A Servicable Berry

Serviceberries are ripening, some turning the darker shade of red that means they're ready to harvest.  Serviceberries are one of the species out there that have several, regional common names that can make it hard to communicate about them; serviceberry is my least favorite.  Juneberry I like because it accurately describes when the berries are ready,  giving you some useful information.  Saskatoon is just a fun name, from a Cree word for the shrubs.  (Saskatoon, Sasketewan, is named after these plants, and not the other way around!)  Shadberry (or variants -- shadbush, etc.) is used in the NE and refers to the shad runs that take place at the time of blooming.  

I was first introduced to these berries as Saskatoons when I lived in Northern Minnesota.  People lauded them as a great native substitute for blueberries in muffins or pancakes, and used them to make jam.  I'll give you that they are the siza and shape of a blueberry, and have a similar flavor (which similarly improves when cooked).  Personally, though, I find the seeds to be a bit of an annoyance in terms of using them as a food source.  The seeds -- 3 per berry, I think -- are about 2 times the size of a raspberry seed.  They're perfectly edible and just come out the other end, but, you know... I'm not expecting my muffin to cruch quite so much, I guess.  I've tried making jam with them and leaving the seeds in and frankly, eating it was really unplesant.  I've also tried removing the seeds to make jam, and to be totally honest, this is not worth the considerable time and effort it took.  If I were hungry or foraging I'd certainly count them as a great food source, but in today's world, they're not my favorite.  (And I'm saying that as a locavore, who would just rather be eating the strawberries that are peaking now and the early raspberries and even black raspberries have just started to come in.)

A note about making jam with serviceberries... Amelanchiers are in the rose family, same as apples, and as such are very high-pectin fruits.  I make jame without using pectin and have gotten pretty good at judging the gel point and know which fruits take longer and which are shorter... still, sometimes I undercook (syrup) or overcook (just not good).  The first time I made serviceberry jam, it gelled so fast, I was in disbelief and kept cooking.  I ended up with something so stiff it was unspreadable and even un-get-out-of-the-jar-able.  So that's my warning if you're planning to try it.  It seems like it'd be a good year to, as there's a bumper crop, at least here! 

Seeds of the saskatoon.

Flowers

Wild strawberries.

serviceberries.

Dutchman's breeches.

Creeping Charlie, my nemesis, flowering all over my yard.

Also...

Mayapples, not flowering yet. Just umbrella-info.

Puffball World

This morning I came across several logs just covered in puffballs. 

They are at that place where if you touch them, clouds of spores come out like a brown plume of smoke.  I tried to capture that in a photo with less success than I'd have liked...

In other news, serviceberries are looking lovely this time of year, no? 

Bad Guys and Good

It's not a happy occasion when the garlic mustard flowers, but it's an important one.  We all know that flowers are followed by seeds... in this case, a lot or seeds.  And so, if we're going to remove the garlic mustard from our open spaces, this is about the last opportunity! 

Meanwhile... Serviceberries are flowering.  looking forward to berries in June!

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...

Can't Keep Up!

Things are happening so fast out there that if I had enough time to blog every single day, it still wouldn't be enough.  I'd need to blog every hour to keep up with all the changes.  we're supposed to get some cooler weather starting tomorrow, so maybe that'll put the brakes on.

The bloodroot, which started to flower on Sunday,
can't handle the heat (perhaps) and by today have
dropped their petals!

We're at that point where, if you look across a field at a tree line or forest, the whole thing takes on a lime green glow... a haze of tiny leaf-outs and tree flowers in the springiest of greens just hangs there.  Our catalpa has started leafing out.  Maples are all flowering now, including the green-yellow flowers of sugar and Norway maples.  Serviceberries look green... everything is just popping out green.  Meanwhile, here are some blooming updates... though I apologize for the photos, I couldn't really see the screen too well and didn't realize they weren't coming out!  Plus, I'm at the stripey-world computer.

Our sedges are flowering rather strikingly.

Blurry celandine poppies bloomed this morning!  So lovely...

Blooms

The first -- very early -- serviceberries are flowering today.

Tulips are now in full bloom here.

It is still unseasonably chilly.

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!)

Moving On...

This morning I awakened to a frost-covered world. Around here, our last frost date is May 15, supposedly. This is when it is deemed pretty safe to plant frost-intolerant plants outside. That means that, two weeks before the safe date, every time the cold night causes frost, it could theoretically be the last... last night's frost was accompanied by temperatures that, according to the internet, dipped below freezing. (My thermometer is currently out of commission, so I must trust the internet.)

On the other hand, today I went out into the "woods" (I put quotes because we're a prairie place -- our woods are smaller than a football field and mostly buckthorn and honeysuckle) and swarms of little gnats (or tiny mosquitoes -- kids thought they were this, but they never bit anyone) were all around our heads... Just Monday these bugs weren't around at all. So it's winter and summer, all in one day.

In the plant world, there are new flowers every day...

But some things have moved past stage 1 (flowering) and on to stage 2 (seeds)...

Maple "helicopters" getting prepared for flight.
Serviceberries flowers have ended, berries have yet to form.

Saskatoon, June- or Serviceberries...

Now, this is a serviceberry update I can easily describe: first flowers, 4/14.

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!

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...

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).

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!!!!

May Day

Serviceberry flowers.

I quite enjoy this time of year, when many trees turn white with flower petals, and then eventually they fall like snow, creating a delicate white carpet below their former branches.  But that is getting ahead of myself... 

Mertensia have opened up.  These flowers, along with lily of the valley, used to grow at my grandparents' house when I was small.  My granny was a plant person; she had a little greenhouse window for indoor plants and a yard with a garden and a little woodland area.  Still I think of her when I see bluebells (and of my mom when the lilies of the valley bloom).

First uvularia opened up today (and already one petal is broken!)  I have several bellworts in the yard and this is the only one close to flowering.  Another mystery.  Same with the wild strawberry... most buds are still closed; this one decided to open up early!