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!)

Ticks Reported Today

Between Scilla and Charybdis

We're not between a sea monster and a whirlpool, but somewhere between cold and warm; we're in the brown between the white and the green. In this time of anticipation, caught between winter and spring, come the scilla.

In garden news, I planted peas and spinach yesterday... carrots next weekend. The garden looks... hopeful. Empty, but that also means weed-free, with trellises waiting for the weight of vines to grab at them. The beds are so flat and rich brown and perfect. In the basement, tiny tomatoes (and friends), barely two inches tall and basking in grow light, wait for the time, 6 weeks hence, when they can sink their roots into the soil, too.

In the native world, early bloomers, like spiderwort, Jacob's ladder, golden Alexander are poking up through the dead remains of last year's plants, 2-3 inches tall...

Crocus

Returning to Illinois, it almost seems as though spring has stalled, the weather still cold. But the crocuses were up, reminding me that it IS spring and it WILL get warm!

Georgia on my Mind

Earlier this week, we flew south, like confused birds, to get an early taste of spring on the Georgia coast. I had actually hoped for more of an early taste of summer... last week, I followed the weather and it was in the upper 70's and lower 80's in Savannah. What a treat that would be after a late March in Illinois that just wouldn't seem to get out of the 30's, at least not for long. Well, we arrived in Savannah at about the same time as a cold front, headed up by torrential downpours. Driving unfamiliar roads in an unfamiliar car isn't fun, but it gets even worse when your visibility is about 5 feet and roads are closed due to flooding, but detours aren't marked. But even so... it was green and it smelled fresh and new.

When we got to the b and b where we were staying, guests on their way out told us of the perfect weather they'd had, assured us that we'd have the same. We didn't. That night, it stormed spectacularly, causing a power outage on the entire island... but it stopped by morning and we had rain-free days. But not warm ones. It stayed in the 50's -- the low 50's a lot of the time -- and we didn't see even a glimpse of the sun the entire time we were there.

Still... the weather couldn't stop us from enjoying the southland in the springtime.

The live oaks spread their branches over streets and walkways, creating tunnels. Epiphytic Spanish moss hangs down, creating a fairy tale atmosphere.

Everywhere trees are flowering, leaves emerged but still lime green and new, thin and almost translucent.
The last to leaf out, even this oak has tiny leaves...

While we weren't able to lounge on the beach, we did explore the beach and, at low tide, made several discoveries:
Lettered olives, alive and shiny... we also found a few empty shells.

Sea stars...

Jellyfish, most dead and washed up, but this comb jelly still alive and trapped, momentarily, in a pool. (The jellyfish is the blurry blob to the left and just below the broken sand dollar.)

A crab exoskeleton, perfect and unbroken, next to some of the plentiful clam shells.

A huge piece of horseshoe crab...

And plenty of other shells and treasures.

We also saw a lot of shore birds, laughing gulls and several small varieties of waders and pelicans.

I carried my nature journal but it really wasn't warm enough for sitting outside and drawing to be pleasant. Until... you guessed it... the morning we had to leave! So I did get in a quick drawing, of the tree whose leaves were hanging right over our balcony, since I didn't have the time to go anywhere or look for something exciting and Georgia-y, or we'd miss our plane (which ended up leaving 2 hours late, so I guess that wasn't a real issue, but whatever).

I thought is was a hackberry, but apparently I was too far south and it was probably a sugarberry, which is a lot like a hackberry.

In Mourning

This dove sits on a nest that was once occupied by robins. Although mourning doves do make their own nests, they will also reuse their own or other birds' prior constructions... hey, why not take advantage? This particular site is very protected and watched over by a class of kindergarten kids, which may stress out the dove, but doesn't hurt, as no kindergarteners are 8 feet tall. If this dove is sitting on eggs, they'll hatch within 2 weeks... and this process could happen 3-4 times over the course of the spring and summer. This nesting dove is probably pretty bummed that his (the male doves sit on the nests during the daytime, and females work the graveyard shifts) view looks something like this:

Keep those eggs warm and toasty, little guy! (Really, though, if this is our spring snow storm, we can't complain too much, can we. It's typical to get a big snowfall in spring when the daffodils have bloomed already... which they have not, as you can see -- there are some right below the tree in the photo.)

Spring Takes a Break

It is, at this moment, snowing.

(That's all I've got for you.)