Valley Water Mill Park

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I finally managed to walk the trail around Valley Water Mill Lake just before Thanksgiving. It was my 3rd time at the park; the first time was with my Identifying Woody Plants class and the 2nd was on a very rainy day to learn about what kind of volunteers they needed. This 3rd time was on a dry but cloudy day in the 40s. Most of the fall color was gone but there was still plenty to see. I was a little rushed because my husband was using the hike for exercise while I wanted to slow down and take pictures!

The honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) pods were frequently on the trail….and it was easy to spot the trees with thorns!

The coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) was still beautiful along the trail. The berries require some freeze-thaw cycles to become palatable to birds.

The other color in understory was burning bush (Euonymus alatus)– a non-native invasive that is popular in landscaping. I looked at the stems to be sure that is what it was….they have corky wings. There is also wintercreeper (Euonymus fortune) in the park. Both are very difficult to eradicate.

I was on the lookout for fungus too but was rushed enough to see only the most obvious. There was a cut end of a log that has shelf fungus around the outer edge…and some that looked a lot like meringue on another.

Most of the oak leaves were brown and crackly…an occasional one still colorful.

There were a lot of leaves on the ground. Most of the time the trail has been swept clear by the wind but there were drifts of leaves everywhere.

I photographed two exposed roots. One that was close to the trail and displaying the impact of being stepped on. The other looked more like the soil has been eroded from the base of the tree – maybe during a flood; the tree was not that far from the riverbank.

Next time I go to Valley Water Mill I want to plan to spend a bit longer….explore a bit more thoroughly!

Our Missouri Yard Before the Killing Frost

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I walked around our yard before the killing frost last week…to capture the colors of late fall. There is not much to do in the yard right now. I am following the ‘leave the leaves’ strategy. The winds swept away most of the leaves in the front yard but there are two drift areas in the back which may thin the grass. I don’t mind at all if that happens. I’ll plant black-eyed susans, cone flowers, golden rod, asters, bee balm, golden alexander, etc. I am inclined to let the pokeweed grow at will since I have seen mockingbirds eat the berries this fall.

There were still a few dandelions in bloom….and insects. The morning I walked around was in the 40s so the insects were not moving very fast.

Of course there was lots of color…including aromatic sumac, a young maple, our Kousa dogwood…as well as other plants that are probably not native.

The seeds of the chives are easily falling out of their husk. The pods on the crape myrtle will probably freeze before the can mature; the plants have died back to the ground every year we have lived in Missouri so far. The big buds on the rhododendron look great and will likely make it through the winter to bloom next spring.

Both the Eastern White Pine and Short Leaf Pines are doing well in our back yard – pokeweed growing underneath them. There is also a small Eastern Redcedar that has come up in my wildflower bed; I’m thinking about where to move it next spring…maybe to the area where I planted a button bush…which a squirrel promptly clipped to the ground.

My husband got the barn swallow nests removed from under our deck. We succeeded in not letting them build a nest on the brick of our house last summer…but they found a place on the deck supports and we didn’t notice soon enough.

Our maples in the front yard have lost their leaves. Our neighbor’s river birch has also lost its leaves and it looks like there is a squirrels nest in the tree. The oak in our neighbor’s yard (a pin oak) still has a lot of leaves but seemingly has dropped a lot as well; most of the leaves in our back yard are from that tree.

Even though the drought of the summer made the fall not as brilliantly colored, fall lingered lingered…and the transition to winter was worth noticing.

Zooming – November 2024

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The zooming images for November are mostly a celebration of fall in our area of Missouri. There are a few animals in the group that could have happened at other times – a robin bathing in a stream, a grackle at our feeder, and a small red-eared slider in our neighborhood pond.

Can you find the poison ivy seeds (hint…they are white), the glorious fall Virginia creeper, a chestnut husk, 4 kinds of oak, and a maple?

I enjoyed searching out little bits of nature to photograph…fill frame…using my camera to ‘see’ better than I do with just my eyes. My camera’s optics are the great enabler!

Our Missouri Yard – November 2024

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We haven’t had any extremely cold weather yet. Some trees have lost their leaves but not the oaks. We already are well above the monthly average for rainfall so are recovering somewhat from the drought through the summer and fall…just as we are bracing for winter.

The violets are reduced in volume but still mostly green. They have been a great plant for extending the flower beds on the east side of our house into the yard (I have several feet of ‘grass’ that is so thick with violets that I haven’t mowed it for at least two months!).

I have an area that is full of pine needles and clippings (grass, boxwood, yew) that I will plant with hostas next spring – as soon as my established clumps of hostas begin to sprout and can be easily divided. The rhododendron looks great…lots of buds for next spring’s blooms. The grapevine that I’ve draped over the stubble of a crape myrtle is turning yellow. I’m not sure what I will do with it next year. I don’t want it growing into the rhododendron but there is not a lot of space where it can go otherwise.

The seeds are falling out of the chives. These plants were started a few years ago from seeds I got from my mother’s garden. There is an oak seedling growing in the lambs ear. The closest oak tree is a pin oak, but the squirrels might plant acorns from further afield. The parent of a maple seedling might be one of the maples in our front yard…although it is on the other side of the house from where this seedling is growing.

The spicebush that I bought and planted about a month ago is showing some fall color…hope it comes back in the spring.

It is obvious we haven’t had a hard freeze yet this year. There are ‘intimate landscapes’ with fall colors everywhere.

I am trying to ‘leave the leaves’ this year rather than mow them. There were two piles that had been created by the wind in my front yard so I gathered them up into the wheelbarrow to move to my compost spot where the hostas will go. Otherwise I am leaving the scattering of leaves on the yard. I might have to move some oak leaves that fall into our yard once our neighbor’s tree drops its leaves. Overall, the wind had done most of the ‘raking’ of leaves either away from my yard or into areas where they can stay.

The Virginia creeper on the west side of the house has already lost its leaves but the plants near our front door are spectacularly red.

The aromatic sumac has lots of buds. I hope it makes seed clusters next season.

The Ozark witch hazel is probably too small to bloom in January but hopefully it will in a few years. I found a small tree growing under the holly trees. The leaves are rough…maybe a hackberry? I am going to leave it be for now…just as I am all the redbud seedlings!

I still have work to do before it gets too cold: pulling/digging out Japanese honeysuckle primarily.

Sprouting an Acorn

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I picked up some acorns back in September – pin oak (neighbor’s oak) and white oak (from Identifying Wood Plants field trip). Some of each were wrapped in damp paper towels to sprout. Only one sprouted! It was a white oak which was not too surprising since they are known for sprouting in the fall (didn’t learn this until I had the acorns in the damp paper towels).

The sprouted acorn is now in a modified soft drink bottle with some soil…in the window of my office. The pictures below show the young white oak over the past 7 days.

The plan is to keep it indoors through the winter and plant it outdoors after the last frost next spring. It could be the only white oak in the neighborhood!

Identifying Woody Plants (Month 2)

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The Identifying Woody Plants field class I am taking at Missouri State University has met 5 more times since my last post about the field sessions on the campus.

I am continuing to take pictures of items in the classroom before class:

An opened Maclura pomifera (Osage orange) fruit

Some Quercus macrocarpa (Bur oak) acorns

An herbarium page showing Tilia americana (American Basswood) fruit which we have seen in the field, but my pictures were not very good.

Cuttings from two plants were brought in and we were asked to ID them based on our notes – with the hint that the first one had milky sap (hard to see since it had been cut):

Morus alba (white mulberry) – a non-native that is frequently seen as a ‘weed’ tree and Vitis (grape).

Recently the walk from the parking lot to the classroom building has been full of late blooming pollinator plants and fall foliage.

The one session where we stayed on campus added some new trees to our list:

Quercus bicolor (Swamp white oak)

Sassafras albidum (Sassafras)

Carya ovata (Shagbark hickory)

Quercus lyrata (Overcup oak)

We also saw some review trees and I got better pictures of Celtis occidentalis bark (Rough hackberry)

And some add odd growth of a Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip/yellow poplar). The trunk of the tree was growing at a slant rather than straight upward and it had small branches coming out relatively close the ground.

The hikes on campus and further afield have been more pleasant this past month because the temperatures have been cooler. There have been no rainy days in the field either!

Previous posts about Identifying Woody Plants field class

Solar Eclipse – Part 1

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We traveled from our home near Springfield MO to Poplar Bluff MO for the solar eclipse on April 8th. There was a flurry of activity on the day before the event to finalize our destination; the weather forecast was the key driver for us to choose Poplar Bluff (along with Whitely Park being a good location that was not included as part of the event planning by the city).

We left our house at 5:30 AM to pick up our daughter and son-in-law before heading east; it wasn’t long before sunrise. I took some pictures of it through the windshield of the car (my husband did all the driving).

We did not encounter any heavy traffic during our morning drive…got to the park 2 hours before the first contact…plenty of time for set up and looking around the park. We set up on an asphalt parking lot that never completely filled up so we spilled over onto the two spaces on either side of where we were parked next to a fenced soccer field.

I walked around to look at a few low growing plants…

And trees that were just beginning to leaf out. I realized that the trees did no have enough foliage to make projected crescent patterns onto the ground as happened when we were in Loup City, Nebraska for the August 2017 solar eclipse.

On the ground – I noted roots of a sycamore, seed pods of sweet gums (from last year and green ones from this year) and a clump of green (probably a weed) surrounded by brown thatch.

There were birds about:

Two purple martin houses that were beginning to be populated. One had a pair of house sparrows too; I wondered how long it would take for the purple martins to evict them.

A starling in the grass – keeping an eye on the sky.

And a group of robins in a tree without leaves but lots of twigs that made it hard to get a good image.

I took most of my eclipse pictures with my bridge camera (Canon Powershot SX70 HX) on a tripod with a solar filter taped to the camera body to cover the lens until totality). I had eclipse glasses that I wore to look at the sun with my eyes and put over the camera on my iPhone to take one picture. I’ll post my eclipse pictures on Sunday along with some my husband took…stay tuned for that.

Our yard/yard work – March 2024

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There is a lot going on in our yard this month. The bulbs I planted last year have thrived. The crocus bloomed first followed by the hyacinths and daffodils. The hyacinths don’t seem to bloom as well here as they did years ago in Maryland.

The forsythia bush in the corner of our yard is blooming profusely. I cut some to bring inside…and took some macro pictures of the flowers there. After the bush finishes blooming, I will trim it back significantly. I planted pawpaw seeds under it and I am hoping they come up…start my grove of pawpaw trees with the forsythia’s protection from the hottest parts of the summer days.

The fragrant sumac is blooming. I bought the young plant last spring after the bloom time so this is my first season to observe the small flowers.

The lambs’ ear is returning. The clumps that get more sun did not die back like the largest clump on the north side of the house. There are two in a sunny place that might merge over the summer.

The small hens and chicks are pretty with additional color forming on the tips of their leaves over the winter. There are still two chicks. I’ll be moving more rocks away from them so it will be easier for them to spread.

The vinca under one of our cedars is blooming. It seems to be well contained. I don’t want more of it!

I’ve planted more pollinator/butterfly garden seeds in two places: enlarging the existing wildflower garden and a sunny area under a pine tree where I cleared away most of the pine needles (it is sunnier there because I cut some low branches).

I’m not sure if the bulbs I planted from my parents’ garden are going to survive. They had to be planted in the winter…not the optimal time. Hopefully they will become established over this summer although I doubt they will bloom.

The mound where a pine tree used to be (it fell and had to be removed) is going to fill out nicely with irises and I planted a tiny oak there (I cut it from my flower bed last fall and put it in a vase to enjoy the fall color….it grew a root and put out green leaves! It will take years before it gets big enough to impact the bed but could eventually dominate the back yard!). The beautyberry that is there has not leafed out yet.

The hostas are beginning to emerge…in dense clumps. I decided to divide two clumps…since I have a shady place that I’d like to convert from grass.

I planted divided clumps (roots plus a furled leave or two) at the pine needle and flower bed boundaries with grass. I covered the grass with extra pine needles (from under the tree where I planted pollinator/butterfly garden seeds) and clippings from some bushes). I was thrilled when the hosta leaves unfurled within a day or two after they were planted!

There is still a lot to do in the yard. I get a little done every day I am at home and it’s dry…over 60 degrees.

Annual stick/pinecone yard clean up

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The chiminea left by the previous owner of our house comes in handy for burning sticks and pinecones that would otherwise be difficult to get rid of. The sticks come mostly from our neighbor’s river birch (the tree sheds into our side yard every time we have a strong wind!) but there is a mixture of crape myrtle and oak….and some branches trimmed from the forsythia last season that were thoroughly dried in their pile under a pine tree. The first two fires were all sticks! Most of them broke into short enough pieces easily enough but a few poked out the opening of the chiminea until they burnt enough that I could slide them the rest of the way in. The mornings were cool enough that I enjoyed watching the fire burn. My husband asked why I smelled like smoke when I came inside!

As I trimmed some lower branches off our largest pine, I realized that there were way too many pine cones and that I was going to need to burn some of them – particularly the ones that had fallen onto grass rather than the carpet of needles directly under the tree; otherwise the lawn mower was going to be challenged by them every time I mowed in the upcoming months.

I piled the cones into a wagon along with the forsythia sticks (which had broken easily into short lengths) and loaded the chiminea with the sticks and half the cones for the third fire of the season. I lit a paper towel wadded under the sticks to start the fire.

It was an interesting fire to watch. The forsythia sticks and most of the cones caught fire easily although some of the cones might have been damp enough to slow their burning. As the fire progressed, I enjoyed the movement of the flames…the shape of the cones and the way they changed from their brown color to black with glowing red crescents to black and white…and then ash. I added the rest of the pinecones once most of the initial load had burned….and they caught quickly. After they had burned down, I stirred the ashes and was surprised at the chunks that still hadn’t burned. I closed the screen on the chiminea and watched the fire die before I went inside – realizing how much I had enjoyed photographing the pinecone fire.

Walk in the Carrollton Neighborhood

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Getting out for a walk in the neighborhood was a treat during the routine of being with my parent in the hospital for 24 hours and then catching up on everything else (including sleep) for 24 hours…repeating. Even though I was exhausted, being outdoors in the crisp air was exhilarating; as always, I had my camera in hand to document what I noticed.

I didn’t get away from the house before I noticed the mini-mums in the front flowerbed and the oak leaves on the ground but held upright by the groundcover.

There was a flowerbed near the sidewalk a few blocks away that was full of ceramic yard art tucked into the plantings. The frog was my favorite.

I noticed that the city of Carrollton (Texas) has marked the drains along the street…indicating that the drains go straight to waterways (i.e. not treatment for contaminates).

There was a confused pear tree along the way – blooming in late November rather than waiting until the spring!

Refreshed and feeling less stressed…I returned to my parents’ house for a nap.

Bringing Fall Foliage Indoors

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I found a small oak and a maple growing in my flowerbed…cut them since they can’t grow large there. They were colorful so I put them in a kombucha jar on one of my office tables and have been enjoying them for the past week or so.

The oak was the largest of the two small trees and the leaves were a variety of colors. It is probably a child of the oak in our neighbor’s yard – maybe planted in our flower bed by a squirrel.

The oaks in our neighborhood retain their leaves longer than many other trees nearby…so maybe this young one will last longer indoors too.

The red maple seedling made an interesting macro image from above! It is smaller and more delicate than the oak…but the topmost leaves continued to grow after I cut it!

The maples in our yard have already lost their leaves but the small one indoors is still photogenic!

Our Missouri Neighborhood – November 2023

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I am planning to do a lot more walks around my neighborhood – get some quality outdoor time/exercise…maybe even what the Garmin calls ‘intensity minutes’. I’ll take a small camera with me…just in case I spot anything interesting. My daughter called me just as I was heading out so I didn’t photograph the great blue heron that was in a sunny spot at the edge of the pond; I just watched until it flew away while I talked to her.

I did some power walking almost to the furthest bridge before I stopped to photograph some oak leaves that had caught in the grass at the edge of the pond. The tree still had quite a few leaves to drop!

The willow seems to still have mostly green leaves!

A little further along there was debris on the walk; looking closer I realized it was seeds rather than leaves!

Even though the temperature was only about 40 degrees. The sunshine must have made the bank warm enough for a turtle to leave the water.

After I got to the other end of the ponds, I noticed a lot of maple leaves had fallen in the drainage channel and the grass along the path.

A short length of sidewalk on my route was almost covered with pine needles. I enjoyed photographing some cones that had fallen as well.

There was a stump at one end of the row of pines that must have been cut several years ago – maybe before we moved to the neighborhood. The color of the pine needles stands out against the gray of the wood and the powdery green of lichen/moss.  

A big plus – I accumulated 29 intensity minutes!

Our Nixa, MO Yard – March 2023

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The bulbs are up in our Missouri yard but making slow progress toward blooming because we keep having cold days! There are irises from a previous owner; I added more last fall along with daffodils, crocus, and allium. There is something growing low and around the irises that is very green (I suspect it is a weed/invasive but I am leaving it alone because I like its greenness).

The hyacinths are up and one tried to bloom. Most are still waiting to raise their buds above their leaves.

I am waiting to cut the decorative grass until late May…give insects overwintering there a chance to hatch and provide food for nesting birds.

The robins are back, of course. They don’t come to our feeder (they are not seed-eaters), but they are in our yard finding food – a good indicator that the yard might not be overwhelmed with chemicals. I am keen to let it grow as naturally as possible since I want birds and pollinators to be healthy here.

I have a clearer view of the sky in this house than I did in Maryland; the trees are not as dense or large. There is a river birch and oak in our neighbor’s yard that might provide an opportunity for a picture of the moon resting on branches…but I didn’t catch it this month. My camera’s night scene setting did a relatively good job of getting the moon in focus (Canon PowerShot SX70-HS on a monopod…me standing in my yard a few feet from my home office).

Overall – I like our new location…and plan to spend a lot more time in the yard when the temperatures are a little warmer.

Our Missouri Neighborhood – March 2023

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The temperature has fluctuated wildly – from the teens to 70s this month. I took walks on two of the sunny days. We’ve had enough rain that the drainage into the ponds had running water on both days, and I stopped on the bridge to take pictures of leaves from last season in the rippling water. Oaks, maples, river birch, and red buds are represented.

There is almost always a pair of mallards about….and lots of robins.

Some branches from a magnolia in a nearby yard are upright in the pond. I wonder how long they will last…..or maybe someone is trying to root them (i.e. start new trees)?

The turtles are more active on warm days. They all appear to be red-eared sliders. Their snouts are usually all that is visible unless they are closer to shore or sunning on some high ground in the pond.

One day I started out in sunshine but there were more clouds than I anticipated. I took some landscape shots….experimenting with backlight and the curving walkway through the trees around our pond.

Some geese were on the walkway (and this time of year I give them space since they might be aggressive) so I went up to the street to complete the loop to my house. I noticed that the stormwater drain is labeled ‘no dumping – drains to river’ with a metal shield; in Maryland the labeling was painted onto the concrete.

The red maples are some of the earliest trees to bloom. The trees along the path don’t have low branches so my pictures of the flowers rely on my camera’s zoom.

Sometimes I photograph something because I didn’t anticipate it…the oak leaf stuck in the chain link of the tennis court is an example.

Another is the mats of algae on lower spillway between the two ponds. They had washed from the upper pond but are doomed to dry out on the spillway if another rain does not come soon. Still – they were ‘emerald isles’ at a time of year where there is still a lot brown in the natural world.

Ritter Springs

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Ritter Springs is a park near Springfield MO – north of the city in a rural area. It was our first visit to the park (one of our exploratory day trips this fall). There is a one lane paved road a short distance into the park then a gravel parking lot. A gate blocked the gravel road down to a pavilion; near the gate there was a map of the park and its connections to other nearby parks via trails.  

The park would have been a lot more scenic a few weeks earlier before most of the leaves fell. When we were there, drives of leaves accumulated everywhere…filling any low areas.

Even so we enjoyed our walk through the woods along the road and on mowed trails – looking for photo opportunities. I spotted shelf fungus that were bright spots in the fallen leaves,

A buckeye butterfly in a sunny spot,

The torn end of a recently fallen branch,

Some red leaves still on a young oak…protected from the wind by the bigger trees,

And a tree top full of cones.

But probably the tree I got most excited about was the Osage Orange. The tree had a very limited range in pre-colonial North America but has been planted by settlers as a hedge where its thorns deterred free-range livestock from vegetable gardens and corn fields. It also has historical significance in plains states where is was widely planted in rows for windbreaks. This time of year it is easier to identify the trees with their huge fruits….or simply looking up after seeing one of the greenish orbs on the ground. There are a lot more of the trees in Missouri than in Maryland!

I took a closer look at one of the fruits.

Next time…we’ll go further into the park…maybe even all the way down to the Little Sac River!

Our New Neighborhood – November 2022

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The fall in our neighborhood peaked very quickly. It was already fading by early November but I still enjoyed trying to capture the remnants as I walked around the stormwater ponds. There were some leaves in the shallow water in the trough of concrete that feeds water into the ponds. I stopped to take some pictures looking down from the bridge.

And a few colorful leaves are still on the trees.

The oak leaves were thick at the edge of one pond…some wild asters growing through them…floating on the top of the water. I didn’t notice the fish swimming from under the leaves and water plants until I looked at image on my computer screen!

A red eared slider poked its head out of the water a little further away.

On the loop back toward my house, noticed a little color on along the path

And some brilliant red seedlings at the edge of the pond (will they survive to become trees?).

Our Missouri Yard – October 2022

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We had two mornings with temperatures in the 20s last week after I took some pictures of the yard. The frost didn’t seem to impact the oak or river birch in our neighbor’s yard very much.

The rose petals are all limp now, but the leaves are unchanged. Some of the buds might still open now that we are going to have at least 10 days of temperatures well above freezing.

The pokeweed flowers and berries survived very well but the leaves or limp. The berries that are already ripened will probably be eaten by birds, but the immature fruits are probably not going to develop further.

The oxalis triangularis that is growing on the east side of our house survived the frost unscathed! Maybe it benefited from being close to the brick wall of the house and getting sun first thing in the morning when the temperature was the coldest.

Now that is it warmed up again – I am planting bulbs: daffodils, hyacinths, allium, and crocus. The previous owner put landscaping fabric then rocks in the flower beds, so the task is very difficult. I removed a small cedar that had died and planted bulbs in the space – filling in the bigger hole I made in the black fabric with cedar mulch and rocks. Over time, there might be more and more of that…until there is not as much of the black fabric in the beds.  I am probably going to plant the rest of the crocus in the lawn since they will come up and bloom before the grass would need to be mowed!

Zooming – June 2022

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I didn’t have as many photographs as usual to choose from in June…too busy moving. There were still enough to choose twelve. The locations were wide ranging: our neighborhoods in Maryland and Missouri, the botanical garden in Springfield MO, our houses in Maryland and Missouri. It is occurring to me that my multi-day road trips between Maryland and Missouri/Texas are almost over. The trek between Missouri and Texas is an easy 6.5 hours!

Enjoy the slide show!

Moving Out

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The moving out day started out with a flurry of activity (putting bedding into closets to be used on inflatable mattresses after the movers left) and walking around making sure there was blue tape on everything that was not going on the truck. The kitchen area was where we stored the boxes/padding we’d use for the few remaining items that would go in a car when we left the house for the last time (the space between the refrigerator and the cabinet…and then in kitchen cabinets that were otherwise empty). I set myself up a working area with my laptop and papers associated with the move day. The Regency bag was for plastic bags of small hardware as furniture was disassembled. I put each set in a Ziploc with a piece of paper indicating the furniture it would be reunited with in Missouri. Just before the mover was due to arrive, everything was as ready as I could make it. I walked down the driveway and the took a picture of our oak with Virginia Creeper – a Zen moment.

The mover and his 3 helpers arrived shortly thereafter and then the team to prepare the grand piano (and treadmill) for the move. They put mats down on the wood floor…would have put more if we were not going to replace the carpeting anyway. Ramps were improvised for the two steps down from our front door. They loaded into the side of the truck. Big boxes of moving blankets and a big hanger of huge rubber bands to hold them in place around furniture were brought it. A steady stream of boxes were taken to the truck on dollies. The rubber bands and shrink wrap were the two innovations most noticeable to me since my last long distance move in 1983 (Plano TX to Springfield VA…..now we’re doing Laurel MD to Springfield/Nixa MO). The piano was partially disassembled, padded and loaded onto the bottom part of the crate which had been built specifically for it in front of our house (the team’s van had a generator to power the tools!). The piano went to the truck on a 4-wheel dolly where the rest of the crate was assembled around it. Going down the ramp at our front door was a bit scary for me to watch but the team told me that it was relatively easy (there was a job they had that required taking a piano down a muddy hill which they categorized as awful/scary but even they the piano came through unscathed).

10 hours from when they started – everything to go on the truck was loaded and the big truck pulled away. The delivery date for our move in is a bit more than a week away…but a lot needs to happen in that week!

Our Maryland Neighborhood

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I took an early morning walk in our neighborhood – down to the water retention pond…savoring the familiar sights and sounds. The first was our oak near our mailbox. It was a much smaller tree when we moved to the house over 25 years ago. I planted day lilies around its base about 10 years ago; they never get a chance to bloom because the deer eat the buds like candy but the leaves make a lush collar for the tree that keeps the mowers from damaging the trunk.

I took pictures of some of my favorite trees against the morning sky/shadow – maple, ginkgo and oak. The maples are thriving while the oaks are declining. The builder planted one of each near the street originally.

The ginkgo is near the street in one of the yards along the way to the pond. It leans a little toward the street.

At the pond, cattails were thick with old and new growth, the red winged blackbirds and green frogs (rubber band sound) were noisy, and I appreciated once again that the slopes are no longer mowed.

I managed to photograph a female red winged blackbird and a rather scruffy looking fledgling that she was feeding. The fledgling stayed down in the cattails more than the adult.

I took a picture of the oak overhead as I sat on the bench near the pond. It is a lot like ours…more dead branches than it should have.

The arborist that worked on our sycamore and plum talked about the oaks dying…that making sure they are watered is about all you can do to help prolong their life; it looks like all the oaks in our neighborhood are experienced a slow death. The Virginia Creeper that is growing on our tree makes it looks greener than it would be on its own!