Two days after we visited the columbo it was raining. Grateful for the rain, which we do need, I still had a gut feeling that the columbo might be blooming. We grabbed the umbrella and made a quick dash to the botanical garden. At the top of the flower stalk it was still mostly buds, but a few purple-speckled, greenish flowers with yellow stamens were opening!
Most of the images of the columbo found online show it standing straight up. But the top of this one is bending over, as if all those buds were too heavy.
American columbo
with raindrops and orbs
Still in a rush to get out of the rain, I couldn’t help noticing a mountain laurel starting to bloom…
mountain laurel
There are many times I do wish I had a waterproof camera! There is so much beauty to be found in a garden on a rainy day.
The periodical (every 13 years) Great Southern Brood of cicadas are fascinating creatures and they are everywhere! Walking in the woods we found the one (above) sitting on a sign post. When inadvertently disturbed it flapped its wings and landed down on the leaf litter with its wings spread out.
4.29.24 ~ Bolin Forest
Returning home, we noticed our dogwood tree was covered with the empty nymph cases, still clinging to the twigs and leaves.
We wondered about the noise they were supposed to be making, but in a few days we started hearing a faint buzz outside which got a little louder each day and soon could even be heard from inside the house. The buzzing is constant. To me, it sounds like a lawnmower in the distance, not at all like the jack hammer some folks were suggesting. But who knows? Maybe they haven’t reached their peak yet.
A few days later we stopped by the botanical garden to check out the American columbo and to take a May Day picture of the trees at my eight seasons spot. It was a very bright and sunny day and for some reason my camera decided to give me a black background for this sun-drenched iris.
Much to my delight the mountain laurel is starting to bloom!
When we got to the American columbo plant the flower stalk looked like it was about three feet tall now. It’s kind of hard to make out in the third picture here, with all the other greenery surrounding it. It looks top heavy, with the bundle of buds bending way over.
American columbo buds
marshallia (aka Barbara’s buttons)
The next picture is my scene for Karma’s “same location for all 4 seasons” photo hunt. I made it an 8 season endeavor, including Groundhog Day, May Day, First Harvest and Halloween, which fall between the solstices and equinoxes. If you want to join in please see her instructions at the end of this post HERE at Karma’s When I Feel Like It Blog.
5.2.24 ~ Courtyard Gardens May Day (8 seasons series)
I can’t believe the difference from the first two pictures I took and this one. It will be fun to post them all together at the end of the year. And I will keep on checking the American columbo! It’s getting hot. It was almost 90°F that day, above the average mid 70s, and Tim didn’t last too long. (I was finally in a short sleeve shirt with no jacket!) And the drought monitor officially has us at abnormally dry. It should be an interesting late spring and summer.
On this visit to the botanical garden there wasn’t much change in the American columbo’s flowering stalk, but we’ll keep checking back. In the meantime there were more new blooms to appreciate as spring continues along its way.
common sage
onion
Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world. ~ Alan Watts (The Way of Zen)
I heard a towhee singing “drink your tea” and was determined to locate him somewhere in a nearby tree. At last I spotted him and did my best to get a picture of the elusive bird. My last attempt was in 2020, when we heard one rummaging around in the brush on the ground. If you’re interested see this post, eastern towhee. What a treat to get a picture of him singing!
It is only when singing that the Towhee is fully at rest. Then a change comes over him; he is in love, and mounting a low branch, he repeatedly utters his sweet bird s-i-n-n-g with convincing earnestness. ~ Frank Michler Chapman (Life Histories of Familiar North American Birds)
eastern towhee
wildflowers in a sassafras sapling grove
marshallia 2009 NC Wildflower of the Year (these reminded me of the Sno-Caps candy I used to love)
Georgia false indigo aka Georgia indigo bush (rare)
As for the wild spontaneous Flowers of this Country, Nature has been so liberal, that I cannot name one tenth of the valuable ones. ~ John Lawson, describing North Carolina in 1709 (Carolina Comments, January 1982)
downy woodpecker
female house finch
male house finch
The finches seemed to be a pair. He kept coming down from the tree to the feeder but she wouldn’t follow him. Wish I could have gotten a picture of them together. And so ended another lovely morning in the garden.
The folks at the botanical garden are very excited because one of the American Columbos they planted 19 years ago is looking like it might flower this year! This flowering stalk (above), also known as yellow gentian, is about 2 feet tall and it could grow to between 3 and 8 feet tall.
After spending 19 years in our Mountain Habitat as an unassuming rosette of leaves near the ground, one of our American columbos is about to put out a spectacular flowering stalk for the first and only time. Then, after reproducing, it will die. ~ NC Botanical Garden Facebook page
will it flower???
a rosette of America columbo leaves on the ground ~ apparently this one not going to be flowering this year
We also enjoyed the presence of other plants and trees, already blooming…
fringe tree blossoms
northern sundial lupine
sandhills bluestar
wild azalea
white-throated sparrow
A nice, quiet and cloudy late morning in the garden. We were a couple of hours later than usual and there seemed to be fewer birds out and about.
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.
wood anemone aka windflower
lily of the valley
maiden pink
‘white lady banks’ rose
Manchurian lilac
mountain witch-alder
wild blue phlox
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.
hermit thrush
ladybug
yellow-rumped warbler
tufted titmouse
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.
Brown-headed Nuthatch, #90
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!
4.8.24 ~ Sandhills Horticultural Gardens Pinehurst, North Carolina
By coincidence, exactly six years ago on this day, my sister-in-law and I visited this lovely horticultural garden near her home. (spring blossoms) We had a great time exploring it again. It was quite different than my local botanical garden. There were lots of huge, vividly colored rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias, and very few identification signs.
We found these in the Hackley Woodland Garden:
a busy bee
We walked the boardwalk in the Desmond Native Wetland Trail, a little nature conservancy and bird sanctuary. It was filled with birdsong and lots of new greenery. Looking up for birds I spotted the only thing blooming in there, a wild azalea. So delicate and pretty:
wild azalea
The Margaret H. Ambrose Japanese Garden was calm and peaceful. We paused a lot, reflecting…
And we finally took a quick peek at the formal Sir Walter Raleigh Garden:
It’s interesting how each garden had a very different mood to it. There were ten other gardens there we didn’t have time to see. I think a lot about the differences between preserved natural land conservancies and cultivated gardens. Each have their value and place in the world.
In the afternoon the four of us took Dan & Fran’s dog Biscuit for a walk in their neighborhood and enjoyed watching the solar eclipse with our special eclipse glasses. They seemed pretty flimsy but worked very well. I had also obtained a special filter for the camera lens. Tim had to hold it in front of the lens while I tried to find the sun without getting it in my eyes. When I fiddled with the zoom it would get fuzzy and we didn’t have a lot of time to figure out what worked best! It was very awkward but we managed to get a few shots.
near the beginning
I almost forgot to check the ground for crescent shadows…
crescent shadows
at or near the 78% peak we got in our area
We went back to the house to enjoy a meal and then I took one last peek outside to see the last of the eclipse from the porch. The moon was near the top of the sun and some long leaf pine needles way up in the trees got into the picture, too.
4.2.24 ~ ‘old blush’ rose arbor North Carolina Botanical Garden
It was spring vacation week so we had a chance to take Katherine with us on one of our walks at the botanical garden. Like her grandmother, she was enchanted by the rose arbor. And we finally saw tadpoles in the frog pond!
And of course we saw lots of flowers…
lobed tickseed
Florida flame azalea
Virginia spiderwort
bogbean
wild geranium (with tiny ant)
great white trillium
Katherine knows a lot about cinnamon ferns and she located some starting to come up in the Mountain Habitat (above). And then, in the Coastal Plain Habitat (below) she spotted some more that were taller and starting to unfurl. My granddaughter informed me that, among other things, cinnamon fern is the oldest species of fern on earth. (70 million years!)
learning about cinnamon ferns from Katherine (photo by Tim)
Of course there were some birds to enjoy and a couple even paused for a photo or two…
Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal he was feeding her but I couldn’t capture it!
northern cardinal
white-throated sparrow
What a blessing it was to share a beautiful day with our granddaughter, to share our interests with her and to have her share hers with us.
3.30.24 ~ ‘old blush’ rose North Carolina Botanical Garden
It’s always a pleasure to be greeted by the roses dangling from their arbor each time we visit the botanical garden. It never gets old! Like sunrises and sunsets, I suppose. A steady presence. But we were on a new mission this day to locate a Virginia dwarf trillium, another tiny ephemeral we heard was blooming. Along the way we saw…
Spanish lavender
hermit thrush
This (below) was the only undamaged dwarf trillium we could find, surrounded by other kinds of plants. We had torrential rains for a couple of days and I think they did a number on the tiny trilliums. But I’m grateful we got a chance to see this one. It is much smaller than all the other regular size trilliums we’ve been seeing this spring.
Virginia dwarf trillium
spreading Jacob’s ladder
white-throated sparrow
Only by living for many moons in one region, my peripheral senses tracking seasonal changes in the local plants while the scents of the soil steadily seep in through my pores — only over time can the intelligence of a place lay claim upon my person. Slowly, as the seasonal round repeats itself again and again, the lilt and melody of the local songbirds becomes an expectation within my ears, and so the mind I’ve carried within me settles into the wider mind that enfolds me. ~ David Abram (Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology)
yellow trillium (?)
twisted trillium
pine warbler
sweet shrub aka Carolina allspice
great white trillium (?)
tufted titmouse
red chokeberry
squirrel going out on a limb to reach maple seeds what a mess he made discarding the “helicopters”
carpenter bee (thanks to Eliza for the identification)
As we were making our way back to the parking lot this giant bee (above) was hovering over the walkway, blocking our path. Well, if it was just going to stay there I might as well get a picture of it. I don’t know if these creatures are unique to this area but sometimes they hover outside our windows and crash into them repeatedly. It sounds like someone is throwing pebbles at the window.
So we’ve lived here for ten moons I think, not very many so far, but our senses are slowly getting familiar with the seasonal changes.
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)
fragrant sumac
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.
first ‘old blush’ rose of the season
Venus flytraps poking up from the soil
wild blue phlox
Carolina wren
white trout lily
limestone bittercress aka purple cress
‘finch’s golden’ deciduous holly
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)
eastern redbud cauliflory
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.
