About Trees

I volunteered to be the ‘tree lady’ - staffing the tree nature station at the family event following the 5K Green Run at Belmont last weekend. Some of the children just enjoyed looking at tree cross sections (tree cookies) and buds cut from trees around my yard earlier in the morning (tulip poplar, black walnut, red maple, and sycamore) with magnifiers while others were keen to fill in all the blanks in the booklet to earn the Howard County Conservancy’s Junior Naturalist Badge. Most of them left my table and headed down the slope to look at some trees up close – sweet gum, white pine, and sycamore. The sugar maple around the corner from the carriage house got some attention too.

It was a good day to be outdoors – sunny and a near perfect temperature. The turnout was not huge – but enough to make it worth the effort.  It was good to see children learning something new about the natural world…and enjoying the outdoor activities (the tree nature station was one of three stations).

I didn’t take a picture of the whole table – just two of the small branches I took as ‘living’ examples. The black walnut has leaf clusters coming out of knobby stems.

The sycamore is just beginning to pop its buds! I had some sycamore leaves pressed from last summer to illustrate how big the leaves would eventually get. Looking at the branch at it is now, that size increase hard to imagine.

The black walnut and sycamore are far behind the tulip poplar that already has leaves as big as a hand and big flower buds. The red maple is already shedding its seeds while the green leaves rapidly unfurl.

A Walk in our Snowy Neighborhood

Earlier this week, we had a few inches of snow on the ground. We knew the temperature was warming enough that it would melt on its own the next day so didn’t bother to shoveling the driveway. We took a walk through the neighborhood instead.

I thought this tree with snow and cut branch took in the look of a pig face! When I looked at the picture on my monitor I noticed that the branch – that had only been cut last summer – had already dried out and darkened. The reddish layer already had cracks too.

The fire hydrant was clearly visible but I thought the uneven layering of the snow on the top made it look different than the actual shape of the metal underneath.

The water retention pond was not all snow covered. The ice from the earlier – very cold – days was beginning to melt.

My favorite picture of the day was the crape myrtle pod full of snowflakes…crystals still intact.