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.

Hike to the Patapsco River

I joined a group to hike from the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant Farm to the Patapsco River (Patapsco Valley State Park). We hiked along the farm's cut grass trail, then through a field of cut hay…to the forest. 

A stone marker from 1800 shows the boundary of the Mt. Pleasant Farm.

The undulations of the path took us up and down but averaged ‘down’ on the way to the river and ‘up’ on the way back.

The leaves had fallen - obliterating the trail and smaller fallen limbs. We scrambled over larger deadfall and churned the deep leaf mulch on the inclines. The moss was so green against the dulling brown of the leaves that it sometimes seemed to glow. In fact - any bit of green is eye catching in the late fall forest.

The river view was on the other side of railroad tracks. We listened for a train whistle but only a maintenance vehicle came along the track while we were there. Horsetails grew through the rocks of the rail bed on the river side. Sycamores grow along the river - taking on their white ‘ghost tree’ look of winter now that their leaves were gone.

There were a few examples of shelf fungus that I noticed on the hike back.

The beech trees with their smooth bark were the most frequent tree along the streams down to the river. Some of the trees still held a few leaves. I like the look of the tree trunks of varying sizes in the forest nearly devoid of foliage.

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!

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.

Brookside Gardens Outdoors - February 2013

Much of Brookside Gardens is still in winter mode when I was there earlier this week - lots of browns, mulch washed onto the walkways from the last rains. It was a sunny day and large sycamore was at its winter best against the blue sky; it’s easy to identify these trees in winter with their white trunks. The snowdrops were up but most of the other bulbs were just peeking through the soil.

The small trees that were the highlight of my walk were the witch hazels which were blooming. There were at least three different flower colors - two of which are shown below.

Tree Trunks

Winter hikes in deciduous forests are sparse in so many ways - full of browns and grays, stark tree branches without the softening of fluttering leaves, sometimes very quiet with even the birds and squirrels hunkered in their nests. I tend to look more closely at thinks that I may not notice during other times of the year. Thinks like the trunks of the trees themselves.

How many trees can you identify just by their trunks? These three are probably some of the easiest.

American Beech

River Birch 

Sycamore