Front Flowerbeds

The most urgent yard work when I returned from Texas was the front flowerbeds. The bushes needed trimming, the milkweed was rampant, and the day lilies were full of buds that the deer were sure to eat! On one side of the door, the sidewalk was half covered with leaves from day lilies and other vegetation.

On the other, the milkweed were hiding the small nine bark that survived and filled in the hole of the one that died. The mint was so think that it covered the sidewalk to the front porch.

We went to work. I wanted to save some of the milkweed to become a Monarch caterpillar nursery but opted that it did not need to be on both sides. My husband and I worked for about an hour in the steamy morning heat with had trimmers and pruners. After 8 we got out the electric hedge trimmers and weed eater – hoping that everyone would be up and about by that time on a summer weekday.

After two mornings, we had made noticeable progress and were both pleased with the results. I put the glass bird bath in the stand of milkweed in front of the door. The taller plants will shade the water a little and provide some cover for the birds bathing or getting a drink!

We worked a third morning and pruned a bush to the side of the house to about half its size. Now to just keep it tidy….

Caterpillars and Day Lilies

Since I’ve been home, I’ve started doing some remedial yard work…more on the changes to the flowerbed later. I’m focused on caterpillars and day lilies that were a biproduct of the work. The biggest excitement was a very small monarch caterpillar on the milkweed! I can’t cut it down now. Every morning I look at the plants and I haven’t found the caterpillar again but there are a lot of other insects on the plants. Milkweed is popular with the insect crowd.

Yesterday there was a different kind of caterpillar on the milkweed. I’m not sure what it is. Maybe some kind of Tiger Moth caterpillar? It isn’t a milkweed tussock moth caterpillar since those are orange and block and white and bristles are shorter and there are more of them.

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The day lilies that I thought would be so gorgeous in the front flower bed always make beautiful foliage and then last year the deer ate the buds before many of them could open .  Evidently the buds are deer candy. I’m giving up on day lilies after this year. So - while I was working in the flower bed, I cut all the flower stalks I found and put them in a big vase. The next morning, I took the vase outside and took pictures in the morning light.

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I appreciate the opening buds and the spent flowers of the orange lilies. Placing the vase on the deck railing and using the out-of-focus forest as the background worked out well.

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I photographed the one pink and white lily from different angles. It was the only non-orange flower in the vase.

At least this way I get to enjoy the flowers one last time rather than getting mad at the deer.

Home Again

I’ve been away from home for almost three weeks. This is my first day back and I hope some of my normal routines will be re-established quickly and easily. I’ll be posting the June month-end posts over the next few days as part of that return to ‘normal’….along with grocery shopping, yard work, and laundry!

On a positive note – spending a period (like 2-3 weeks) with a different-than-usual focus is always a learning experience. It will take some introspection now that I am home again to internalize the nuances of the experience.

Stay tuned!

Sycamore

Sycamores are common in our area near rivers and streams particularly. They tend to get their leaves late and loose them early in the fall. Right now – in June – they are about their best looking with their foliage still mostly intact. Later in the season, the many of the leaves will have holes or be partially eaten away. A lot of insects depend on those leaves for food. The leaves keep growing all during the season getting larger and larger…bigger than dinner plates…plenty to go around for the insect company.

Looking up int the tree, the whiteness where the outer bark has peeled way I a little noticeable – not the standout feature that it will be in winter.

This time of year, there are still some very tiny leaves. They are lighter in color than the bigger leaves and from far away look something completely different than a leaf…a little decoration at the ends of all the branches.

Patuxent Branch Trail

Sometimes volunteer activities help us find something new close to where we live. That happened to my husband and I recently. I had volunteered us to count pedestrian and bike traffic as a trail near where we live for a community organization. The location on the Patuxent Branch Trail was only about 3 miles from hour house….and I’d never been there before.

The trail crossed the Little Patuxent River on a re-purposed railroad bridge built in 1902 – the year after one of my grandfathers was born! It became a pedestrian bridge in 2002.

The bridge was still full of sediment from recent rain. Both pictures below taken from the bridge. I was not surprised at how many people (pedestrian and bicyclists) stopped on the bridge to enjoy the view.

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My husband is already talking about biking the trail on the next day without rain in the forecast!

First CSA Week for 2018

Yesterday was the beginning of the weekly shares from Gorman Farms CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I picked strawberries last week and picked up a head of lettuce that seems to be in overwhelming supply right now….but this was the first really share. They enlarged the layout for the pickup so the ‘medium share’ subscribers have a whole side to themselves; it’s much easier to move around – weigh what needs to be weighed, find a place to perch the bags if things are too heavy. I was surprised that zucchini was already in the distribution this first week and have already found my favorite zucchini bread recipe to use the increasing amount that will probably come in the upcoming weeks; a pound seems easy enough to use over the next week or so.

When I got home I piled it all on the top of the stove…it took most of the space. From left to right – the overage head of lettuce and garlic scapes in the plastic bin, kale and butter lettuce and tatsoi next, and then charge and pac choi last.

I’m glad my daughter is coming to visit this weekend. I’m going to send home one head of lettuce with her and more. For once, I am not going to be overwhelmed by the first week of the CSA!

Zooming – May 2018

Sometimes I use the zoom on my camera to capture botanicals that I can’t get close to – like this weathered sycamore seed ball.

And sometimes I capture an insect on a plant that I don’t see until I look at my ‘take’ on the big screen after I get home. This is a grass seed head I photographed at Belmont while I was waiting for the bus with the students coming for BioBlitz.

Most of the time I use the zoom to capture things like frogs (yesterday’s post) or birds that would move away if I tried to get closer to them. This month I photographed two birds that were singing: a Grackle in the black walnut and a Caroline Wren on our deck railing.

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There was a Mourning Dove with an iridescent patch on its neck near our birdbath

And a Robin alert to what was happening in our backyard.

I managed to get one good image of a Chipping Sparrow on a split rail fence at Belmont; it kept flying ahead of me even with the distance the zoom was providing.

Finally – I got some pictures of Tree Swallows at Belmont. They were protecting their nest along the path to the pond – would dive bomb hikers (to the delight of all the BioBlitz groups) and return to the top of their box between rounds.

Frog on the Grill

My husband was surprised when he took the cover off our gas grill on Memorial Dad to find a tiny frog on the shelf where he usually sets the plate of food to be grilled. It seemed completely oblivious to being exposed at first. I rushed out with my camera to get some pictures. It didn’t budge.

We wanted to turn the grill on so I used a dandelion leaf to tickle the frog and it jumped….but in the direction it was pointed (which happened to be toward the grill rather than away. I tried again, and the frog jump off the grill and hopped a few times to get to a vertical surface – the frame of the door to the covered part of our deck. Note that the color seems a little different; the reference I found said that this type of frog could change color based on its environment.

It’s a Tree Frog. We have two in this area that look identical – the eastern gray tree frog (Hyla versicolor) and Cope’s Gray Treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis). The only reliable way to distinguish is evidently the number of chromosomes (Cope’s Gray Treefrog is diploid, the eastern gray treefrog is tetraploid). This individual did have a light spot beneath the eye and large toe pads typical of both.

Online Reference: Field Guide to Maryland’s Frogs and Toads

May 2018 Tree Status

All the trees are growing well with the warmer temperatures and rain. The sycamore behind our house has lots of small green seed balls among its new leaves; last year a freeze came at the wrong time and the tree only produced one seed ball.

The tulip poplar is full of flowers as usual. Its leaves are larger than the sycamores at this point. Later in the season the sycamore leaves will be the largest.

The maple had so many seeds early in the month that they made the tree look brownish…but then the were blown off the tree and the maple looks like is normal summer self.

The sweet gums are starting new seed balls as well. They look like spikey globes among the leaves.

But the celebration of tree blooms this month is the horse chestnut. The tree I photographed is at the end of the drive up to the manor house. The top fell out of the tree several years ago but the part that Is left is blooming profusely. I stopped one day after I finished hiking and leaned out the open window of my car to take some pictures of the flowers.

Mourning Doves in the Spring

We have mourning doves that frequent our back deck all during the year but there seem to be more of them in the spring and summer. I love their gentle coo sounds. Sometimes they are a nuisance – building their nests in a gutter resulting in a clogged downspout in the next heavy rain.

Back in 2016 it seemed like they were using our deck railing as a favorite courting/mating spot…and it’s happening again this year! I have been away from how so much recently that I was surprised to catch them in the act!

I wonder if the occasional red tailed and red shouldered hawks that we see are attracted to our area by the doves that seem so plentiful already (and are evidently prolific too).

Backyard Walk – May 2018

Last month I posted about violets and spice bush. On an walk through the yard this week, I still say plenty of violets blooming and

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The spice bush was beginning to unfurl leaves. I hope there will be some spicebush swallowtails around this summer to produce several generations of butterflies in our forest.

The maple seeds are drying and will swirl away from the tree soon. The black walnut is beginning to unfurl its leaves. There are multiple leaves that unfurl from the buds on the tips of the stems as well as along it. The bud scars from last year are often visible. The tree lags the tulip poplars leafing out.

The high point of the walk around the backyard was not actually in the yard…it was just into the woods: A Jack-in-the-Pulpit! There are so many invasive plants in the forest that I always am relieved when I find a native making it through another spring. I'll try to pick a good day to spray myself with insect repellent (to keep the ticks away) and walk back into the forest before the prickle bush gets too thick to look for more native wildflowers.

The sycamore buds have just pops…with leaves too tiny to be very interesting yet. I’ll save it for the June post.

New Housing Development

I have lived in the same house for over 20 years and the area across the street from the neighborhood has always been a agricultural field.

There were some changes over the years: the field was planted with soybeans or corn or wheat – we always tried to observe the sprouts growing into seedlings as we went by to discover which it would be. The margins changed when herbicides came into popular use. Crop stubble was left, and tillage was reduced over the years – never leaving the soil bare for long or at all. And now – the process to develop the land into a residential neighborhood has started.

The development is in the initial phase with civil engineers doing studies and developing a sketch plan. Last week there was a ‘pre-submission community meeting’ (part of the county’s Development Review Process) that was crowded…people standing all around the edges of the room because the seats were full. It was my first experience at this kind of meeting and I was glad I got there early enough to get a seat. There was a lot of tension in the room with a lot of questions about the impact on already clogged roads and overcrowded schools. I am on the mailing list to get the responses to the issues raised within the next 30 days. I’m also sign up to the community Facebook page so that I can learn from others in the community that know more about how to maneuver within the process to protect the interest of the already existing neighborhoods…if this new development proceeds.

One of the new things I learned in the meeting was that the traffic issues on the roads now are largely due to a development that did not complete as planned and provide an entrance/exit to a major through street; instead the development only uses the narrow 2 lane roads in place prior to the development which were not designed for the volume of traffic they now carry. No wonder the people that have been following the issues for years are openly distrustful of the process and the developers rather than starting out in ‘trust but verify’ mode.

It’s positive that there are so many people engaged at this point…that the big issues have been surfaced. This is becoming my close-to-home HoLLIE-like project!

Backyard Walk – April 2018

We had some warmer days late last week and I walked around our backyard to photograph it’s status. The violets are blooming. Sometimes the scent of them wafts through the air. They like the areas where there is lots of leaf mulch.

The red maple has bloomed, and the samaras (seeds) are forming. Our tree is in further along that the one at Belmont; the microclimate where it is growing is warmer probably.

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Do you see the yellow haze under the trees in our forest? That’s spicebush. I think almost all the understory trees are that plant. The others have been killed so heavily browsed by the deer that they haven’t survived. I’m going to make an effort to inspect the spicebush this summer….hoping to find the caterpillars of the spicebush swallowtail butterflies. I am pleased that we have so many food plants for them.

Cherry and Plum Blossoms

We have a cherry and plum tree in our front yard…and they are both blooming at the same time this year. In past year the plum has been almost finished before the cherry tree peaks. The up and down temperatures this year has acted to synchronize their blooming.

The cherry tree still has some buds. It always surprises me that the buds look so pink but the petal are almost white.

The cherry tree is an older tree and has more lichen growing on it.

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The plum has pink buds and the color is retained in the open flowers.

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The leaves of the tree are red too so there is no greenery around the plum blossoms.

These trees are the best part of our spring front yard!

Sunrise Alarm

After I posted about the sunrise back on March 18th, I remember a time when I wondered why there were not alarm clocks that would be relative to sunrise rather than the same time every day. Well – there are apps for that! I found several when I thought to check and chose Sun Alarm from Volker Voecking Software Engineering. I set the alarm on my phone to go off at 10 minutes before sunrise for my location.

I usually get up earlier than the alarm…but find that I am seeing more sunrises because I look to the east when the alarm goes off. Seeing a beautiful sunrise is a boost at the beginning of the day that is always welcome. The picture I’m including with this post was taken last Tuesday…about 9 minutes before sunrise.

Birding through a Window – March 2018

I was out and about more during March than earlier in the year so I wasn’t around to see birds through my office window as much. I did catch the birds that seem to always bee around: the blue jays,

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The cardinals,

The mourning doves,

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The juncos (they’ll be leaving for their nesting grounds in the north soon),

The titmouse, and

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The Carolina wren.

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There are the ones I see less often – so continue to view them as special:

the pileated woodpecker and

The northern flicker.

There seemed to be more flocks of birds in the yard and around the feeder/bath: cowbirds,

Crows,

Grackles,

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Starlings, and

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Robins of course (I always associate springtime and flocks of robins coming through…some staying for the season and others continuing northward).

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All in all – a good number of birds around in March through high winds and snow….the swings of temperature. It’s been a wild weather month.

Snow Day - Part 2

By mid-morning – it was obvious that the ‘big snow’ was going to be during the day on Wednesday. The backyard became a winter wonderland with snow accumulating on every available surface.

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The azalea that has been showing a lot of stem and leaf color earlier in the day became indistinguishable from other mounds of snow.

After lunch I opened the garage door and took a snow measurement on the driveway – a little over 4.5 inches and it was still snowing. I also photographed the sidewalk in front of our house. I wondered if the plum tree was going to have some breakage from the weight of the snow; there was no wind – a good thing.

I decided to shovel the driveway. The snow was not as heavy as I thought it would be – which made the job easier. There were plops of snow falling from the trees and I could hear some slow trickles of water. The temperature was about 33 degrees.

A little while after I came in from shoveling, the snow plow made a down and back pass at our street. Later in the day they came back and did the side streets. Events for Thursday began to be cancelled.

The next morning (Thursday), there was still snow on the trees at sunrise. But the day was sunny and the forecast was for a high of 45…probably the last of the snow days! I got some pictures of the forest and the maple blossom in the morning sunlight.

Snow Day - Part 1

The forecast Tuesday night was for a lot of snow in our area overnight and all day Wednesday, so meetings were cancelled, schools closed, and the recycle truck pickup to our neighborhood delayed. The temperature hovered close to freezing. I saw some deer crossing our street at dusk as the announcements came out.

 I had planned to shovel my driveway in the morning and then again later in the day since the snow was going to be wet and heavy. I was anticipating getting a workout. But….

The temperature stayed high enough that the streets and driveways were mostly clear in the morning. I took pictures and enjoyed the relative quiet of the neighborhood without rumbling vehicles (no buses or recycle truck). It seemed that there were less cars on our street; the adults were taking a snow day just like the school children – a time to savor being at home. In the front of our house, I took pictures through the skinny windows on both sides of the front door of vegetation laden with snow and ice: daffodils,

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Azalea, and

Bushes.

In the back, there was the top of the snow filled pine,

The heated birdbath with the snow knocked off its rim by birds that visited,

And a gutter filling in with snow and ice (hopefully it will melt and drain gracefully).

It started to snow again, and I decided to wait for the afternoon to take a walk (hoping that I would not need to shovel the driveway at all).

March Sunrise

About the only perk for going to daylight savings time is being up for sunrise again. I noticed the one yesterday via its reflection on clouds in the west at first. The clouds had a pink tinge over the tree tops. I took the picture through my office window.

I went downstairs and took a picture through the narrow window beside the door. The color was already becoming more orange.

I opened the door, so I would avoid the window frame (and the smudges on the glass).

That’s when I heard the red winged blackbirds. They were across the street in a treetop – greeting the new day with their chatter.

The cat was waiting for me when I turned around from the open front door. Fortunately, he is not a cat that is always looking for an opportunity to escape to the great outdoors!

Tree status – Mid- March

I took some close-up pictures of three trees in our yard this week. The black walnut has obvious buds but they aren’t opening yet. The scars from last year’s growth are shallow craters below the buds for spring 2018 growth.

The plum tree has bright pink buds. The blooms will be pink and probably coming soon. This is the first tree that blooms in our yard.

The cherry is the second tree to bloom. The buds have begun to spit open. Our tree lags the ones in downtown Washington DC which are predicted to reach peak bloom this year around the end of March. Our weather has kept having cold nights with some warm days so the bloom is proceeding slowly after appearing to be starting early.