Snow in June

The cottonwood trees are spreading seeds, fluffy snow that floats through the air and collects in the grass.

State of the World

I've been failing in the end game for the last few days... I've been taking pictures and notes, but haven't managed to dedicate the computer time to getting blog entries actually published.  So here's the state of the world right now.  

The state of the world is lovely.  Warm and sunny and only lightly breezy.  This is the third day of perfect weather (and Friday was only a slight bit cooler) and I love it.  I can run and run and never think about the weather.  I can work in the garden -- and did I ever this weekend.  It's just... just... I can't even express.  Marvelous spring weather for the past few days. Here's just a bit of what I've been seeing...

• The first tick was found (not my me) on 4/14.  YEA!  Now we get to feel false (and real) creepy crawlies whenever we're out in the prairie or woods for the next 2 months!
• Pasqueflowers also reached their peak bloom on or around 4/14, when I took this photo. 

• Dandelions have been blooming for a little over a week now, but I didn't photograph one until Friday. 

• Crabapples leafed out -- this picture is from Friday, and by today they're even greener and leafier.  With them, the honeysuckles, the boxelder, and the lilacs (photo from today) leafing out, not to mention other shrubs like spirea, my blackcurrants... the understory has a definite green tinge to it. 

 

• The Norway maples are flowering -- their green-ish flowers fool people into thinking they've leafed out, but it's flowers first.  Red maples are also flowering (have been for a while, actually).  Sugar maples haven't started yet.  

• While we're on the subject of tree flowers, cherries have just started, and magnolias... they're in full and fragrant bloom, a full spectrum from whites and pinks to purples.  Really just a lovely treat. 

 

• Less pretty, but cottonwoods are catkining and actually the catkins are already falling like rain when you stand under the trees.  Soon they'll be sending off seeds like snow! 

• Celandine poppies started flowering this weekend...

• In the world of bulbs... daffodils are at or just past peak bloom.  Tulips are just starting, only a few varieties open.  Hyacinths are in full bloom, too. 

• In the insect world, I started seeing white butterflies all over this weekend.  Also ants, and those big fuzzy bumble bees.  And...
• I saw my first green darner!  It's dragonfly season!
• In the bird world, so much, and I'm not a good birder.  Wood ducks and yellow-rumped warblers.  Bob o'links.  Killdeer.  Buffleheads.  So much more...

OK, I think that'll be it for now... if that's not enough to process!

Happy Earth Week! (One day is not enough!)

Unseasonable

This time of year, it's pretty solidly late summer.  The trees and the prairie are still predominantly green -- the late season yellow tinge colors the world... yes, some of the prairie plants are past peak or even done flowering, but still.  It feels like summer.  

Cottonwood trees seem to be providing the exception.  Their leaves have already started to brown and fall.  Walking past them, you sense two of the quintessential signs of autumn that even the least observant phenologists detect... the crunch of dead leaves underfoot, and the smell of them in the air.  It's a little taste of what's to come!

It's Not a Freak Snowfall

...in June when it's 90 degrees... It's cottonwood seeds. They've been falling like snow flurries for a few days but this morning they had accumulated!

More April Fools

We happened on a magnolia tree today that was flowering -- some blossoms fully open, most in process, and some still tightly encased in their large furry buds. Above is my sketch study of some of them. It was very windy, which meant both that the flowers would not hold still for sketching and that their floral scent surrounded me. (Actually, a mother with small children came up to me and said that she liked to sketch but she couldn't get her kids to sit still so she didn't do it any more -- I responded that I couldn't get the plant to be still, either!)

Here are some other tree flowers I saw today:

(In order, a red maple, a variety of cherry not native to this continent, a pussy willow -- look at those colors -- and a cottonwood.)

These tulips must be an early-blooming variety, because most are not close to flowering, even in the city.

These little dwarf irises are a beautiful spring treat... as are the Dutchman's breeches, but I am a little sad because mine aren't even emerging yet, which means they're probably not coming back. I mean, this was a little south of my house, but not that far. Sadness. (But I still have some hope, I'll keep you posted.)

And my last bit of plant news -- after I posted this morning, I went into the front yard and saw the above daffodil. I have no idea why the shaded front yard daffodils flowered before the back yard ones, but today is the first day I've seen the full-sized ones blooming around here.

In animal news, I also sketched this pair of geese that was both nestling their heads in their backs and resting, if not sleeping. I also saw a mink. It ran right past me while I was sketching, and at first I didn't know what the brown thing was, but I ended up getting a good and pretty long view of it. I was drawing, so there was no hope of getting a photo, but it was still pretty cool.

And a last bit of news, I heard on NPR today -- and I assume it was serious, although they were doing all sorts of April Fool's broadcasts, but this one wouldn't be very funny -- that we had record-breaking high temperatures. It hit 83 degrees F. And it was warmer than many southern cities like L.A. (that's the only one I remember). Funny, if people went on trips for spring break and it ended up being warmer here than there! Ha! That's like nature's April Fool.

Our Place in History

As it is somewhat of a slow phenology time, between the rush of spring flowers and the drawn-out bloom of the prairie in summer -- although there are still things to be observed... such as, there are cottonwood seeds blowing all over today, floating gracefully down and up and down again... But back to the point, in the absence of the laundry list of new blossoms of three weeks ago, I shall wax philosophical about our place in history.  

Several weeks ago, fivecrows gave me this book she had acquired sometime earlier.  It's a fascinating book, entitled Apgar's Plant Analysis, published in 1874.  The book, intended, according to the preface, for students of biology, contains several pages of botanical terminology, and then the bulk of the book contains blank pages for the student to fill in describing plants.  (There is also a page that advertises other botanical texts and materials, which describes a botany microscope, with 2 lenses, available for $2.00!!!)  One page, written in 1880 and describing a Uvularia, is shown above.  The pressed flower shown to the left was inside the front cover.  

Among the species described in the book are spring beauty, hepatica, bloodroot, rue anenome, violets, larkspur, trillium, pipevine, columbine, stonecrop, strawberry, phlox, buttercup, cranesbill, lungwort, toothwort, bittercress, Solomon's seal, plantain, marsh marigold, and more.  Many pages are left blank.  (I am sorely tempted to fill one out, but will resist.)

There is no name in the book, although I imagine the botanist was a woman.  This may be because of the extremely neat handwriting -- although I think this was probably typical of everyone at the time.  But it may also be because I relate with his person, I imagine her stopping, almost 130 years ago, in Mrs. Neel's yard and Gardener's Woods -- wherever those places are -- and sitting down to study those plants.  For homework or for pleasure... or both... who knows... Perhaps she sketched them, too, in a different book, lost to time or preserved somewhere else, treasured by someone else.  

I think about her records -- scientific, sterile, formatted, yest still somehow lovingly done -- compared to mine.  Whimsical, on and off, switching from poetic to scientific to plain mundane.  Her perfect handwriting on the lines of a book, tucked away on some shelf, sold eventually at a garage sale; my typing into blogger, out there for anyone to see, and who knows what will happen to it in the future.   How the times have changed, and how they have remained the same.

I suppose it was more common, then, to know the local plants.  It's a different world, a different understanding, for people who do and don't, in some ways.  I was talking to someone last week who said that when he walked in the woods, he saw a lot of green plants and trees.  None of them were different to him.  He didn't understand how people differentiated between them all, or why they bothered, or how they remembered.  To me, every plant is different.  Even if I don't know its name -- or especially then -- I am interested in its characteristics, and how it differs from others of its kind and why.  There are so many things to see, everywhere.  I sort of understand him, though... what if I could tell all those little brown birds apart?  Would the world look wholly different to me?  

What is it they found?  On average, children can identify over 1,000 corporate logos but fewer than 10 native species that live in their area.  (Read more.)  I'm guessing that back in 1880 there weren't so many corporate logos cluttering people's brains and more care was given over to what grew in yards and parks.  It's a sad state of affairs, but I'm glad I am connected to this glimpse of a phenologist's records from the 19th century.  I wonder what someone will say when they come across mine, someday...