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!

Basswood, Linden, Honey-tree...

Basswood leaves, seeds and bracts (unfinished; it turns out there is NOT enough time in the day to do all that I want to do and all that I need to do and also sleep -- which I guess is a need and a want -- so... unfinished drawings. Ah, well.  At least I'm drawing.)

Call it what you will, the seeds of the basswood are starting to disperse.  I used to think that the bracts were instrumental in seed dispersal, similar to the wings of a maple seed.  But in fact, many of the bracts stay on the tree and the seeds fall off independently, as happened with the missing seeds in the picture above.  The bracts may actually function to attract pollinators to the flowers earlier in the year; and seed dispersal's most likely vector, besides gravity, is animals.  (When the seeds sprout into baby trees, the seedleaves are crazy -- nothing at all like the leaves of the tree shown above... but that's not happening yet!)

I guess it would be negligent not to explain the title.  Growing up on the north shore, I called these trees linden trees, but apparently this is a fairly localized common name for what most people call the basswood.  (My husband had no idea what I was talking about when I referenced a linden).  And many people call them honey-trees, due to the sticky sap that drips from them... as anyone who has ever parked their car under one well understands.  I guess we could clear up confusion and just say Tilia americana, but that's no fun...

More From Today.

OK... first thing's first. Today is ICE OFF day! This morning there was still a largish mass floating, but strong winds broke it up. There are some ice-cube sized chunks that have floated over to the edge, and were making a clinking sound as they were pushed together in the wavelets. It sounded like nature was throwing a cocktail party to celebrate spring! (You know, before it snows again.)

The sexually precocious American Hazels have begun to display their bright pink female flowers. (Many shrubs have none yet, but several have branches adorned with these almost impossibly small but beautifully colored flowers.) Alders are also girl-flowering (in addition to the male flowers noted earlier) now, but I didn't get a picture of them.

I have discovered, by the way, that if I carry a white index card with me, I can slip it behind small subjects and it makes it a lot easier to get the auto-focus to focus on the proper thing. I recognize that the sacrifice here is the artfulness of the photos, but sometimes, the goal is scientific documentation. Especially when I have 20+ kids waiting for me and not understanding why I am stopping to take a picture of something random like a bud when they are studying something totally different like birds, for example. So the boring backgrounds aren't necessarily my first choice, but they serve their function.

Many buds are swelling up and showing peeks of green between their scales. Not that many species, but enough that it's starting to be exciting out there...

shown above, Linden, serviceberry, and weeping willow (with catkins showing).

And more from the baby plant front, here are prairie smoke flower buds (left) and baby bergamots, in the shadow of Naomi (right).

Naked Thursday!

Some trees are getting nekkid. Mostly ashes, lindens, crab apples, some oaks (but others still have green leaves...) The bare trees must be feeling cold and wet. It's been raining for about 8 hours and doesn't seem like it's going to stop any time soon.

My driveway and front yard are covered in ash leaves...

Warmth! (Yea!)

Today is a beautiful day, as was yesterday. The sun is shining, it is relatively warm (which means light jacket only, not short sleeves or anything). There are dragonflies (meadowhawks at least, maybe others) around the pond, and grasshoppers are everywhere. I haven't seen a frog in a while; I think I won't until spring.

grasshopper in there. See it? off to the left.

But still... in the midday sun, shadows are long

and there is something just... I don't know... oppressive in the air. As though winter is breathing down our necks and this niceness is just a reprieve, a delaying of the inevitable...

Plants are preparing for next spring already; with buds and catkins they face the winter days ahead just like so many people do... with their eyes on spring.

basswood bud; hazel catkins.

Another Day...

There are grasshoppers everywhere. Green ones, brown ones, orangish ones... so many grasshoppers, like the grass is moving independently just a step or two before I actually get there.

The asters at work are just pinkier than anywhere else. No idea why.
One linden tree that thinks its fall, although all its friends are still green.

Seed pods on prairie mimosa.

Happy 4th!

Independence Day was mostly cloudy, temperature pleasant, and the sky teased of needed rain or most of the morning. It spitted a few times in the morning, but I stayed outside with a book through it all, so no real water. Finally, this afternoon, a steady, pitter-patter of rain fell, refreshing. It felt good to stand out in it. But I don't actually think it gave us a substantial amount of water. Finally, it got sunny in the early evening -- good luck, I guess, for all the fireworks watchers out there.

Flowers on a linden tree, nearly spent.

Big red-orange lilies blooming in my yard.

The first butterflyweed bloomed in my yard this morning (although most is a few days behind, and at school it is in full bloom. And I cannot figure out the pattern, really, because this flower is in a shadier spot than the other stand in my yard...)
Seedheads beginning to form on the northern sea oats.

And again...

Dasmselfly of the day: Spreadwing. Variety unknown -- apparently, they are very difficult to distinguish.
Some brief notes:

• Purple coneflower is finally blooming in my yard (which seems to be about 2 weeks behind school).
• At Illinois Beach state park, the irises are essentially done; the last few are looking ratty.
• Spiderwort is still in full bloom; it blooms for so long!
• Linden is in full flower.
• Catalpa are finished flowering in some cases, but others have many flowers still.
• Butterflyweed is almost open; other milkweeds are in full bloom.
• The lilies in my yard are open; and the roses which keep blooming year after year despite my utter neglect opened last weekend.

It is HOT. And? Humid. That's all I really have to say about today. Yesterday, I spent about 4 hours doing yard work, and probably sweat about 5 lbs. off. (Also, I got several mosquito bites, including 2 on my face, despite using spray; and strange sunburn stripes in little odd places that I missed with sunscreen. Plus, I discovered that spiderwort at this stage in its life (slightly past peak bloom) seems to have a deep blue sap, which is actually beautiful but stains clothes and skin. So I looked pretty beat up at the end of yesterday. This morning, we went strawberry picking with some friends, and despite the fact that we were done before 10 am, I still sweated buckets. Oy.

This picture, taken from the car window, shows some early coneflowers. None in my yard are blooming at all. They are close, but not that close.

Juneberries (Serviceberries)... will they be ready

in June?

Some are reddening, but they need to be deep purple

before they should be harvested.

Almost-flowers on basswood/linden tree.

Also noted but not photographed:

• thistles are blooming (have been since about Saturday).
• wild indigo is blooming, but not in my yard, as I can never get it to take very well, and it comes back, but small and stunted...
• a lot of almosts right now... almost false sunflowers, almost coneflowers in my yard, almost milkweed, almost queen of the prairie...

Stay cool!!!!

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.