A Little Color

Ok, I'll admit it... I've been strategically ignoring the early adopters -- those few trees that are turning colors earlier than their peers.  But it turns out I can't stop the forward momentum of the seasons by simply ignoring or not writing about it, so it's time to acknowledge... things are starting to turn colors.  Here, a sugar maple starting to become vibrant orange.  The sugar maples (as always) have a great variety in their phenophases -- many are still green as June, while others are further gone than this!

Here, a close-up of chokeberry bushes, which seem to consistently have about 1 in every 20 leaves turning orange... 

Still summer for 3 more days, right?????

I Know, I'm Behind...

OK, I've been remiss as a blogger and, to a lesser extent, as a phenologist.  I have all sorts of excuses, though they all boil down to one, really... I've been on school trips.  This means that a lot of the observations I've made haven't been here, but rather 2 hours north or 2 hours south.  It also means I'm extremely busy, and extremely tired.  So some data has been lost.  I know.  Irretrievable.  A day of laziness, data lost forever.  There's always next year. 

At any rate, I'm typing this on May 23, but I've dated the post 5/16, because I actually did take these pictures on that date.  Just didn't make it to step 2, uploading (or step 3, writing, or step 4, publishing...)  So here's just a taste of what was happening a week ago:

Columbine blooming.

Dogwood (red-osier) blooming.

Chokeberry blooming, and feeding a big fat bee. 

Honeysuckle blooming.  All over, because they're terribly invasive. 

Also important to note: we had our last freeze on 5/14, which was a very cold day.  I don't think it topped 40 as a high... there may have also been frost on 5/17.  There was where I was sleeping, and that was SOUTH of here, so it would make sense.  But I wasn't home to witness it.