Finally, Sun! And flowers.

After over a week of relentless rain rain rain (and chill) we finally have some sun, and it looks like it's here to stay for a while.  

In the world of trees... some tiny leafies are starting to peak out -- especially on crabapples (pictured here) and lilacs.  

Also, red maples are flowering so brightly red, they're earning their name this week!

And some early magnolias have started flowering, but mostly they're just quite swollen.

In the prairie, not much happens this early, but prairie smoke is in that "almost" stage:

In the world of bulbs, quite a few daffodils are blooming, but most are still not there yet.

I also noticed some early hyacinths flowering. Oh, and periwinkles, which are not bulbs but we'll group them here as cultivated non-native flowers.

This violet photo is actually from last week -- on 3/31 I noticed them flowering, but I was too lazy to do a post for just that.


Many, many interesting ducks migrating through this time of year.  I don't carry binoculars or a bird book or a good working memory of duck ID, so... you'll just have to trust me that they're interesting.

History Repeats Itself

Last week began with a warm and beautiful Monday, followed by a cold and gloomy Tuesday.  This week has started identically... we broke 80 degrees on Monday, which was sunny and breezy and lovely.  Last night, a front came through -- it started with brief but violent storms -- the photo below is hail on my deck.  It only fell for about 5-10 minutes, but it was a loud and violent 10 minutes.  Overnight, the temperatures fell, and today we're looking at a high temperature about 30 degrees below yesterday's.  And it's not raining, but it's not dry, either... it'd be a good day to stay at home with a book or a puzzle, but that's not an option...

 Here are some other updates from the past 24 hours:

Leaf-out photos... above, basswood/linden/however you prefer to refer to Tilia species.  Below, silver maple, which is not only leafing out, but getting the famous samara "helicopter" seeds. 

Look at this fascinating fellow.  At one point in my walk yesterday, I brushed many of theses mayflies off my shirt.  They must have had an emergence in that area.

OK, I know this isn't the best photo, probably not even worth showing, but... look how YELLOW that goldfinch is in the center.  They just make me happy. 

And in the flower world... the first lilacs are starting to open...

...those redbuds have started to open...

...tomorrow I think we'll be showing crabapples opening, they're so so close!

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!)

How Green!

...are there lilac buds!

Shrubs are Singing...

All over, trees and shrubs are flowering... 

Crab apples, whose pink buds turn to white as soon as they flower.

Lilacs, which should be in full bloom just in time for mother's day!

Judd's Viburnum

Leaf-Outs

Crabapple

Lilac

Chokeberry

Forsythia 

Ick.

The nice weather lasted... 1 day!  Yesterday was rainy -- a cold front coming through, and by evening the rain was really sleet.  This morning dawned COLD.  And muddy.  

Still, spring is marching on.  Goldfinches are gold, and daffodils are blooming.  Some shrubs -- black currants, lilacs -- are starting top leaf out, so that we can see a springy green haze in some places when we look across lawns and fields.  Catkins are finally fluffy on willows, aspen, and other trees...  

Update

Today:
Serviceberry flowers, first lilac flowers opened (literally while I was watching, they weren't open this morning and then at lunch they were!) and rain, rain, rain all day long!  But a nice, warm rain...

Some Sketches

 I am pretty out of practice with sketching.  And I haven't the time to work on it.  I wish I did; maybe now with daylight savings time... Anyhow, today I stole about 15 minutes while eating my snack and tried three very quick sketches, then later a fourth... but I didn't really "get into" or feel great about any of them.  Ah, well.  They still illustrate what's happening today!

Siberian Elms Flowering

First Forsythia Flowers

Yesterday, the forsythia bushes had small yellow buds on them.  In 24 hours, they grew about a centimeter and some of them opened up.  It's really amazing -- you could probably literally see them grow if you had the patience.

Lilacs Buds Begin to Look Like Leaves

Crocus

Other notables today:

• 2 daffodils bloomed in our yard, although most are not even close.
• Scilla started blooming today.
• Temperatures topped 80 degrees F.

Things I Love

Things I Love, by Naomi

• I love waking up to a cacophony of chirps from robins and chickadees, sparrows and cardinals, through the open bedroom window.
• I love walking around my yard to check what's blooming before I leave for work without having to put a jacket on.  (Today: dwarf irises, crocuses, lilac leaves pushing out of their bud scales...)  (I'd love it even more if I didn't have to go to work, but the point is, no jacket to bother with, even early in the morning.)
• I love wearing my sunglasses as a headband when I step inside and not having to worry about the fact that a hat is already in their place on my head.  
• I love not wearing socks.  
• I love when my closet -- situated over the garage and not part of the heating or cooling system of the house -- isn't freezing or boiling when I go to get my clothes. 
• I love when things change every day; it's like waking up to discover a new world each morning.  Even after a mild winter, it's so so refreshing to hit almost-spring.   

(Just wait until we get some sort of April blizzard.  Oh, the complaining I'll engage in!)

Baby Pictures and Other Updates

Spring marches on, and here are some of the floats at the parade today...

Some buds are starting to do more than just swell, they're turning green and scales are splitting. Above, serviceberry (left) and lilac.

Some plants are popping up green shoots, like the rattlesnake master babies shown on the left. And early flower-ers are getting ready. Shown here, prairie smoke buds (photo taken on 4/3) show their pink color. Pasqueflower buds are brown and fuzzy and I'm keeping an eye upon them.

It is a good time for hazels of all sorts. Here is an American hazel twig with its catkins (male flowers) swollen and enlarged, almost blooming. Two tiny female flowers are also visible in the background. Meanwhile, witch hazel is in full bloom, and the bushes are surrounded by a cloud of perfume... a sticky sweet scent that almost makes me dizzy. Sigh... the internet is good, but there are some things you still have to experience in person...

I found this egg shell today which we believe to be a mourning dove egg based on size, color, and timing. It wasn't especially near a nest of any sort (that I could find).
And finally... our first daffodils! These are extremely precocious, as it were... most are about 6 inches tall with no hint of flowers opening yet. Some are significantly shorter depending on sun/soil conditions. These blooming ones are right next to a building, which perhaps provides them with heat? (My uncle, 30 miles south, within an urban heat bubble, and steps from the shore of Lake Michigan, reported seeing daffodils over the weekend. My dad, in England... so thousands of miles to the east, quite a bit north, and under the influence of some ocean currents that obviously don't bless us here... sent pictures of daffodils over a month ago!)

Cute Cookie

A student found this painted turtle in his deck and brought it to his class today. I got to go with them to release him into the wild. The kids, who developed quite an attachment in only 4 hours, called it Tiny Tim, but I called it Cookie. Actually, I call all turtles that are about an inch (give or take) in diameter cookie turtles. They just make me think of little cookies, the kind of thing you could pop in your mouth in one bite. I mean, I wouldn't actually do that, even if I weren't a vegetarian, but... they're just as cute as little cookies, even though they have little grumpy-old-man faces.

In other news... nearly everything (or at least some members of every species) has at least tiny leaves now -- locusts and lindens, ashes and oaks... it's a green world out there! And the first lilac flowers opened today, but just like one flower per bunch...

I love pasqueflowers. The native crocus, I always thought... a short plant with a purple flower, over an inch long, that blooms early, at a time when your soul desperately needs to see something blooming. And, of course, Aldo Leopold immortalized them in A Sand County Almanac, giving their appearance in spring a new, almost patriotic dimension.

"Like winds and sunsets, wild things were taken for granted until progress began to do away with them. Now we face the question whether a still higher 'standard of living' is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.

"For us of in 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."

It was with that in mind that I sought out pasqueflowers for my own yard. It wasn't easy. The genetically native ones aren't that common even when you do find purveyors of native plants, and they're not growing plentifully so that you could go and dig one up someplace. I went to countless native plant sales... some had plant lists available, with pasqueflower on them... and then I arrived (right at the beginning, to be sure they didn't sell out, because I was certain that everyone else wanted these gems as much as I did) and found out that they never had pasqueflower in the first place. They thought they were going to, but... and I went to sales with no lists in hopes of finding one. In the end, over the years, I got 5 native ones and one from a garden center that was a little different. Some of them came back for a second year, but clearly, my place isn't good for pasqueflower. I have put them in 3 different areas, places that are sunny and shadier, and this year... none came back. I am a bit sad. I was still hopeful, see? I went out and looked each day at the spot where the nursery tags still poke out of the earth. I thought at least that not-quite-native one would come back, it was probably bred to live in a garden-type place. I thought maybe they were late and I really hadn't given up on them... until this morning. Returning to school, I saw this:

Not only has this pasqueflower emerged and bloomed, but the flowers are starting to brown! So I'm thinking mine are all dead. (It's probably partly due to me, though... I let things get too crowded; I can't bear to cut back the native plants I put in myself, even when they spread and make babies and get in the way of the other native plants. So I blame myself. Anyhow, I'm done with them. After 5 years, 6 plants, and many hours searching, I have resigned myself to the fact that pasqueflowers are among the plants that don't want to live in my yard, of which there are several. Oh, well.)

I'm sure I missed plenty of other things at school in my week away. One of them is the flowering of the little elm trees, which have apparently already shed their reproductive parts and are beginning to make seeds.

Here, almost-ready-to-do-something-exciting Juneberries and lilacs.

I'll let you know what else I've missed...

Lilac

So... at what point do I get to call this a leaf instead of a bud? Because I feel like we're close.

Signs of Spring?

Or maybe just wishful thinking... you be the judge.

I was outside this morning and again this afternoon. The snow melted considerably between one and the other. It was a very sunny, warm day.

Also? I saw a bug. Far away from the building (so it couldn't just have been living inside and flown out the door), a small fly-like insect was darting around. It moved like a diptera, was about 2 mm long, and wouldn't stop moving long enough for me to get a good look at it. But there's definitely a bug out there.

These lilac buds are greening. I really think they are. Or am I just imagining it?...

I have been seeing tracks not just of opossum (left), but we also found tracks from a skunk (right)-- I'm pretty sure. After a lot or poring over books and researching, I have not been able to conclusively determine that these "mystery tracks" were skunk, but I have ruled out almost everything else and couldn't come up with any proof that they were not skunk.

I recognize that these animals walking around is not necessarily a sign of spring, as these animals awake and emerge at intervals throughout the winter... but they sure have been active lately!

Photo note: I know these track photos should be rotated. They're not great photos anyhow -- it was so sunny it was hard to even see, much less take pictures -- but it would help if they were the right way. But my computer is being ornery and won't turn them, and I'm done fighting with it, so just... tilt your head to the left and all will be well.