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. 

Fall Reflections from Centennial Park - Maryland - November 2013

The walk around Centennial Lake in Howard County, Maryland is a treat in the fall. Last weekend, the breeze was light enough to make the reflections of the fall foliage quite spectacular. In fact, for most of our walk around the lake the sky looked bluer in the reflection!

I like the little distortions in the reflections. Sometimes the water is a perfect mirror and other times it distorts the image.

The real trees and reflected trees take on a surreal look when the water is perfectly smooth…and the symmetry is perfect.

And what about the closer looks - where the colors look more vivid in the reflection than in the actual branches?

Enjoy the 'best of the rest' in the slideshow below.

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.

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.

3 Free eBooks - April 2013

The Internet has a growing number of online books…and many of them are free. This is my monthly post highlighting 3 that I have enjoyed most this past month.

Gray, Asa. The Forest Trees of North America. Washington D.C., Smithsonian Institution. 1891. This is really the plates prepared for a book. The work was done between 1849 and 1859. It is available in PDF form here. The first three images hooked me for the rest of the volume: magnolias and tulip polar. The tulip poplar in our back yard is just getting ready to bloom…and the image captures the look of the tree quite well.

Redoute, Pierre Joseph. Les Roses. Paris, De L’Imprimerie de Firmin Didot. 1824. There are actually three volumes available on the Internet Archive: 1817, 1821, and 1824. All three contain pages and pages of botanical prints of roses. I was prompted to look for these books when I saw a reference to them in May Theilgaard Watts’ Reading the Landscape of Europe.

Sale, Edith Dabney Tunis (editor for James River Garden Club, Richmand). Historic Gardens of Virginia. Richmond, William Byrd Press. 1923. Available from the Internet Archive here. The book includes the birds-eye view of many gardens as well as a few vistas from ground level. It is tempting to see how many of these gardens still exist!

Walk around Centennial Lake

Yesterday morning was cold but sunny - a good morning for a brisk walk around Centennial Lake in Columbia, Maryland. There were quite a few other people that took the opportunity to get outside after the previous rainy days.

Of course - the park is still mostly in the grips of winter. The trees and their reflections were full of browns and grays. The paddle boats were stored on the dock. The birds were the ones acting as the harbingers of spring: 

• Red wing blackbirds were calling back and forth from their trees

February 2013 Sunrise

The sunrise is creeping earlier but the trees are still bare so there is still a sunrise view from my front porch. By March it will be iffy.

I like the stark blackness of the branches against the brightening sky and the sun just peeking from a rooftop.

The morning I captured this picture seemed to be full of school buses coming through the neighborhood. I noticed the first one before 6:30 AM! That is an early morning for the students. And it was below freezing with the sun not yet contributing any warmth to the day.

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