Tulips at Longwood Gardens - May 2014

The timing of our visit to Longwood Gardens on May 2 was near perfect for the tulips just as it had been for the cherry blossoms in Washington DC back in April.  The day was near perfect for enjoying the gardens too: mostly sunny and near perfect temperature. 

We arrive about 10 minutes before the gardens opened. The beds of tulips in front of the entrance building gave us a hint of the colors that were to come.

It was quite a challenge to pick the images to include in the slide show below. Tulips come in so many colors…and there is a surprising variety in the shapes as well. Hopefully you enjoyed tulips growing in your area too!  They are a sure sign of spring.

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.

Dandelions

Dandelions grow too easily. They come up every year in the lawn….pre-emergent doesn’t ever get down early enough for us to be rid of them. This year I am feeling a little guilty that we even tried to eliminate them.

Their bright yellow flowers seem so cheerful.

They grow just about everywhere - in good soil and bad.

Supposedly the flowers and leaves are edible. I’ve never quite developed a taste for them although the flowers would add wonderful color to a salad. Maybe I should simply harvest the flowers from the dandelion that comes up in my Chaos Garden.

Their round puffs remind me of childhood - gently holding the stem and blowing the seeds into the wind.

And they are another great object for macro photography!

Lichen and Moss

Lichen and moss are plants that are easier to appreciate with some magnification. My first project simply captured them in the ‘wild’ - on trees or rocks or soil. The collage below shows lichen growing on tree trunks. The images on the left are using the 8x loupe. The one on the right was using the 22x loupe.

The mosses were awakening during March and April when I began the project and I was surprised at the variety that becomes apparent when the plants are viewed through even a the lower (8x) magnification.

Seedlings Finding Sun - April 2014

The small pots of seedlings are going out into the garden soon: cucumbers, tomatoes, chives, cilantro….and one sunflower. My husband and I did a daylong photography session with the tray of small pots earlier this week to see if we could catch the seedlings turning toward the sun. We put the camera on a tripod and set it to take a picture every 15 minutes. The slide show below shows the seedlings moving around as the day progressed. The sunflower seedling is the large one closest to the camera that moves around a lot.

 

Dallas Arboretum - March 2014

Late March is probably one of the most beautiful times of year to walk around the Dallas Arboretum. We went on a week day so it was overly crowded. It was sunny and cool - comfortable with a light jacket. I took so many pictures it has taken be a month to pick my favorites to include in the slide show below. The Dallas spring was almost a month ahead of our spring in Maryland this year!  Enjoy this celebration of springtime!

Spring Maple

The maple I see from my office window has change a lot in the past month.  The snowy picture of the tree is from mid-March!  

By early April it was tinged in red flowers.

I took some close up pictures. The one on the right is with the 8x loupe. They are small but the color stands out in the springtime forest.

Now the tree looks drabber from afar

But that is just the blending of the red and green as the samaras develop.

Brookside Gardens Buds and Flowers - April 2014

Every spring I rejoice with the new growth at Brookside Gardens - the leaves unfurling, the early flowers opening. It is such a relief after the drabness of late winter. This week we have experienced some cold days (again); the images in this post were taken earlier in April on a warmer day.

I’ve been experimenting with the 8x loupe for much of this spring’s photography and noticed small features of opening leaves and flowers more than ever before.

Some leaves start out with pleats along their vein lines

Some flowers lift to the sun

And others bow.

Some fruit trees bloom so early that they are frequently caught by hard frosts.

The center of some flowers stays in the deep shade of the surrounding petals.

Zooming - April 2014

There were so many pictures taken in the last month to look at….to crop for this month’s ‘zooming’ post. I finally chose some favorites: a degraded shell spiral, water droplets on leaves, uncurling leaves, crocus, hyacinths, violets, tulips, daffodils, hibiscus, deciduous magnolia, the profile of a sculpture. Enjoy the views!

Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC

The cherry blossoms were at their peak around the tidal basin in Washington DC late last week.

It was probably the best walk around the tidal basin in my 30+ years in the area:

the blossoms were near perfect, the temperature was pleasant,

there were lots of people but few crowds, and

the monuments (Martin Luther King Jr., Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson) were nestled in the blooming trees.

One recent change: the scaffolding that had been around the Washington Monument since it was damaged by an earthquake is gone (i.e. repairs are complete).  The flight path for Reagan National Airport is along the Potomac so I managed to catch a picture of a plane descending with the cherry trees and paddle boaters on the tidal basin.  Enjoy the slide show from our walk around the tidal basin!

Glorious Hyacinths!

The hyacinths are blooming in Maryland this week - like the hyacinths were blooming at the end of March in Dallas. They are one of my favorite flowers of spring because they are early bloomers, they smell wonderful, and they last longer than the crocus.

My mother has planted a large bucket with hyacinth bulbs and then had to push the soil out of the way to help the flower spikes emerge. I took the opportunity to take some close ups of the flowers. Enjoy the macro images below!

Fiddleheads in the Brookside Conservatory

I always look for ferns sending up their fiddleheads through the leaf mulch in the spring. They have not appeared outside in my part of Maryland…but there were some fiddleheads among the ferns in the Brookside Gardens conservatory.

The plant in the conservatory was a tree fern I have been checking every time I got to the conservatory. There were coils with coils….tight spirals that would uncurl into the fronds.

Star Magnolia at Brookside Gardens

The Star Magnolia at Brookside Gardens was just in bloom this past weekend on the southeast side of the Fragrance Garden (map of Brookside Gardens). It is one of the earliest blooming deciduous magnolias. The slide show below shows the whole buds and flowers.

Using the 8x loupe, I took some more detailed images of the blooms at various stages: the flowers just beginning to emerge from the bud,

The petals opening a little but still curved inward,

The expanding petals opening outward,

Opening more,

And, finally, the center of the flower.

Narcissus

Narcissus and spring ---- they go together. The flowers in this post were in my parents’ garden in Dallas but the flowers are frequent sights in Maryland this time of year as well. As I write this (back home in Maryland) I see a patch of daffodils that a neighbor planted at the edge of the forest; they started out in a smaller area 20 years ago and have multiplied - and seem to be in sync with the red blooms of the maples.

I used my 8x loupe to capture images of the central flowers from different perspectives.

And there was a tiny spider that was very still on his flower while I captured his portrait.

Unfurling Leaves in Dallas

Last week I was in Dallas and rejoiced in the unfurling leaves; they are a few weeks ahead of the trees in Maryland. It seemed like everywhere I looked there were tinges of red that were standing out before the green chlorophyll becomes the overwhelming color in the leaves.

Pecan buds opening into pleated leaves that will unfurl quickly now that it is getting warmer.

Peonies coming up from the roots with shiny new leaves edged with red.

Photinia bushes that were burnt by too many freeze thaw this past winter but are still managing to put on some fresh new leaves.

And rose bushes with tiny red leave that got greener as they grew larger.

Rhododendron Buds

The rhododendron buds were huge when we walked around Brookside Gardens recently. These were taken without benefit of any extra magnification (i.e. the loupe was not needed for these buds). I am already looking forward to seeing them open into their cluster of blooms as spring progresses.  I already have a ‘note to self’ to photography them every time I visit the gardens over the next few months.

Witch Hazel in Bloom

I enjoyed seeing the colorful witch hazels in bloom at Brookside Gardens recently. I knew that witch hazel was native to North America and was used to make the witch hazel liquid that is so soothing to skin.  Since reading Douglas Tallamy’s book Bringing Nature Home: How You Can Sustain Wildlife with Native Plants, I have decided to landscape with native plants from now on.

So - it was frustrating to discover that the spring blooming trees are hybrids from Japan and China. The native to North America (Hamamelis virginiana) has wonderful foliage in the fall and then blooms in late fall/early winter! The flowers look the same….it’s just the timing of the flowers that is different.

It still might be the smallish tree that I’ll plant next in my backyard, knowing that it will support other natives to make a comeback in my yard.

First Sycamore Leaf of 2014

Back in mid-February, I cut some twigs from the trees around our house and posted some photographs of the buds. The sycamore twig was not very interesting so I didn’t include a photograph of its bud but I kept the twig in my collection and kept water in the cups. A few days I took a look at the basket and noticed that the sycamore twig had a tiny leaf!

And there is another bud that looks about ready to burst open too!

We’ve had such cold weather recently that the sycamore buds outside are still in their winter forms so this little green leaf indoors is way ahead of the tree.

Crocus - Harbingers of Springtime

The first bulbs that bloom in our area of Maryland are daffodils, hyacinths, snowdrops and crocus. The daffodils and hyacinths in my flower beds are up with buds just beginning to form.   I don’t have any snowdrops in my yard. So the crocuses are the harbinger this year. The bulbs were planted years ago. They have dwindled over the years; perhaps the squirrels find them occasionally or I disturb them when I am doing other things in the flower bed. I celebrated the few that came up.

I managed to catch three in various stages of blooming last week. At first I simply took pictures of them with the camera….then I started some more creative work with the 8x magnification loupe. I love the contrast of colors - blue/purple and bright yellow. The magnified images below gave me a whole new appreciation for these first flowers of spring.