Zooming - November 2014

The theme for the November zooming post is fall color and texture. The burst of colors - greens, reds, yellows, oranges - is the finale of the growing season. They are fading fast in our area by the last weeks of November. The leaves crackle as they dry, their color fades to brown or black as they decay to mulch.

The seeds of many plants are surrounded by fluff (milkweed, cattails, and blazing stars) that acts as a parachute for the fall breezes to carry them away from their parent toward a place they can sprout next spring.

Neighborhood Walk

We’ve had a few chilly days in our area…some light frosts. Our neighborhood is past the peak of fall beauty. I took the opportunity to walk around yesterday afternoon when it was warm enough for the bees to be active at the few bedraggled flowers that are still blooming.

The oak seems to glow in the sunshine. Up close the leaves look almost drab.

The Indian corn has been on our door for the past few years - for the few weeks between Halloween and the beginning of December.

I’m noticing more leaves in the street gutters this year. The leaves came down with recent rains and are staying put wherever they got wet. I managed to rake and sweep the street gutter in front of my house this past weekend.

The storm water retention pond for our neighborhood is surrounded by trees and cattails. The cattails are exploding and the breeze wafts away the seeds.

This squirrel ran up a large oak as I got close and posed for a picture. Doesn’t he look well fed? His paw reminds me of ET fingers.

Last but not least - I couldn’t resist the colorful fall display of one trees - and the near bareness of its neighbor.

The joys of fall!

Our Summer Yard - July 2014

Maryland has had a variable summer so far: a few hot days with thunderstorms in the later afternoon and then relatively cool days that start out in the low 60s. The yard always seems to need mowing. The flower beds are better than ever.

The day lily bulbs I dug up last fall from a place that had become too shady for them to bloom are blooming profusely - where buds survived the deer back in June. They are a bright splash of orange around the bird bath (along with the purple blazing stars) and around the base of the oak tree where there branches are trimmed high enough that they get a little morning sun.

There is a dahlia with one flower open and loads of buds.

There are a few leaves on the lawn. Some were jettisoned by the tree like the sycamore leaf on the right and some were torn off by our recent storms (like the small brach of oak leaaves below).

The patch of cone flowers is always good for some insect photography.

As I walked around, I noticed mint growing in some unexpected places. It’s probably time for another harvest!

Building a Garden Border

Rather than carrying all the self-pruned branches from our oak back to the woods, I decided to use the longer ones to form a border for my Chaos Garden. I used some gold garden stakes to make brackets about every 3 feet and then wove the sticks through them. I got more enthusiastic and retrieved some sticks from the branch pile I’d made in the woods from previous years’ trimming.

I was thrilled when one grew shelf fungus within weeks of becoming part of the garden border.

The border grew dramatically with the plum and oak trimmings of the past week. I left the branches on the limbs but bent them down into the other branches - increasing the connectedness of the branches so that the brackets were not the only elements holding the whole together. Some parts are not high enough that I will have to wait before I add anything more. Of course - this is a garden border that will naturally decay. Will it simply settle slowly so that I can refresh it from the top? I’ll enjoy the month/years of observing the garden border.

More about the Chaos Garden in another post…..

Tree Trimming

A recent rain weighed down the plum tree branches enough to convince me it was time to trim the tree. I got out a step stool, the saw, and the long handled pruners. I cut off low branches and ones that were growing more horizontal that vertical. Afterwards I took a closer look at the layers within the branches - the delicate color changes from the bark to the sapwood (cambium, xylem), and then the heartwood.

Next up on my ‘to trim’ list was the oak. Oaks do a lot of self-pruning so the main work I do on the treat the edge of our yard near the street is focused on the lower branches when they grow low enough to brush the tops of vehicles in the street or our car as we pull into the driveway. It was harder work than the plum tree; the branches were larger and a bit higher too. There were many tiny acorns on the branches.

I also found an oak marble - almost a ‘glow in the dark’ green.

I cut open the shell and found the insect larvae suspended inside the sphere.

The branches were quite lot and I wove them into the brush ‘fence’ around my chaos garden….more about that in another post.

After the Rain

The morning after the big rain last week was sunny. I ventured out to capture the aftermath of the heavy rain. Water droplets glistened on leaves.

Some of the fragile new growth on the oak tree had been plucked from the tree and became debris on the driveway.

There were also tulip polar seeds that had been swept by the water into piles.

Curiously - there was one very white feather than must have floated to the driveway after the rain since it did not look like it had been wet at all.

Oak - April 2014

I am taking a much closer look at the oak in our front yard this spring using my camera and the 8x loupe. Over the past week or so the buds have come open. The first image is from the 19th. The bud is large but still generally bud shaped.

By the 24th, tiny leaves were in evidence and the beginning of the flowers and catkins were showing.

 

On the 26th, I was surprised at how different the tiny leaves still looked from their final form. They do not look like tiny forms of the mature oak leaf; there is still a lot of unfurling left to reach the mature shape.

On the 28th the catkins had a rosy color and the leaves had gown a bit more too.

And then the rains came and I won’t be able to take more pictures until May….so I’ll continue this closer look at the oak in a post next month.

Magnifying February Trees

The trees of February still look starkly bare. I decided to take a closer look at some of the trees around our yard. I labelled cups and cut twigs to take inside to photograph in comfort rather than braving the cold and overcoming the clumsiness of gloves.

The pods on the tulip poplar were dramatic at close range. Many of them have already disintegrated - the seeds flying away with the wind - but these still had enough to look like ‘flowers.’

The cherry tree buds are already enlarging. I took the pictures through an 8x and 22x loupe to get the magnification I wanted.

I did the same for the oak buds….and then couldn’t resist a closer look at a wound on the twig with the 8x loupe.

The maple tree is beginning to turn reddish at the tips of the branches. And the magnified images show the buds are colorful. They’ll become more so over the next few weeks.