boardwalks – In the Woods

three quick pics

6.21.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
Coastal Plain Habitat boardwalk in June

It was too hot for a walk but I had to get my summer picture for Karma’s “same location for all 4 seasons” photo hunt. And my coastal plain habitat boardwalk picture for June. I darted into the botanical garden, got them, and then took two quick pics on my way back out.

These Fevered Days — to take them to the Forest
Where Waters cool around the mosses crawl —
And shade is all that devastates the stillness
Seems it sometimes this would be all —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1467)

sun-drenched wings and petals

5.21.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
sun-drenched female northern cardinal

It was a borderline-humidity morning, between comfy and muggy, and Tim was still coughing from the cold he caught in Italy, but we decided to chance a walk anyway. This is the time of year when the sun feels too bright and my camera sometimes responded by turning the blurry bokeh effect into solid black.

We forgot the bug repellent and I came home with two mosquito bites, one on each forearm. But the pretty (and non-biting) insects were out enjoying the sunshine, too! I’m not 100% sure of all my identifications here, but I’m giving them my best guess. Some of the butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies seemed new to me.

dusky dancer damselfly on hemlock needles

Summer, for the cold-blooded, represents the Elysian days. Warmth brings life and animation. Their blood responds, literally, to every rise and fall of the mercury. Chill is synonymous with sluggishness, cold with immobility. The sun directly regulates the intensity with which they live.
~ Edwin Way Teale
(Grasshopper Road)

ebony jewelwing (aka black-winged damselfly)

mating silver-spotted skipper butterflies

Even though it isn’t technically summer here yet, either meteorologically or astronomically, it can now be called summer for all intents and purposes!

a snail and another life bird

4.12.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

It was a windy day for a walk but off we went. The very first thing we saw was a snail crossing a side entrance path at the botanical garden. A slow moving creature is so easy to photograph, even if it was partly in its own shadow. And then a little patch of windflowers, how fitting for this windy day.

cobweb on a sweet shrub (aka Carolina allspice)

Coastal Plain Habitat boardwalk in April

I keep wondering if this is the same hermit thrush I keep seeing in this same spot, ever since January.

On our way back to the parking lot we passed by the Children’s Wonder Garden and I spotted another life bird! And this one isn’t found in Connecticut, so I had to pencil it into my Birding in Connecticut book, like I did with the Carolina chickadee. I may have to get a different book to keep my life list in.

When the squeaky sound of a rubber ducky drifts down out of the canopy in a southern pine forest, be on the lookout for Brown-headed Nuthatches. These tiny blue-gray songbirds climb up, down, and around pine trunks and branches with the deftness of a rock climber. They cling to bark with their strong feet rather than leaning on their tails like a woodpecker. Brown-headed Nuthatches are social birds that travel in noisy family groups. Sometimes, offspring from previous years help their parents raise young.
~ All About Birds website

Well, we didn’t hear this cute little nuthatch or see him climbing up or down a pine trunk. Nor was he with a noisy family group. He was perched on the back side of the bee hotel, all by himself, feathers getting fluffed up in the wind. Finding him was a treat after a prior frustration.

Earlier on our walk we picked up the call of a white-eyed vireo on our Merlin app. We looked and looked in the trees where the call was coming from but couldn’t see anything. Tim finally resorted to taking random pictures of the tree with his cell phone, hoping to see a bird in one of them when he put them up on his monitor at home. Well, he did see a blurry blob that had the right coloring… But we can’t count it as a life bird — yet — because we didn’t actually see it!

the great surge of life

3.20.24 ~ hermit thrush, North Carolina Botanical Garden

I lack roots, I cannot fly on my own wings, and I do not burrow into the earth. But I am a part of something vastly bigger than myself. I am a part of the enduring force, of life itself. And the great surge of life occurs every springtime. It is this that I am made aware of now.
~ Hal Borland
(Hal Borland’s Book of Days)

Another favorite walk in the botanical garden, savoring every possible moment of this memorable spring flowering. Longtime locals have been telling us that this spring has come earlier here than it has in previous years. The last rose I found on this bush (below) was in November and this one in March is the first rose since then.

I’m planning to get a once a month picture from this spot (below) on the boardwalk. The areas on either side here were part of a subscribed burn sometime after we found the seedbox plant in January.

Coastal Plain Habitat boardwalk in March

3.20.24 ~ Courtyard Gardens
Spring Equinox (8 seasons series)

Spring has returned — and now the earth is
like a child who has learned her poems by heart.
So many, so many … and for all her hard
and lengthy studies now she takes the prize.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke
(Sonnets to Orpheus)

Cauliflory is a botanical term referring to plants that flower and fruit from their main stems or woody trunks, rather than from new growth and shoots. It is rare in temperate regions but common in tropical forests.
~ Wikipedia

Learning something new every day… I’m trying to remember the word cauliflory by thinking of cauliflower. (I’m still having trouble remembering the word marcescence even after using it countless time on this blog…) This wonderful botanical garden is never the same twice.

a flooded cypress swamp

2.20.24 ~ Colleton State Park, Walterboro, South Carolina

On our way home from Georgia we stopped to stretch our legs at a state park in South Carolina. The nature trail we walked on followed a cypress swamp alongside the Edisto River. This river is the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America and on this day it was flooding over into the swamp.

A blackwater river is a type of river with a slow-moving channel flowing through forested swamps or wetlands. Most major blackwater rivers are in the Amazon Basin and the Southern United States.
~ Wikipedia

some of the water came very close to the trail

When we talk of flood control, we usually think of dams and deeper river channels, to impound the waters or hurry their run-off. Yet neither is the ultimate solution, simply because floods are caused by the flow of water downhill. If the hills are wooded, that flow is checked. If there is a swamp at the foot of the hills, the swamp sponges up most of the excess water, restores some of it to the underground water supply and feeds the remainder slowly into the streams. Strip the hills, drain the boglands, and you create flood conditions inevitably. Yet that is what we have been doing for years.
~ Hal Borland
(Sundial of the Seasons)

This magical rest stop helped so much to break up the long journey home. The walk was a only a third of a mile, a perfect finale to a wonderful getaway. And it was so good to get home to North Carolina a few hours later.

songbirds, blooms, some other things

2.14.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

There were lots of birds at the botanical garden feeders on Valentine’s Day, most of them flitting about too quickly to catch with my camera, but I got a few. And a new lifer!

I thought I’d never catch my elusive new life bird — this was the only good picture out of the bunch.

A bird true to its name, the Pine Warbler is common in many eastern pine forests and is rarely seen away from pines. These yellowish warblers are hard to spot as they move along high branches to prod clumps of needles with their sturdy bills. If you don’t see them, listen for their steady, musical trill, which sounds very like a Chipping Sparrow or Dark-eyed Junco, which are also common piney-woods sounds through much of the year.
~ All About Birds website

Coastal Plain Habitat boardwalk in February

More blossoms to enjoy in the Lenten rose patch:

We’ve been hearing frogs croaking for a couple of weeks but they always stop and hide before we get to their pond, no matter how quietly we approach. This time we did see a lot of their eggs in the water, though.

One of these days we might actually see a frog! 🐸

ecoregions

8.19.23 ~ Gold Park
Hillsborough, North Carolina

Saturday, seventeen days after the last one, we woke up to a low humidity day and got ourselves outside for another walk. Because the UNC students are moving into their dorms for the fall semester there are signs everywhere warning about extra traffic in Chapel Hill. So we headed in the opposite direction, to a 24-acre park in Hillsborough. It was very busy there, too, with kids practicing soccer on a field and countless people walking dogs and parents pushing strollers and bicyclists zipping by. I learned later there is a fenced dog park somewhere on the property.

But we stumbled across a little gem, a pollinator garden with a bee hotel. In the garden we met a master gardener who was on her knees, photographing bees on the flowers. While we were talking with her a goldfinch landed nearby and a hummingbird quickly chased it away! After she shared a lot of her knowledge with us she told us about the Orange Master Gardeners website. (We live in Orange County.)

In 2016, Hillsborough became the 35th city to be named a Bee City USA. Dedicated in November 2017, the bee hotel provides a home for the 90 species of bees native to the area, many of which live solitary lives and seek a safe, tunnel-like dwelling to lay eggs and care for their young.
~ Orange Master Gardeners website

The website mentions that we are located in Ecoregion 45C, the Carolina Slate Belt, which sent me off on a web-search, wondering what on earth an ecoregion is…

An ecoregion (ecological region) is an ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion, which in turn is smaller than a biogeographic realm. Ecoregions cover relatively large areas of land or water, and contain characteristic, geographically distinct assemblages of natural communities and species. The biodiversity of flora, fauna and ecosystems that characterize an ecoregion tends to be distinct from that of other ecoregions.
~ Wikipedia

Anyhow, after we were done chatting she kindly pointed us in the direction of Riverwalk, an urban greenway along the Eno River. We enjoyed the boardwalk and scenery. The rest of it was paved so it wasn’t really a walk in the woods. But it was nice to get out in the fresh air and sunshine and to move our bodies. (I’ve been doing a lot of yoga but I’ve missed the pleasures of walking!) I’m not used to seeing so many people.

under a railroad bridge crossing over Eno River

A something in a summer’s Day
As slow her flambeaux burn away
Which solemnizes me.

A something in a summer’s noon —
A depth — an Azure — a perfume —
Transcending extasy.

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #104)

On our way back we passed by the pollinator garden again we spotted a flash of iridescent blue, the wings of this very large wasp. (above) I couldn’t capture the blue on camera. But I’m pretty sure it must be a great black wasp (Sphex pensylvanicus). It prefers solitude and is not aggressive. Nice to know it’s a helpful pollinator and goes after garden pests.

lots of eastern tiger swallowtails down here

Curiosity about ecoregions led me to discover that most of my life I lived in Ecoregion 59, the Northeastern Coastal Zone which is in the Eastern Temperate Forest. And now I live in Ecoregion 45, the Piedmont which is in the Temperate Coniferous Forest. Wikipedia has a map of ecoregions in the contiguous United States here. In which ecoregion do you live? (If you care to share.)

We are slowly getting our bearings here, still working on our to-do list, getting acquainted with new doctors, spending time with the little ones, etc. One nice thing that has become routine is visiting the fantastic Carrboro Farmers’ Market every Wednesday afternoon. It’s been a treat having fresh picked locally grown flowers (some familiar, some new to me) in my vase every week. Makes me feel at home.

in the fields of the commonplace

It was time to dust off the camera and resume taking our walks again. The big project is, for all intents and purposes, finally completed. But, I haven’t figured out how to write about it yet, so that long story will have to wait until after the holidays. Now to prepare for the coming visit of our darling grandchildren!

I added a layer of thermal leggings under my jeans for the first time this season and then we enjoyed the winter scenery along the Poquonnock River Walkway. We might be getting a coating of snow this afternoon. I love the cloudy light before snowstorms.

But the winter sun was shining brightly for the day of our walk, illuminating the tops of the reeds in a magical way.

Let us dig our furrow in the fields of the commonplace … and leave to others, more favoured by fortune, the job of explaining the world’s mechanism, if the spirit moves them.
~ Jean-Henri Fabre
(The Life of the Fly: With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography)

We came across a large flock of house sparrows flitting around in the bushes along the boardwalk — how commonplace can it get? But a couple of them actually stayed put long enough to get their portraits taken.

It felt very good getting out of the house again and enjoying the ordinary, simple things the natural world has to offer.

down by the river

We are lucky in Groton to have a long boardwalk alongside the Poquonnock River, squeezing in a bit of nature between industrial parks, shopping centers, a small airport and the railroad tracks and bridge. The flatness of the walkway is not good for Tim’s back, which does much better on uneven terrain, but there are a few well placed benches along the way where he can sit and readjust his muscles enough times to make it a doable walk. We were wearing our winter coats this day and most of the birds and berries we saw were nestled in the reeds and trees. No waterbirds on the river, except for an occasional gull touching down for a few moments. And one amazing flyby of Canada geese high in the sky.

We avoided this walk during the pandemic because there wouldn’t be enough room to stay six feet away when passing other walkers. But since we both have had our booster shots we felt safe enough to take a chance. One jogger passed by us twice, on his way out and back. We also passed an elderly man walking along, talking to himself.

I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding.
~ John O’Donohue
(Conamara Blues: Poems)

tree silhouette reflection in water
under moss covered branch and bankside foliage

reindeer moss and lichens on dying branch

So far as our noblest hardwood forests are concerned, the animals, especially squirrels and jays, are our greatest and almost only benefactors. It is to them that we owe this gift. It is not in vain that the squirrels live in or about every forest tree, or hollow log, and every wall and heap of stones.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Journal, October 31, 1860)

one can forget the civilization is so close by

multiflora rose hips
(thanks to Eliza for the id)

blackberry
(thanks to Leelah and Eliza for the id)

The wild cherries ripen, black and fat,
Paradisal fruits that taste of no man’s sweat.

Reach up, pull down the laden branch, and eat;
When you have learned their bitterness, they taste sweet.

~ Wendell Berry
(Fall, for Wallace Fowlie)