Fall Arabesques

I’ve been photographing leaves on the ground for the past few weeks and am sharing them today in celebration of fall. The leaves had to be positioned just as they had fallen - or been blown into position.

Some of the colors are muted yellow or brown. The vivid greens and reds are there too.

The backdrops are varied too: grass - asphalt - pebbles - forest mulch - bricks.

What about the other things in the pictures with some of the leaves? A feather, moss on a fallen log

How many trees can you recognize by their leaves in these pictures? Poplars - oaks - maples - dogwood….at least.

Belmont

I’ve participated in several programs at the Belmont Manor and Historic Park as a Howard County Conservancy Volunteer over the past month. September is a good month to see maturing seeds - in the trees: Maple

Dogwood

And sweet gum.

There are other plants going to seed: grasses

And fluffy seed pods in the meadows.

The flowers are mostly done for the year although I did photograph a chicory that was growing at the edge of mowed path.

But it is the very air of the place - looking up to into an old sycamore,

The top branches of other trees,

And starlings swirling - that is the most special.

Belmont is a place with a long history and one looks out from the mansion that is somehow not as important as the vista.

HC Conservancy - September 2014

I took a walk around the Howard County Conservancy’s Mt. Pleasant farm before a volunteer naturalist training session last week. The walk around the meadow started out cloudy and the temperature was near perfect. I took a picture of the dogwood just beginning to turn to fall colors along the drive to the farm house as I walked from the parking lot.

The sculpture of the owl in the natural play area for children is taking on a darker patina as is weathers.

I took lots of milkweed pictures; the pods are maturing and beginning to split…and lots of milkweed bugs.

The meadow has some fall blooms. Purple is a popular color (thistles and ironweeds and poke weed)

But yellow of goldenrods are overwhelming.

There was a cut up tree trunk along the stone fence that had quite an assortment of shelf fungus.

Along that same stone fence were two snake skins - one hanging from a tree that seemed to be growing roots into its own trunk and another along a tree branch.

A tidy nest was visible in the very young tree - probably fresh from this summer but now abandoned.

And last but not least - a huge caterpillar of a cecropia moth! I’m glad one of my fellow hikers spotted it!

Gambrill &Cunningham Falls State Park and Catoctin Mountain Park

We made a day trip to two state parks and an area managed by the National Park Service last weekend. They were all located in Maryland not far off I-70 in central Maryland.

The first stop was Gambrill State Park. We had seen mountain laurel in bloom there about this time in May 2012 (blog post here) ….but we were too early this year. The bushes have lots of buds but none of them were open; it will be at least another week and maybe longer before the blossoms appear. The dogwood branches against the blue sky were some consolation.

Our Catoctin Mountain Park visit was a short hike back to an old still near the visitor’s center. Along the way we saw squawroot (which I was able to identify from the park’s photo gallery). It’s a non-photosynthesizing parasitic plant that draws nutrients from the roots of oak and beech trees.

There were Jack-in-the-pulpits too.

But my favorite part of the short hike was the sound of the water. The swirl of the water over the rocks - from shade to sun - was a mirror for the spring day.

I kept looking for mushrooms along the trail because there had been so many the last time I had hiked the trail. When I got back home, I checked…and discovered I posted about that hike in August 2012…so I’ll give the fungus a few months more to develop this year before I plan to hike there again.

Cunningham Falls State Park was a longer hike to a falls overlook. A new platform had been built since we were there last but it was not a perfect vantage point for falls viewing. There was a lot of water since there had been heavy rain in the days prior to our visit.

Zooming - May 2014

Spring is full of blooms.  The zoomed images from the past month include plum blossoms, dandelion flowers, a very wet tulip, and some hydrangea to add some blue…..

Maple samaras in the grass (detached before their time by browsing deer), cowslips, and jagged edge tulip….

A mushroom, a jack-in-the-pulpit, and a foraging chipmunk….

A foraging bumble bee, spores on the back of a fern frond, and the cone of a cycad….

Fiddleheads and a Venus fly trap….

The center of a dogwood flower, a peppermint color azalea, and new growth of pines.

I find that photographing makes me more observant while I am out and about….and then again when I am looking at the pictures on a larger screen once I get home. I often don’t realize the whole of what I am capturing in the field. Every zooming blog post I compile is a celebration of the technology available in modern cameras!

Buds at Brookside Gardens

I took another series of bud pictures when I was at Brookside Gardens last weekend. The photographs were all hand held - no cutting of twigs to make the photography easier! I intentionally looked for trees that I don’t have in the area around my house. I used the 8x loupe; the 22x loupe is too much magnification for ‘hand held’ work.

There was the flower bud of on a red twigged dogwood. They always look like very small Hershey’s Kisses to me.

The gingko bud has a buildup of scales where it is attached to the tree. It will be interesting to watch how the leaf emerges from the bud.

The magnolia leaves were battered by winter but still green. And the leaf bud looked more ready to begin growing rapidly.

The pine is another bud I want to watch expand as spring begins.

Book Quote of the Month (about trees) - February 2014

Like the Chinese, who divide the solar calendar into twenty-four rather than 4 seasons (among them, fortnights called “excited insects,” “grains fill,” “cold dew,” and “frost descends”), a practiced tree watcher knows there are dozens of seasons and that one of them could be called “acorns pumping out.” - Nancy Hugo Ross inSeeing Trees

It isn’t often that a coffee table book (large format with beautiful pictures) prompts action or behavior change. This one is the exception for me and I suspect it is for others as well. I attended a lecture by the author at the Howard Country Conservancy on February 8th and promptly started planning my forays around the yard and nearby gardens for this spring…and naming the ‘seasons’ that I am seeing. The first blog post prompted by the lecture was on February 13th (I’ll call that season ‘fuzzy buds’. The book arrived in the mail that afternoon and I am savoring reading it and the pictures now….adding more details to the plans.

I’ve always enjoyed botanical photography but have tended toward flowers rather than trees. And I haven’t done the magnified looking at trees all that often. My husband had an old loupe he used during the days his photography was slide based that has now been repurposed and he ordered a new one that has higher magnification for be to experiment with as well.

To celebrate the prospect of learning a lot more about trees over the next year or so - I’ve created the slide show below of the best tree pictures I’ve taken over the past 12 months. Enjoy!