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.

More Partial Pictures

Maidenhair fern, which I could have spent hours drawing, but even getting this far I felt like I was doing the same thing over and over. It was neat, though, because it was wort of backlit by a setting sun so all the shadows were somewhat reversed of what they would normally be.
We have TONS of gentian this year, which is excellent, it's so pretty. Rather a scribble picture, not my normal style, but I kind of like how it came out.

The Daily Grind

It's funny how time and circumstance change our perspective immensely. Two months ago, in the midst of reporting on changing ice crystals, if I could even find a change in them, I would have given anything to have one tiny leaf, little emerging fiddlehead... anything to write about. Now, with embarrassing riches of change every hour of every day, I don't seem to want to write about something unless it's a magnificent new burst of color... I check the marsh marigolds for yellow blooms, but am a day or two early yet. I check the mertensia for their tightly-closed purple buds to turn blue, but am early there, too. And so I don't write. Even though the walnut trees are leafing out, significant not just because all leaf-outs are significant, but because compound leaves are usually slower than their simple friends.

I skipped these periwinkles entirely just because they aren't wildflowers or something I planted -- they bloomed last week. I didn't tell you that the bloodroots, which I chronicled from bud to blossom and some steps in between, are now spent, their pristine white petals littering the floor and creased with the brown of death. I didn't mention that my 4 mayapples have turned to 14, that hepatica, one of the first spring ephemerals to show their stamen, are still blooming strong. I skipped the reddish leaves of the queen of the prairie emerging from the blackened earth. And really? If I tried to describe the changes in the serviceberry, I'd practically be at a loss for words, anyhow -- they are different every day, but until I see an actual flower, what can I say?

I'm not sure, in the end, if I'm spoiled by the wealth of the season, or if I'm frustrated by my lack of words to describe it. See, I feel as though, in the second year of this blog, constant snapshots and factual reports of blossoms won't cut it. I want to say something every time I write, and I just don't have that much to say about phenology each and every occurrence. I notice them, I celebrate them to myself... but I don't always have words. Plus, there are a lot of gray areas. Do I report this golden Alexander flower even though the rest of the plants -- even the rest of the flowers on this plant -- look about a week away from wearing yellow?

And then there's things like this...

I don't have any clue what this fern is. We've planted a large variety, the tags are all gone, and it won't be until real fronds emerge that I have any hope of IDing them. So what do I call it?

You'll pardon my complaining about issues that aren't really problems at all... it's a lovely day, week -- enjoy all that's happening out there!

Another Garden Visit

Here is the new damselfly for the day... but I can't positively identify her. (The bluets are hard -- there's a ton and they all look similar. But the female bluets are even harder!) I think this one might be a female blue-fronted dancer.
I know this is bad photo (of orange bluets mating) but the point I wanted to make is... damselflies were mating today, like, a lot. At one point, I saw three couples at one time.
Sunflower ready to open up! I love the brown sunflowers, because their brown color is on top of the typical sunflower yellow. You can see the yellow through the brown costume, and if you pick a petal and break it, it's yellow inside.
Virgin's bower, the native clematis, in bloom.
Boneset.
Hophornbeam seeds.
Hazel nuts.

Now for the waterfowl update...
Baby swans.
This juvenile duck, probably one of the first born this year, is the size of an adult, but his coloring hasn't fully come in yet (his head doesn't have the pretty green), whereas...
These baby mallards are much littler and so so cute.

Plants turning color already (and, besides this fern and anenome, there are more, like some serviceberry leaves and Solomon's seal).

(Yeah, I know this is sideways. I don't care.)

Spring seems here to stay.

Linden Leafs Out

New, translucent leaves line the linden branches.  Below is a sketch of a linden seedling.  Who would ever imagine that the seed leaves of a linden would look like that!

We have reached the point where it would be easier to list the trees that haven't leafed out than those that have.  Even locusts and sumac have leafed out.  (Well, some sumacs have emerging leaves; others don't yet.)

The first wild geranium blooming.
A cinnamon fern fiddlehead.

Shooting stars bloom.  For years I have had these in my garden; this is the first year they are finally happy enough to flower!

Also flowering: lilacs are beginning to open flowers -- yesterday each cluster had 1-2 open flowers; today they have 5-6.  Redbuds are in peak flowering mode.  Serviceberries are shedding petals. 

Tired of me yet?

OK, it would certainly be ridiculous to complain about a self-imposed mandate... but it is hard to upkeep a phenology blog at this time of year.  So much is happening so quickly!  Certain things I have just entirely written off.  I figure that gives me something to write about next year, when my loyal readers have read all about the bloodroot and the may apples... they will have read nothing of the pussy willow of the birch!  Anyhow, I had planned to write about some of the things I observed in my mom's yard last night (I still will), but then this morning, I saw several other noteworthy things to write about as well.

As I believe I have previously mentioned, my parents' yard in Highland Park contains a wealth of native woodland stock.  Without trying, they get wildflowers popping up -- right in the middle of the lawn, (and sometimes, unfortunately, under the blade of the lawnmower).  It's their whole area.  The house across the street... when I was growing up, it was a blue house and the whole front yard was a little forest.  No grass at all.  It had bloodroot and black raspberries and I don't remember what all else.  The house was totally remodeled and new people moved in; the yard for a little more tailored over time but kept its natural qualities.  About a year ago, the house sold again.  The new owners have destroyed everything but the trees.  Under and around them is all wood chips.  There were bloodroot in there that were in huge clumps, like how I dream of mine someday being.  Criminal.  And speaking of criminal... I should have dug it up in the middle of the night when I had the chance!  Would have, if I'd known the new people would destroy them.

So without doing any sort of planting or thieving, searching for woodland natives (which are much harder to come by than prairie natives), or any work at all, my mom's yard has a field of trout lilies, which are blooming.  They have spread into the lawn and survived living under canoes. (Last year, we transplanted several to my yard, due to the canoe factor.  Only one tiny leaf came back in my yard.  Where the canoes used to be, you can't even tell we took any.  (The canoes now have a lovely rack, btw.)) Embedded parentheses, how about that?!?

Their yard also has spring beauties by the hundreds, anemones in large numbers (pictured below left), trillium, and Virginia waterleaf.  Later it will have jewelweed, and I always remember wild onions but I don't know if those still come back.

  

Of course, they also have their problems.  Buckthorn stayed away for a long while, but recently made its debut and is there in full force.  They have poison ivy by the side of the house!  And, as seen above right, they gots the garlic mustard -- which I did pull after photographing.  This particular invasive biennial is not a problem in my yard, and I count myself lucky.  (When I moved in, I had a small clump of it.  I pulled it out and haven't seen any more since!)  You might think that since it's not a perennial and since it's pretty easy to weed with the root included, that it wouldn't be that much of a problem.  Wrong.  It makes a million seeds, and that's hardly an exaggeration.  But worse, it poisons the soil where it lives.  Mustards are some of the only plants that don't rely upon tiny invisible fungi in the soil for survival.  Our native mustards don't need them, but live among them.  Garlic mustard, on the other hand, lets out a fungicide from its roots, killing the stuff that makes the soil hospitable to other plant life.  Not a good neighbor.  And the only thing that really eats it?  People.  That's how it got here in the first place, as a culinary herb.  Oops.  And people aren't eating it anymore.  So in a week or so, all the roadsides will be decorated with this innocent-looking but evil white flower.  Time for a weeding party!

On to my own digs.     

The fern forest that takes over part of my yard made its emergence sometime this weekend.  (This is just the cutest stage in a fern's life cycle, no?)  These ferns take over the area, out-competing almost everything else -- including other native ferns I have planted.  But they are pretty and low maintenance, so I'm not complaining.  They thrive in the shade of my box elders, and they actually do an OK job at keeping the buckthorn in check. 

And each day, I notice other emergences in the yard, such as, this morning, Joe Pye Weed (pictured below), some blazing stars (not below because, honestly, all these emerging plants look really similar), Bellwort (also below).  Also trillium almost flowering (below) and prairie alumroot (emerged awhile ago...)