When Green is Bad

This time of year, if you're walking through the woods and everything is still verdantly green, you might be tempted to celebrate the what's left of summer... But on closer inspection, you'll see that things aren't well.  The last trees/shrubs to hold stubbornly onto their green color are always the undesirables -- the buckthorn and the honeysuckle.  In this photo from my cold, damp, windy lunch walk, the trail is surrounded by a buckthorn monoculture.  It will pretty much be just as green at Thanksgiving.  The few taller trees are silver maples (their leaves, to the extent that they're still hanging around, are not green). Silver maple isn't the most desirous tree species in the world, either, but with all that buckthorn, neither they nor anything else will be able to reproduce anyhow.  

A million things

So much is happening that it's hard to remember it all, and even harder to do more than just list it all! My bloodroot fully opened this morning (but now has closed up like in the drawing above). Also two hepatica plants, which I'm told are pretty sensitive, so yea!

In bittersweet plant news, the buckthorn has leafed out (see photo)... bitter because buckthorn is a terribly invasive plant. It poisons the soil around it, making the areas it lives uninhabitable for native species. It creates a mono-culture. And it's berries aren't really a great food source for birds; nothing really eats it. The only sweet aspect is, now that they've leafed out, I can see them really well. I pulled about 50 out of my yard. (Although I just realized that I left the one in the photo!) That was pretty dumb.


I have a few flowers on my celandine poppies! I got those from a friend a few years ago. She had them in her yard and they had such beautiful yellow flowers, and she dug up some small ones for me. But for years, I got no yellow flowers. This year, I will have many and I am so happy.

The box elders are progressing -- see how different they look from the sketch I made last weekend! I am also pretty sure willows have leafed out and are flowering (but I made this diagnosis through a car window, which means it may not be accurate.)

Our raspberry bushes have also leafed out. We got two more and planted them today. This was all we got done in the yard, though. We spent the day helping a friend install raised beds. I am glad we did this -- he's helped up a lot in the past and it's just, in general, good to help friends. But it is a little bit frustrating to work all day and then get home and realize that... um... nothing got done in my yard. And it has clouded over and is supposed to rain, and I think also get cold. Which will make getting yard stuff dome tomorrow unlikely. (The house will be sparkling clean, though!)

Bumble bees bumbling, spiders spidering today. The sky seems exciting and I keep waiting for crazy weather, but it's been the same grey since the clouds blew in a few hours ago. (Before that is was sunny and in the 70s and perfect).