Around our (Maryland) Yard in December 2013

Earlier in December we had snow but my walk around the yard for this post was on a cold, sunny day later in the month. I decided to focus on the bark of the trees.

When we first moved to our house about 20 years ago, the young oak tree still had a smooth trunk. Now It is ridged - a mature tree.

The cherry tree has developed knobs and scars.

The young sycamore has bark beginning to peal this winter. It won’t become a ‘ghost’ tree quite yet but maybe next winter there will be more of the white inner bark showing after the leaves fly away.

The last picture is not bark - it the tulip poplar in winter, with the dry seeds flying away from the treetop every time the winter wind blows. 

Around our (Maryland) Yard in November 2013

The November highlights in our yard are seed pods and leaves. Last year the blazing stars were very popular with gold finches but the birds have not found them yet this year.

The onion flowers have ripened and the seeds rattle in the pods - spilling into the garden.

The cone flower petals have dried and fallen away leaving the spikey seeds. They’ll be more of them next year. (Although the zinnias will be some competition…I put the zinnia stalks I cut from the pots on the deck into the same garden area and their seed pods were quite numerous too.)

The seeds from the tulip poplar are also flying everywhere. They tend to get caught at the edges of our driveway and the corners of the deck.

The seed pods are interesting in structure….the colors in the yard come from the leaves. The green chlorophyll dies first and the pigments in the leaves show through.

I love the sequence of colors in the sycamore leaves in the slide show below.

The maple behind our house was one of the last in the neighborhood to change colors…but it turned its usual glorious red. I enjoy the color on the tree and then as a mass of leaves on the grass. That tree necessitates the most concentrated raking of the season because the leaves all fall at once and are too heavy for the wind to blow them away.

The oak tree often seems to go from green to brown but this year the leaves have displayed more color variety. Each leaf has a unique pattern of rust, yellow, and green.

Around our (Maryland) Yard in October 2013

Our Maryland fall has been muted this year. Most of the trees have not achieved the brilliant colors of years past; the few that do are flashes of brilliance that provide a splash of color for a few day and then drop all their leaves to the ground. I find myself appreciating the play of light through oak leaves this year and the splotches of color on maple leaves that fill a tree that looks ‘green’ from a distance.

The front flower bed is mostly gone to seed. I haven’t seen the birds easting the seeds of the blazing stars but the bare rib of some of the seed plums is evidence that the feast is not going totally unnoticed. We’ve had freezing temperatures for the past few mornings but there is still a dahlia blooming - resting on the sidewalk that probably retains enough heat to keep it warm.

The tulip poplars are losing their leaves and their seeds without becoming the blaze of yellow. They tower over our yard and their leaves wave in the wind….and whirl away.

Last but not least - the onion seeds are scattering as the wind shakes them like at rattle out of their cases. I hope some of them come up next spring as new plants.

Leaves of October 2013

Usually we are in full autumn color by about this time of October. This year some trees have not turned very much yet, although they have started dropping leaves.  Some branches of our oak are reddish brown in the sunlight while a lot of green leaves are still on the tree.

The same goes for the sycamore.

The maple had not dropped very many leaves at all although there is a brilliantly colored leaf among the green.

Elsewhere in our neighborhood individual trees have already dropped most of their leaves. We will not have the usual colorful swath up and down our street with the trees on each side turning in synchrony. Perhaps our very dry August is to blame. I’m still holding out hope that the maple I see from my office window (the one that is still green) is going to be full of yellow and red by the end of the month!

Abajo Mountains and Newspaper Rock, Utah

Our trip to southeastern Utah coincided with the government shutdown - before the state managed to re-open the National Parks in the area with state funds. Consequently - my blog posts about the vacation will include sights from outside those parks. The drive west from Monticello UT through the Abajo mountains was quite scenic in the early days of October. There were swaths of aspen among the pine and scrubby oaks on the eastern side of the mountains….and colorful layers of rock in canyons seen from the western side. We turned around at the blockade at the Canyonlands National Park. Newspaper Rock - with images pecked into rock - was along our route back.

Sit back and enjoy the slide show of the mountain views - the large and small, the timeless and transient, the crystal clarity and hazy distances.

Leaves in September 2013

We are getting closer to fall every day. The reddish-purple leafed plum tree has already shed a lot of its leaves judging from what is on the lawn but still looks as lush as it did in the summer. Isn’t the color enhanced by the sun shining through the leaves?

The sycamore has patches of color that seem reddish in the sun but that are brown in the shadows and on the grown. The leaves seem light in on the tree in the breeze but thick, almost leathery, on the ground. Our tree has benefited from being in our garden where it gets a bit more water; the trees in the parking lot islands have already lost quite a few leaves because there was so little rain here in August.

OakOakThe oak tree is getting some swaths of color in the sea of green. The sun brings out the greens from summer than linger on.

The tulip poplar has not lost many leaves yet but the leaves are looking battered at this point and the yellow they will become as fall progresses is already apparent when the sun shines through them.Tulip Poplar

Some of the maples in the neighborhood have a few red leaves but our tree is still green - everywhere.Maple

I am enjoying the closer look at the month to month changes in our trees this fall. Take a look back at the August post to see the leaves from a month ago.

Anticipating Fall

Several of our trees seem to be anticipating the crisp days of fall before they arrive. The sycamore, oak, plum and cherry all look healthy but the grass around them is littered with a scattering of leaves. The oak tree is dropping mature acorns on the driveway. The maple and tulip poplars are still entirely green and the grass around their bases is clear of leaves.

Fortunately the leaf fall is light enough to be neatly handled by the weekly lawn mowing - which is still required by the rapidly growing grass.

Leaves in August 2013

We have four types of trees growing in our yard that are abundant in our region: sycamore, tulip poplar, oak and maple.

The leaves are looking a little battered at this point in the season. The sycamore has tiny holes in its leaves.

The tulip polar has round marks where the leaf has died. It looked like they were higher density on the branches closer to the ground. 

The oak has some places where the green chlorophyll is already beginning to die…the harbinger of fall.

The maple leaves look the best this year. A few years ago that tree was the one with the round dead spots. The tree is recovered from a heavy load of grapevine that was cut a few years ago at the ground. The vine died but it held onto the tree and is only now beginning to break into pieces and fall to the ground.

In a few months the maple leaves will be red; the tulip poplar’s leaves will be yellow. The oak will look deep red when the sun is shining through them but look brown on closer inspection. The sycamore leaves will curl and fall - tough and leathery - some of them will last until the next season relatively intact. I’m going to do a leaf post each month through the fall…so stay tuned.

Shelf Fungus Finale

A little over a year ago I started posting about the shelf fungus that were growing on an oak stump in our neighbor’s yard. In April of this year, the neighbor’s yard crew spreading new mulch detached the shelf fungus from the stump, tossing them into my yard. I collected the remains and posted a slide show summarizing their ten months of visible life. As a finale - before taking the pieces back to the compost pile - I looked at them more closely. The fungus reprocessed the oak stump into a very light-weight, spongy material.

The top of the shelf-fungus looks like it has growth rings. They are not ‘annual’ growth rings like trees since these fungus grew in a 10 month period and actually stayed about the same size after their initial few months.

The underside has a stalk where they were attached to the oak stump and there are fibers where they were ripped away. The undersides are relatively smooth.

I cut a wedge from one of the platters. The growth rings appear to be a surface feature only (i.e. they don’t extend to the interior). The top - where the rings appear - is a lighter colored layer on a brownish interior that appears porous and spongy.

The Wikipedia entry for shelf-fungus mentions that shelf fungus can be used as a wick for an oil lamp. It works! After soaking the wedge I cut in oil, it provided a nice almost smokeless flame as it sat in a saucer of oil. Rather than taking them back to the compost pile I’ll cut the shelf-fungus in pieces to use in the saucer of oil out on the deck. 

It would have been even better for them to continue growing on the oak stump….

Around our (Maryland) Yard in July 2013

Our July has included enough rain to keep the yard very lush. I took a series of pictures looking up through the trees in our yard. The foliage in all the trees is in prime summer condition. I’ll do a similar collage in the fall.

Another series I am starting this month is watching the maturing of the tulip poplar seed pods. There is finally a branch low enough on our tree to watch the developments every month. The image on the right is what the two green pods will look like next summer.

The rest of the walk  around our yard is captured in the slideshow below. I appreciate the dahlias, blazing stars, zinnias and hydrangea bush this year because the day lilies have been so thoroughly enjoyed by the deer; the buds get eaten right before they open! I’ve included the green pyracantha berries; they’ll be a glorious orange in the fall.

Maryland Sunrise - May 2013

It is good to be home again. I was up in time to catch the sunrise yesterday. The picture above was taken a few minutes before sunrise at 6:03 (sunrise was at 6:09). This time of year the view of the eastern horizon from our house is obstructed by trees. The oak tree in the foreground is full of blooms and rapidly growing leaves. But the clouds captured the color of the day’s beginning. What a difference from the sunrise over the Atlantic from a South Carolina beach I posted about a few days ago!

Observing sunrise is one of my favorite ways to start the day. The more beautiful it is - the more positive I feel about the rest of the day.

March 2013 Snow

We got the best snow of the season yesterday in our area of Maryland. It clung to the trees until the little breezes and temperature caused it to plop to the ground or trickle away. One of the early pictures of the day was of the dense oak twigs piled high with snow (to the left). It looks like a black and white abstract drawing to me.

We went out for a drive to enjoy the beauty of the snow. I liked the way the snow clung to the dry grasses from last summer with the flocked spruce in the background. It was a shot from an open window - the car simply stopped in the middle of a country road.

When we got back from the outing, we made snow ice cream: fill a large bowl with snow, add milk (I used half-and-half that I had frozen from an early time when snow was forecast but didn’t materialize), 1 cup of sugar, and flavoring (I used 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1/2 teaspoon coconut). I add red food coloring so that I can tell when everything is thoroughly mixed. With an electric mixer it only takes a few minutes to create the treat.

By the afternoon the wind and melting had revealed red maple blooms and the hyacinth bed.

This was a year that the groundhog got it wrong….we are not having an early spring. With the snow scenes so beautiful and the streets cleared easily, I could simply celebrate the beauty of the day, take photos and remember that spring will be here soon.  

Waiting for Snow

The forecast was for snow - but instead we continued under heavy clouds and mists in the same pattern as the past few days.

There is too much brown in the outdoor scenes - bare tree branches and dried hydrangea flowers.

The tuffs of green grass are a bit of relief and the colors of the shelf fungus on the oak stump provide some relief.

And then - I check the pots left on the deck from the summer and discover that both pots of parsley are surviving!

Still - I would enjoy a big snow….one that would keep me at home for a few days, give me a physical task (shoveling the driveway), and change the scenery through the window to a white wonderland.

Around our (Maryland) Yard in January 2013

The temperature was in the 20s on the morning I walked around our yard this month. There was still frost on the ground - coating the hardest of weeds that are green (lower left). The cairn of rock and shells (upper right) has been knocked over by foraging deer; I left the toppled pieces for another day. Most of the seeds from the onion have scattered (upper left) and the seed casings are tattered. Surprisingly the tulip poplar (middle left) seems full of the dried remnants of flowers and seeds from last spring. The trunk of our oak tree (bottom right) has smooth areas from its younger self.

Winter is the starkest of seasons. Every color that breaks the monotony of browns is appreciated: the blue of the sky, the green of a weed, the white of an old shell. Now, as I write this post, I am looking at the maple from my window and noticing a little movement of the branches from a breeze and am glad I am in the warmth of the indoors.