Everything outdoors is filled in and green now! I came home with hundreds of pictures Sunday afternoon and struggled to narrow my selections down to 36, so I’m splitting them down to sharing a dozen a day for three days.
We were delighted to find a pair of house finches enjoying a late lunch at the feeders.
And then there were plenty of flowers, of course!
crossvine
wild columbine (aka eastern red columbine)
wildflowers in the sassafras sapling grove
??? amsonia tomentosa or woolly bluestars ???
eastern bluestar
I noticed this well-defined fern shadow on the boardwalk (above) and then found the beam of sunlight on a Christmas fern (below) that was creating it.
The cinnamon ferns (below) have grown so tall since I photographed their fiddleheads on March 26th!
Blooming wild azaleas scattered around the botanical garden looked so pretty there, accenting all that new greenery.
Even though I’m seeing lots of bluebirds these days, they are proving to be very challenging to photograph! The one above cooperated by staying put for a little while, but his position in the available light left a lot to be desired. Still, I kind of like that thin crescent outline of light on his breast and belly.
sassafras blossoms
I’m paying more attention to the small grove of sassafras saplings. Right now there is a patch of pretty violets surrounding their trunks. By April other wildflowers will be blooming there.
violets
We checked on the sandhills pyxie-moss and found it still blooming, in spite of all the grasses, pine needles and cones, and assorted leaves trying to cover it up.
sandhills pyxie-moss
red maple seeds
Two weeks after the controlled burn the cinnamon ferns are coming up!
cinnamon fern
evergreen blueberry
golden ragwort
Alabama snow-wreath
rue-anemone aka windflower
Look who we caught making himself right at home in the birds’ tray feeder.
Who robbed the Woods — The trusting Woods? The unsuspecting Trees Brought out their Burs and Mosses — His fantasy to please — He scanned their trinkets — curious — He grasped — he bore away — What will the solemn Hemlock — What will the Fir tree — say? ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #57)
3.21.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden sandhills pyxie-moss
Last year the sandhills pyxie-moss was blooming on January 28 and was still blooming on March 7. This year we saw only one flower on the clump on February 26, but finally, on this March 21 visit we found a full bloom! We will keep checking on it. You may remember that this miniature shrub is very rare and found only in a couple of North Carolina counties.
trailing arbutus
hepatica
little sweet Betsy
When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. ~ John O’Donohue (Beauty: The Invisible Embrace)
rue-anemone
purple cress aka limestone bittercress
bloodroot
It seems reasonable to believe that the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction of our race. Wonder and humility are wholesome emotions, and they do not exist side by side with a lust for destruction. ~ Rachel Carson (Silent Spring)
eastern red columbine
eastern redbud
sassafras (redbud in the distance)
After enjoying this wonder-filled morning, a pleasant surprise was waiting for me at home in the evening. As I went to close the drapes in the living room I noticed a pretty mourning dove sitting on the edge of the birdbath on our deck. She was watching me. We made eye contact and we gazed at each other for the longest time. Tim finally went and got the camera and took this picture of her, still looking at me. Years ago, and shortly after my mother died, a pair of mourning doves used to keep me company in my garden while I was out there weeding it, but it’s been many years since I’ve had one make contact with me like this. I felt comforted.
mourning dove photo by Tim
Things have been pretty discouraging around here since Tim had his stents put in. Thankfully he seems to be doing well in cardio rehab. But my dear sister has been diagnosed with the same kind of endometrial cancer I had back in 2017, and her prognosis may not be as favorable as mine was. Also, due to osteoporosis I’ve had to give up my beloved yoga practice. I’ve replaced it with tai chi, which I am liking well enough, but I still find myself grieving for yet another loss. I was very grateful for the solace the mourning dove was offering me.
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!
chalk maple
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
aster
a very busy bee
sassafras
tickseed
male northern cardinal
female northern cardinal
oakleaf hydrangea
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)
the tabasco pepper harvest
a dragonfly? ~ an angel?
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!
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 part of the valuable ones. ~ John Lawson (A New Voyage to Carolina, 1709)
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.
If you had told me a year ago when I was writing my lastWalktober post in Connecticut that a year later I would be writing my next one from a new home far away in North Carolina….. I would not have thought it even remotely possible. But here I am!
This is my contribution to Walktober, this year being hosted by Dawn over at her Change Is Hard blog. See Dawn’s warm invitation to participate here: Walktober 2023.
10.25.23 ~ Carolina North Forest Chapel Hill & Carrboro, North Carolina
It turns out that 750 acres of woodlands, with numerous trails, belonging to the University of North Carolina, is only about a mile away from our home, as the crow flies. For this, our first visit, we wound up on the deeply shaded Occoneechee Loop. It had plenty of uneven terrain for Tim so it wound up being our longest walk so far this fall.
My camera kept telling me that I needed a flash so I decided to focus on finding pockets of sunlight for my pictures. It wasn’t long before I was feeling more relaxed and mindful, noticing the individual trees and the little things. This forest bath was having a delightfully positive effect on me.
shagbark hickory can grow over 100 ft tall and live for 350 years
sometimes we could see the sky
leaf trap
hickory leaves?
suspended pine needles and leaves
leaves on a sassafras sapling
On such October days as this, we look about us as though in some new and magic land. The mystical draws close behind the luminous veil. We see the things about us and sense larger meanings just beyond our grasp. ~ Edwin Way Teale (Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist’s Year)
burl on a loblolly pine
squirrel making a quick exit
another squirrel checking me out
same squirrel taking his nut up, up, up
new growth
sunlight penetrating the deep green forest
another squirrel giving me the tail
We’re looking forward to our next walk in this wonderful forest. It will be nice to see how it changes with at least three of the seasons, as I know hot and humid summertime walks here will be few and far between.
After a couple of years we finally made it back to this little 6-acre nature preserve, again in the winter. We really must try to get back here in a different season. The property is tucked between houses, a highway and Beebe Cove. Things are very drab this time of year so we took advantage of the new tree identification signs and enjoyed looking more closely at the different kinds of tree bark found in our neck of the woods.
I climbed up on the huge boulder this time and Tim took this picture of me with his cell phone. Last time we came he climbed up and I took the picture. You can see those pictures here.
view from the top, looking down on the trail leading to a tidal marsh and Beebe Cove
glacial erratic sitting on top of the boulder
view from below the boulder
I’ve seen many sassafras saplings over the past couple of years on our walks in the woods. I recognize them from their three differently shaped leaves. I wonder how many full grown trees I’ve walked by, not recognizing them. I was delighted to find myself in a small grove of them here, maybe 20 mature sassafras trees very close to the cove. Note to self: come back in other seasons to see what they look like leafed out in the spring and summer and in fall colors.
Beebe Cove
On this day it was 36°F/2°C and cloudy with a bit of a north wind. Today it was too cold and wet to go outside, for us anyway, so this morning I did some yoga for the first time in months. It felt so good!
11.2.22 ~ a trail at Bluff Point State Park & Coastal Reserve
Hello, November! Taking an afternoon walk instead of our usual morning saunter proved to be invigorating — we went on for an hour and a half! There are many side trails at Bluff Point and we took a couple of them, finding some summery greens, a few fall colors and many bare trees, ready for winter. And of course, glacial erratics at every turn.
dried up browned ferns surround a glacial erratic
birch leaf
As we were walking along we were surprised to witness the silent flight of an owl. We did not see or hear it swoop down to catch its prey, but we suddenly heard the moment of capture, a rustling of the dry leaves on the ground, and then saw it fly up and away, soundlessly, carrying its squirrel-sized victim.
dense woodland behind old stone wall
sunlit maple leaves
The entire Connecticut landscape is a gift of the glacier. … Our safe harbors, historic mill sites and early farm economy were made possible by an ice sheet that oozed down from Canada between 25,000 and 15,000 years ago. The ice sheet also gave us fertile lowlands along our large rivers, gracefully curved upland pastures, gravel riffles in trout streams, verdant marshes fronting shoreline villages, a patchwork of stone walls, bricks for colonial buildings and solitary boulders, stranded here and there as if they were hillside shipwrecks. All of these are glacier gifts. ~ Robert Thorson (“Connecticut’s Glacial Gifts”, Hartford Courant, August 31, 2003)
American wintergreen
We also saw a woodpecker and a nuthatch, but couldn’t get a decent picture of either of them. It was loads of fun navigating all the side trails weaving through the woods, deciding which fork to take several times. It was almost like a maze and we did backtrack a few times when we seemed to be going in the wrong direction.
sassafras leaf
a squirrel for Linda
When we got back to the parking lot a man was feeding a couple of squirrels. I think he must be doing it regularly because the squirrels were hanging out there very close to him. There were a few birds scolding this squirrel, impatient to have at some of those seeds he was sitting on. It was such a pleasure to be deep in the woods on a warm and lovely November afternoon.
6.3.20 ~ Connecticut College Arboretum, New London, Connecticut
This walk was from June 3rd. Still catching up!
I have the impression that Emily Dickinson enjoyed the companionship of her large dog, Carlo, while she tended her garden. I used to discuss things with Larisa’s tabby cat, Mary, while I was planting and weeding my little plot. She was always interested in what I was up to and what I thought about this or that. Emily’s poetic musings…
buttercup
Within my Garden, rides a Bird Opon a single Wheel — Whose spokes a dizzy music make As ’twere a travelling Mill —
?
He never stops, but slackens Above the Ripest Rose — Partakes without alighting And praises as he goes,
peaceful paths
Till every spice is tasted — And then his Fairy Gig Reels in remoter atmospheres — And I rejoin my Dog,
burl
And He and I, perplex us If positive, ’twere we — Or bore the Garden in the Brain This Curiosity —
rhododendron
But He, the best Logician, Refers my clumsy eye — To just vibrating Blossoms! An exquisite Reply!
~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #370)
arboretum pond
flower and fern carpeting
sassafras sapling
So everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow cycles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace. ~ May Sarton (Journal of a Solitude)
cinnamon fern
rhododendron
andromeda aka lily-of-the-valley bush
My mother’s favorite flower was lily of the valley. She also had an andromeda shrub planted in the front yard, right near the dining room window.
wild geranium
rhododendron
shady spot
celandine poppy
A garden isn’t meant to be useful. It’s for joy. ~ Rumer Godden (China Court: A Novel)
