maple – In the Woods

sculptures, flowers, creatures

11.10.26 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
38th Annual Sculpture in the Garden

This was the first time I visited the annual sculpture exhibit at the botanical garden without Tim. It was also later than usual, in November instead of once in September and twice in October when we went before. The sun was noticeably lower in the sky and offering a different sort of light for photography. It was good having Sally with me this time, though, and we had a good time identifying plants and commenting on the artwork. There were 74 sculptures but I’m only sharing 13 of my favorites. Even so, this post will be way too long! I just had to add some flowers, a couple of anoles, and a couple of adorable squirrels, too.

“Paperboy” by Stewart Beavers
Paperboy depicts a paper wasp drying its wings in the sun.
It is made from scrap metal including old tools, canisters,
and bearings with the head that spins 360 degrees.

“The Blue Lady” by Marc Chicoine
*A mosaic dedicated to the elusive blue lady, an abstract human form.*
(cement and glass)

“Friends in Low Places” by Mac McCusker
Growing up and traveling in the South, you cannot go far without seeing weird little creatures such as the opossum and the armadillo. These animals are so intriguing and fascinating in their movements, characteristic, and appearance. This piece enables the two to interact, socialize, and (of course) gossip about their observations of the selfish, preoccupied, and distracted nature of humans.
(stoneware)

“Genesis II” by Sam Spiczka
Inspired by industry and organic bone forms, Genesis II is a bridge between these seemingly opposed realms. The overall form radiates outwards from a singular core seed. The marks of my hammer and welding gun linger on the graceful steel form. Metal manufacturing techniques are paradoxically used to create a sculpture which feels fluid, natural, and timeless.
(cor-ten steel with railroad tie base)

“Lotus 1” by William Moore
*Outdoor totem reflecting on the nature of clay and its unique properties. The Nature of clay in the natural world.*
(ceramic, steel, cement)

My apologies to the creator of the sculpture that this anole (above and below, front and back) is sitting on. I neglected to get your name, or any other information off the sign, because I was so surprised to see this tiny creature sitting on it. It might be a baby. I’ve crossed paths with a few tiny anoles in the past week or two and AI tells me late-season anole eggs frequently hatch throughout October and November.

“Mushroom Family” by Michelle Fairholm
*I take great joy in spotting mushrooms that pop up unexpectedly along familiar hikes or garden beds. I hope these mushrooms elicit that same simple yet magical feeling.*
(stoneware)

“Rebel, the Revolutionary Rabbit” by Kathie Young

scrub titi, an extremely rare Florida native shrub

“Bess” by Carol Brainard
(ceramic and acrylic)

“A Tale of Vanity” by Julie Berkowitz
I was inspired to sculpt “A Tale of Vanity” after I heard the Cherokee story of “Why the Opossum’s Tail Is Bare.” In this traditional tale, Opossum once had a long, beautiful tail he loved to show off. Jealous of the attention, Rabbit plotted a trick and sent Cricket — the “barber” — to secretly trim off all the fur while pretending to prepare Opossum for a dance. When Opossum proudly stepped into the circle and unveiled his tail, the animals burst into laughter. Only then did he realize it was completely bare. Shocked and embarrassed, he fell over grinning — just as opossums still do when they are surprised. I hope you enjoy my visual interpretation of the shock the Opossum must have felt!
(clay, glazes, mirror, ceramic shards)

“Owl Nest in Rainbow Eucalyptus” by Meg Henschel
I started this piece by making the baby owls then realized they needed a mama owl and nest. I am amazed by the colors of rainbow eucalyptus, so much more exciting than brown, thus the colorful tree trunk!
(ceramic – wheel thrown and hand built)

As we were leaving I caught sight of this brightly colored maple sapling across the parking lot. A lovely ending to a perfect autumn day.

moderate drought by the creek

It had been seven months since Nina, Susan, and I had taken a walk down by the creek! Mostly because of the unrelenting heat and humidity that descended upon us before summer even began. And avoiding ticks was part of it, too. It was very nice visiting friends outside for a change.

I’ve learned to wait until November for the leaves to start changing their hues. On this day there was still plenty of green left on the trees, but with splotches of fall color here and there.

Not sure how the year-long drought has been affecting the leaves, but the water level in Bolin Creek is very low. Time will tell how long this drought will last. For now, the leaves already fallen looked so pretty floating on the water.

exposed rocks normally covered with rushing creek water

But each leaf too has a hue all its own: one of gold, of blood-red, of the slumbering clouds and the strident sun, purple, violet, lilac, we find it all there. And side by side, hand in hand go the quick, the bright, with the old and sere, just as in our world people go side by side, hand in hand, those who are still young and hopeful and those who are weary and sinking earthwards.
~ Sigbjørn Obstfelder
(Seasons)

To love life, really, must mean caring not only for the garden plot but also the wilderness beyond the fence, beauty and mystery for their own sake, because of how meager a world would be without them.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never)

that veery’s song

“Veery. Pleasant Valley Wildlife Sanctuary. Lenox, Massachusetts”
by Paul Danese

Ah, Henry, I’ll wager that you, scribbling notes in your cabin by the pond, never worried about the difficulty scientists might have reading your atrocious handwriting some 150 years later. How could you have known they’d unearth those notebooks, use your records of 1850’s bloom time to compare with ours today? To sound the alarm about Walden warming? But were you alive today and ambling about your pond, I’d wager you’d notice what’s already a little off: blueberries and trillium in flower and maples aleaf more than two weeks early. You’d know that means earlier caterpillars, which means decreased food for the birds who can’t resynch their calendars and migrate north while food is still being served, which means, among other things, that veery’s song you loved to listen to (vee-ur, veer) might grow increasingly rare.
~ Barbara Hurd
(Listening to the Savage: River Notes & Half-Heard Melodies)

Early in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hillsides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whip-poor-will, the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Walden)

a blessing of spring

When the Spring is in the offing,
And the early birds are freezing,
When one-half the folks are coughing,
And the other half are sneezing;
When the sun is getting higher,
Though the fact’s hard to remember;
And you huddle by the fire
Twice as cold as in December;
Life and all its cares would crush us,
Floor us in a brace of shakes,
If it weren’t for the luscious
Maple syrup on the cakes.

But a fellow keeps postponing
Day by day his preparation
For the final telephoning
For old Charon’s transportation.
Though he knows the Spring is lying
And his grippe is undiminished,
Still he does put off his dying
Till that can of syrup’s finished.
Then, at last, the north winds waver,
And the sleeping Spring awakes;
But we know the true lifesaver
Was the syrup on the cakes!

~ Walter G. Doty
(The Christian Advocate, March 22, 1917)

autumn notes

10.23.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

Our walks are usually taken in the morning but we decided to go for an afternoon meander this time. Autumn is in the air even though the temperatures are above normal. The sun felt so good on my bare arms!

A southern variation of sugar maple, chalk maple grows to 25 ft. and usually has 2-3 trunks. Its attractive, mature bark is chalky-surfaced. The significant landscape feature of this tree is its brilliant fall foliage.
~ Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center website

Before we left the garden we took a peek inside a little, dark, windowless shed called the Herb House. It was air-conditioned and had a bench for Tim to sit on. He hadn’t been enjoying the warm sunshine as much as I had been!

Isn’t it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive — it’s such an interesting world.
~ Lucy Maud Montgomery
(Anne of Green Gables)

This afternoon walk was a very nice change of pace. At home we’re getting more frequent visits from the cardinal couple and the juncos are arriving for the winter. The squirrels are busy burying their nuts. It’s a wonderful time of year!

the intelligence of a place

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…

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.

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)

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.

sightings on another gloomy day

2.9.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

When we arrived at the botanical garden on Friday, Tim needed to tie his shoe, which gave me a minute to look at the roof of the gazebo he was sitting under. It was full of reindeer lichen and all kinds of moss so I took a few pictures with my zoom lens. When I got home I noticed those tiny red dots on the lichen. (above picture) Apparently these are called lichen fruiting bodies (apothecia) which contain spores that are dispersed in the wind. Just a little biology lesson for the day…

A quick stop by the bird feeders and there I found another life bird, this time a female Purple Finch!

The Purple Finch is the bird that Roger Tory Peterson famously described as a “sparrow dipped in raspberry juice.” For many of us, they’re irregular winter visitors to our feeders, although these chunky, big-beaked finches do breed in northern North America and the West Coast. Separating them from House Finches requires a careful look, but the reward is a delicately colored, cleaner version of that red finch. Look for them in forests, too, where you’re likely to hear their warbling song from the highest parts of the trees.
~ All About Birds website

We listened for a long time to a Carolina wren singing its heart out in the branches above us…

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment. If a shower drives us for shelter to the maple grove or the trailing branches of the pine, yet in their recesses with microscopic eye we discover some new wonder in the bark, or the leaves, or the fungi at our feet.
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Journal, September 23, 1838)

And finally, tucked away in a shady spot in the herb garden we found a patch of Lenten Roses blooming. They’re not actually roses, they are in the buttercup family. There are many varieties, flowers ranging in color from deep red to white and many shades in between.

It was a lovely surprise to find these flowers blooming so abundantly on a gloomy February morning!

when the sun comes out

2.6.24 ~ Parker Preserve, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

When the sun comes out the world brightens up, even the browns and grays in the winter woods. It was a very sunny morning the other day, but too cold for a walk. So we opted for an afternoon walk. Even then it was still cold, Tim wore a coat, and I was bundled up with hat and mittens, too.

We found a new place to walk, another property belonging to the North Carolina Botanical Garden, Parker Preserve. It connects to the Mason Farm Biological Reserve we had explored back in December. At the beginning of the trail is Parker Meadow, the site of the former home of Bill & Athena Parker.

The huge bench above is one of two sitting in the meadow, where a 19th century log cabin was destroyed by a fire in 1995. (I assume it was the home of Bill & Athena.) After noticing what we presume to be dozens of patches of daffodils about to bloom, we headed into the woods, following the Woodland Trail.

this leaf was probably stranded here all winter

Off in the distance we saw a huge log, covered in moss with sporophytes sprouting out of it. I used maximum zoom but could only manage the fuzzy picture above. We have been warned repeatedly about copperhead snakes so I resisted every urge to go off the trail and wade though the leaves to get a closer look.

in the spotlight: a maple leaf surrounded by oak leaves

illuminated roots from a tree that fell long ago

The disadvantage to taking an afternoon walk is that the traffic on the way home is very congested and slow. We found ourselves sitting in the car for a very long time at a traffic light near the James Taylor Bridge. From the road this bridge is unremarkable, the only hint that a bridge is there is a small sign identifying it and a short cement wall with a low fence on either side of it. But it’s located a mile from JT’s childhood home and it goes over Morgan Creek, which he wrote about in one of his songs, Copperline. We’ve encountered Morgan Creek a couple of times on our walks. This is all of particular interest to me because James Taylor was my idol when I was a teen, and he was the first singer I ever went to see in concert. I had all his albums. It’s a small world.

Half a mile down to Morgan Creek
I’m leanin’ heavy on the end of the week
Hercules and a hognose snake
Down on Copperline
We were down on Copperline
~ James Taylor
♫ (Copperline) ♫

before and after photo hunt

I noticed how similar the shape of a cicada wing was to the shape of a maple seed. In this sculpture I decided to merge the two.
~ Sam Spiczka
(“Cicada Maple Seed” sculpture)

This is my selection for Karma’s Before & After Photo Hunt. The sculpture was taken down shortly after the second picture, much to my disappointment, as I thought it would be great for a four season series. But it will do well enough for this before-and-after autumn. Most of the leaves on this beautiful southern sugar maple have stayed on the tree for the winter, a good example of marcescence. It’s become my favorite tree in the North Carolina Botanical Garden.