A Pine in March

The winds have been blowing this month and the pine cone litter the ground. Sometimes they seem completely dried out, drab and fragile….sometimes they still have the color from earlier in their development and bits of sap.

Some of the cones are manage to stay on the tree - like ornaments on a tree decorated for Christmas.

Some of the cones are manage to stay on the tree - like ornaments on a tree decorated for Christmas.

And then there are the buds at the tips of the branches (taken with the 8X loupe magnfying) that will become the next generation of pine cones.

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.

Zooming - February 2014

I’ve been doing quite a bit of magnification recently with the microscope and loupe. The monthly ‘zooming’ post is done with cropped images from the camera - simply using the camera’s own built in zoom. Can you find: 

• The muffin liner
• The surprised squirrel
• The snow on crepe myrtle berries
• The icy pine
• The glowing knot in stained wood
• A sunrise through the oak branches
• An ice fall from a gutter
• Tulip poplar seed pod spires
• The moon through tree branches 

Outdoors in Maryland - February 2014

February is a stark month in Maryland. On a sunny day, I bundled up to take pictures - noticing that there is a lot of drab brown - texture becomes important in the scenes: the forest,

Hydrangea flowers from last summer,

And wood grain on the deck in the afternoon sun.

I’ve bought a bird feeder - advertised as ‘squirrel proof’ - and hung it so that we can see it through several windows.

A few days ago there was ice and that added a glistening coat to everything. I took pictures standing in doorways rather than venturing out on the icy surface: the frozen drips on the sycamore,

The tangled branches of the cherry with a pine providing background,

And a pine weighed down with a burden of ice.

That’s the outdoors scene from our area of Maryland for this month!

Zooming - January 2014

The ‘zooming’ post for January includes botanicals from outside (curly bark, magnolia leaves, leaves and twigs of a bush under ice and snow, a deteriorating shelf fungus) and inside (hydrangea, Christmas cactus, Norfolk pine, lilies, amaryllis) plus a pitted shell in the rock garden and the fringe of a holiday tunic.