite the aggressive campaign being waged against them by creeping charlie.

Now, normally I wouldn't put a photo of what I just sketched. Besides being redundant, it only serves to highlight the inaccuracies in my drawing. Especially this sketch... I had to sit farther away than I prefer from the plant -- I like to be able to touch it, move my head around to different angles, etc. But I didn't want to crush a bunch of other stuff, like baby mayapples or uvularia or wild ginger or trout lilies, or even the Dutchman's breeches foliage that I found in 3 places in the yard but none with any hope of flowering this year. Anyway, to get to the point... a bee landed on the flower while I was sketching, and I got a picture of it, so I included it. Also the same bee landed on a clump of hepatica.

Also blooming in my yard...

spring beauties and Greek anenomes. A lot of fiddleheads are poking up, too... I tried to sketch the spring beauties, but only proved what I've known for a while and re-discovered yesterday. I can only do one sketch a day. Or at least without a significant break. I don't know what gets tires, my brain or my hands, or what, but the second one is always terrible. And usually incomplete. So, it's not here.

NOT yet blooming in my yard are marsh marigold or bluebells.

Ephemerals

Ephemeral. Fleeting. Our spring weather has been ephemeral this. Thursday, after snow and rain, we had a lovely spring day... to be followed by a cold and wet Friday. Today was, again, lovely, but by Monday we're supposed to be back to three days of chilly rain.

Today we walked at the gardens. The spring ephemerals were in full bloom. (Being 20 miles south, they are a couple of days ahead of us. Being professional horticulturists, they are probably another couple of days ahead of us.) As proof of point, I can't even get Dutchman's breeches (sketched above) to grow at my house. There it grows in huge clumps of feathery leaves.

Their bloodroot was actually on it's way out...

Trout lily.

Anenome.

Spring beauty.

Trillium.

Bluebells, just starting to bloom.

Marsh marigold.

This magnolia is from the exact tree I sketched last year on April 1 last year. It is, perhaps, a little further along in its lifecycle. But not much.

Prairie smoke. (OK, those last aren't ephemerals, but whatever.)

Today

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.

"Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question of whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild and free. For us of the minority, the opportunity to see geese is more important than television, and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech..."

Pasqueflowers always make me think of Aldo Leopold. They secured an honored place in the second paragraph of the forward to ASCA... probably the most important and influential phenological document ever, not to mention one of the 2 most "impactful" environmental works ever written (and written over 60 years ago, so it's amazing how current its themes still seem. The other impactful book, by the way, is Silent Spring, this according to the American Nature Study Society). And so to me they have special significance. With their early bloom, they remind me that spring really will win over winter. Their rarity drives home the message of Leopold's book. Their diminutive size, almost hidden among last year's litter, tells us that beauty and wonder can come in small packages.

So, yea!! My pasqueflowers are blooming. I have no idea why they are so terribly pale, but I am thrilled that they came back. I've had a terrible time with them, never getting one to come back more than once. That includes this one, as we just put it in last year. Perhaps they only live for two years, though that doesn't seem right... And they're so hard to find, this is my last effort!

Other good news: my ephemerals did, indeed, come back. At least most of them. Shown below are bloodroot, mayapple, and a trillium, all behind last year's pace but there nonetheless. Shooting stars are also well along, and wild geraniums, and spring beauties, and wild ginger, and marsh marigold (one) and bluebells. The only things that didn't return to my yard are my red baneberry and my Dutchman's breeches.

These hepatica are in my mom's yard. They are a lot happier than mine. (Actually, my one that bloomed the other day isn't looking good at all. I suspect that was it's final attempt at productivity before expiring. I have two others that look like they'll be more like this, but they haven't bloomed yet at all.) My mom also has a Dutchman's breeches about 1.5 inches tall.

Oh, and we are having a major creeping charlie problem, which we may have to fight using drastic measures or we risk losing most of the aforementioned wildflowers.

Last Day of Freedom

Tomorrow we return to school after an all-too-short break. Short as it was, though, we're going back in a world that seems entirely new. Spring flowers blooming, colors bright and subtle dotting the landscape. Most larger trees are still bare-branched, but shrubs and smaller trees, like crab apples and willows, are tinged with the green of small leaves, and when you look across fields, there's a green haze in the hedgerows... hardly a color at all. An aura. A message whispered in the wind... "It won't be long now..."

Here's what's popped up most recently:

Spring beauties, with their pale striped petals.

The daily bloodroot update.

Trout lily leaves.

Anenomes (these ones Canada) are among the plants that look like balls of green low to the ground. Others, not pictured, include Virginia waterleaf, Jacob's ladder, golden Alexander...
And here, marsh marigold buds (in case I forget to check them when they actually bloom).

Oh, What a Difference a Day Makes...

...Especially when it's a day such as the last 24 hours have been, warm, mostly sunny, partly windy, all around beautiful. Yesterday morning's round buds...

are today's hepatica flowers!

Mayapples popped open their still-tiny umbrellas.

Ginger leaves burst through the soil.

And trillium's three-leaves have appeared.

Couldn't resist showing the bloodroot again, now that the flower bud has poked out.

In the non-ephemeral plant world, here's the yellow coneflower, which emerged a while ago but I was struck by how big it's already gotten, about 4 inches tall.

And, my maple-leaf vibernum leafed out... along with some crab apples and other shrubs.

Unfortunately, these leaf-outs are not all good. Throughout the yard, previously nearly-invisible little sticks have sprouted buckthorn leaves... they are everywhere, these little weeds that want to be terribly invasive, soil-poisoning trees. And among them are tiny leafing-out box elders (whose parents are flowering at the moment). I could work for days and days, it seems, and still have these invasive babies around. The honeysuckle, which has become the bane of our gardening existence, has also leafed out. (When I installed my vegetable garden on the south side of the yard, there was a honeysuckle hedge, about 8 feet tall, in the neighbor's yard, that did not interfere with the garden. Six years later, those things are about 20 feet tall and shade out more of the growing space each year. The boughs that hang over our yard get chopped, but the trees are not ours to level. I could make a lovely garden in that area, though, if I were allowed...)

And speaking of the garden... we planted carrots and peas this morning, to go along with the spinach that I didn't mention we planted earlier in the week.

April Fool

I'm not sure what's up with me lately... the past few days have been perfectly lovely and I have been thoroughly enjoying them... but I haven't felt like blogging too much at all. I suppose it's natural for my excitement about things to wain. Anyhow, I felt obliged to go out and snap a shot of this flower -- name still unknown -- that I photographed on April 12, 2009. I noticed them blooming on Tuesday, so they bloomed over a week earlier this year.

I also wanted to get a shot of the scilla, (which I know I blogged about last year, too, but I can't find it...anyhow...) They actually just opened up in my yard, although I know that I've seen them open for days in other places. Not sure why mine are late bloomers. So out I went to take some pictures of these two purple blossoms, when I was thrilled and surprised to find...

VIOLETS! Which were definitely not open on Tuesday, or even close (yesterday I was in the city, far enough south that many things are a couple of days ahead, so can't say what happened then). Anyhow, I posted a sketch of these violets on April 11 last year, but that was not on their first day of flowering, so I can't say if they, too, are ahead of '09. So the violets motivated me a bit to blog, and to keep exploring.

This cultivated flower also opened up yesterday or this morning. It reminds me of bluebells, and was the inspiration for me planting some of those, which I have not noticed yet so I am hoping they do come back. Now, here are some more baby pictures that I can't resist posting:

Hepatica flower buds grow in the middle of a cluster of lobed leaves, which actually seem to grow under the snow. Their white fuzz seems to almost glow in the morning sun.

Baby bloodroot.

I noticed these geraniums on Tuesday, but then they were all curled up little pink blobs (as the one leaf in the middle of the photo still is). Their color was quite pretty and unique, but today the leaves have opened up and turned reddish.

And... look how close we are to daffodils!

It's supposed to be around 80 today, and sunny, and I am going to go enjoy it... I'm just wondering... will it snow next week or something to make up for this?