Walk at Mt Pleasant – Part 1
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I got up at my regular time and was out of the house a few minutes before 6; the sun was up but it was still very much the ‘magic hour’ for photography when I got to Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant Farm. There were only two other cars and I didn’t see any other people around before I headed out on my walk. I hadn’t been there to walk around since back in January….completely missed the spring which I usually get to observe many times as I volunteer for school field trips that come there…but not this spring. I noted a sign about social distancing and no large groups. The picnic tables looked so pristine and lonely. There would be plenty of space of a group of 10ish to eat lunch far enough apart; it would look odd to me since I am used to the school groups that often ate there after a field trip and were almost always more than 100 people.
On a positive note – the orchard has fruit this year. In 2019 a late frost caused all the blossoms/newly forming fruit to fail. I thought it might have happened this year too but there are fruits on both the pear and apple trees. The pear might not have edible fruit (I think they are usually bigger by this time)
But the apples have a lot of green fruit that will be begin turning red soon.
The door to Montjoy bar seemed to not fit as well as they did at one time…they sag a little. I wondered how long ago they were painted.
The trumpet vine was growing profusely over the arbor near the children’s garden. Insects were enjoying the flowers. I made the mistake of walking under it and a bee flew around my head for some distance beyond. Not sure why I was attractive to the bee.
There were lots of meadow plants in bloom – horse nettle, thistles, Queen Anne’s lace, bindweed, a pleated mushroom. Something to photograph at every turn.
I’m not usually keen on landscape pictures but there was mist coming off the ground and it added dimension to the contours of the land. The sun had been up for about 45 minutes. I could already tell that the mist was burning off as I walked…could feel the high humidity.
The bird houses have been refreshed and painted. The background paint is a light blue and then natural things are painted over the blue. It’s a nice change in the meadow even though I also appreciated the old natural wood houses with occasional patches of lichen and moss. There is a sign on the pole cautioning to stay away because they are tree swallow homes. I wonder if they put the signs on after they knew it was a tree swallow using the house rather than a bluebird.
The meadows looked very lush and growing wild. The place looks more overgrown than most summers…and I think it is more than not mowing as much. There are not as many people around. There are even ripe blackberries in the meadow than haven’t been picked. During previous summers, the campers ate blackberries as soon as they were ripe!
The stream seemed to be running more in the channel closest to the beach area rather than the one we used to think was the deeper one. It was running slowly…the last rainstorm already mostly drained off. It felt a cooler down at the stream in the deep shade.
Most of the milkweed was past blooming with tiny seed pods forming although I did find two flowers– one in the meadow and one in the garden area near the flowerpot people. Both had interesting insects:
Milkweed beetles meeting each other – moving around quite a lot….another insect further down that didn’t move during my picture taking.
There was a bee on the flower in the other garden. I watched it as it went to several small flowers – trying to avoid bee butt pictures!
The rest of my hike report in tomorrow’s post…
