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!)

Bird Day

Yesterday was a crazy bird day... First this red tail let me get about 10 feet from me before swooping down and flying to a nearby tree.  Diving ducks on the lake, but they all look like non-descript dots... I can ID buffleheads and mergansers, both of which I've seen in the past few weeks but neither of which there are... The most amazing bird happening was the tree swallows... Today and yesterday there were tons of them, swooping and diving all over the lake, skimming the water, grabbing... Something.  Very cool (but no photos at all of small fast-moving birds).

Almost pasqueflower... Almost prairie smoke, too...

Blooms

Celandine poppies

Prairie smoke

Center of ice stick tulips 

Almost pasqueflower 

Hepatica

Spring Has Sprung

Illinois is the Prairie State, but if you're lucky enough to have access to a wooded area, this is the perfect week to explore it.  Spring ephemerals are in their prime, and, as their name implies, their beauty is short-lived....

Hepatica

Hepatica is in full bloom right now.  I love this wildflower especially, not just because it's an early treat, but because they come in so many colors -- white and pink and purple and blue -- sometimes all right next to each other.  Bloodroot is also in full bloom in the woodlands, its large white flowers standing out against the brown of last year's leaves and green of emerging leaves.   It's leaves -- themselves an interesting shape -- are still curled around the stems; the stems show the red liquid inside that gives the plants their name. 

Bloodroot

Just starting to bloom are trout lilies -- their splotchy, trout-skin leaves are all over -- spring beauties, and anenomes.  

May apples and trilliums have not yet flowered, but their unique foliage is popping up.  

If you only have access to prairies, there are some early flowers there, too.  Pasqueflower is in full bloom right now, with its purple flowers and fuzzy stems.  This is always one to which I look forward; Leopold's quotations makes it seem significant to me.  I know I quote him each year at this time, but I'll still remind you of this passage from ASCA: "For us of 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."

Prairie Smoke is also starting to bloom!

Also... the first tick of the season was seen a week and a half ago, but they're out in full force now.  I pulled several off kids today.

Spring Beauty

trout lily

Pasqueflower

Anenome

D-Day!

I have been waiting for this day for months!  As I ran through the newly flooded back loop of Rollins Savannah... clad, I might add, in shorts and a tank top... a dragonfly swooped past my head.  YEA!  It wasn't the only thing that the strong wind carried my way... the cloyingly sweet perfume of blooming magnolias.  The aroma of outdoor grilling.  When the mercury first tops 80, everything comes out to play.

Also seen:  trout lilies blooming.  Baby geese (on 4/28).  Pasqueflower blooming.  First prairie smoke blooming.  Dandelions in full bloom.

Rights of Spring

Pasqueflowers

"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 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." -- Aldo Leopold


In other news, this afternoon a storm came through -- presumably the start of a cold front -- bringing much needed rain after over a week of dry heat.  Sheets of rain poured down, and afterwards the smell of spring was in the air.  Delicious!

Pasque Part 2

Today I sketched my pasqueflower. First I drew the flower from a regular view (on the right) and I was pretty pleased with the flower part. The stem and leaves, however, were so hairy that they a) required too much patience, and b) were too difficult to really capture. There's so much fuzz you can hardly tell what shape the leaves actually are! If it were a common plant, or a weed, I'd stick my finger in there and move them around and get a better view, but I didn't want to hurt my plant. For the second (left) sketch, I bent over more to view it right from the side, sort of like how it was photographed yesterday. The sun was shining through the petals, so the places where they overlapped appeared really dark, while the places where they didn't appeared bright white. Same problem with the leaves.

Today

"There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.

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

Pasqueflowers always make me think of Aldo Leopold. They secured an honored place in the second paragraph of the forward to ASCA... probably the most important and influential phenological document ever, not to mention one of the 2 most "impactful" environmental works ever written (and written over 60 years ago, so it's amazing how current its themes still seem. The other impactful book, by the way, is Silent Spring, this according to the American Nature Study Society). And so to me they have special significance. With their early bloom, they remind me that spring really will win over winter. Their rarity drives home the message of Leopold's book. Their diminutive size, almost hidden among last year's litter, tells us that beauty and wonder can come in small packages.

So, yea!! My pasqueflowers are blooming. I have no idea why they are so terribly pale, but I am thrilled that they came back. I've had a terrible time with them, never getting one to come back more than once. That includes this one, as we just put it in last year. Perhaps they only live for two years, though that doesn't seem right... And they're so hard to find, this is my last effort!

Other good news: my ephemerals did, indeed, come back. At least most of them. Shown below are bloodroot, mayapple, and a trillium, all behind last year's pace but there nonetheless. Shooting stars are also well along, and wild geraniums, and spring beauties, and wild ginger, and marsh marigold (one) and bluebells. The only things that didn't return to my yard are my red baneberry and my Dutchman's breeches.

These hepatica are in my mom's yard. They are a lot happier than mine. (Actually, my one that bloomed the other day isn't looking good at all. I suspect that was it's final attempt at productivity before expiring. I have two others that look like they'll be more like this, but they haven't bloomed yet at all.) My mom also has a Dutchman's breeches about 1.5 inches tall.

Oh, and we are having a major creeping charlie problem, which we may have to fight using drastic measures or we risk losing most of the aforementioned wildflowers.

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!)

Photo Journal

Currant flowers, 4-22.

First Jacob's Ladder, 4-22.

4-23. Milkweeds are some of the latest plants to emerge, so when their bullet-shaped seedlings come up, I know it's time to start looking for early signs of SUMMER.

4-23. Pasqueflower seeds.

Redbud flowers, 4-25.

Tulip studies, 4-25.

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...