One More - Double Iris

Walking Iris

Click on it for a larger view.

Late Spring/Early Summer

The surface of the river is dusty
with pollen.

The current flows both ways.

In sun and shadow,
fish go about their business--

above them, the dragonflies glide.

Red-Winged Blackbird

I had thought I was too close to the city to see any red-winged blackbirds around here, but yesterday I went to a park that's only a few miles away from my house. It's mostly a marsh, which was lots of fun, all slooshy and smelly and flat, but there was also a pond which was almost completely covered with pond scum and featured frogs, tall reeds and a pair of blackbirds. (Well, there were many birds, actually, but I only saw the red patch on one.)

Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera, but I could only have photographed the pond scum anyway. The frogs were not visible - only audible - and neither I nor my digital camera are fast enough to catch a bird.

The park also had various flowers that I don't know the names of, and many large honeysuckle bushes. I didn't know honeysuckle was a wild plant, but these were certainly out on their own. There was pink honeysuckle as well as yellow, which I've never seen before.

It was a lovely day.

Derelict Art Deco

This is a building near my house. They are currently renovating it . . . hope they'll keep those tiles.

Update (7/3/09) another detail which I never noticed before:

Sundog

I don't think I've ever seen one before.

Yellow Irises

I have been waiting and waiting for these to bloom. They were only planted a couple years ago, when this side of the riverbank was refurbished. (The other side belongs to a different town.) A few smaller clumps were also planted in other spots.

PS: There are a couple white iris plants too.

Pink Lady's Slipper

As a child I was told that lady's slippers were very rare and never to be picked. They may indeed be rare, but I saw about a dozen of them flowering in this one spot in the woods. When you see that many of them together they cease to seem rare. (Still didn't pick any though.)

A Visit to the Cemetery

There is a fairly large cemetery near my house, which apparently has always been a sort of tourist attraction. But not in a tacky way. It is known for its landscaping. Many of the trees and plants are labeled, so you know what you're looking at, which is a very helpful feature. Everything in nature should be labeled.

I saw a witch hazel bush, which I have never knowingly seen before, and an "alumroot" plant. Does alum come from plants? They have a couple elms, which were planted in 1998. When I was growing up, all the elms one ever saw or heard about were dead. These must be a new disease-resistant kind. I also saw some trees labeled "plane trees," but which I would call sycamores.

I do not know if the cemetery is still accepting reservations, as it were. But we saw one tombstone which is reserved for two people. One was born in 1923 and died in 2002. The other was born in 1920 and has not yet arrived at his final resting place.

At the center of the cemetery is a hill, and upon the hill is a tower. No one is buried there. You can go up to the top and look out over the landscape. There are 95 steps in the tower (which is spelled "ninty-five" on the informational placard) and when you get up to the top of the stairwell the walls of the tower curve inwards over your head.

I find cemeteries to be very peaceful places. There is no rational reason for it, but irrationally speaking, it's enough to make me wonder if death is not what we suppose it to be.

Spring Flowers

I don't usually take pictures of people's houses. But this arrangement of pink and yellow is too unusual to miss.

PS: if you click on this photo, you can see a larger version. Blogger seems to have shrunk it for some reason.

Basil Seeds Coming Up!

I planted them seven days ago. My windowsill garden consists of one pot of (perennial) oregano and one pot for basil.

Around here, basil seed sells out faster than the other seed packets, so you have to move fast. I went to two stores before finding "plain" Italian basil. Then ended up trying the "lime basil" anyway. Sounds yummy.

They're so cute.

Spring Sightings

1. Robin
2. Crocuses

It's supposed to snow on Friday, but who cares?

Update: it didn't actually snow. Has been kind of cold though.

It seems to me that at the end of winter I'm less tolerant of cold than I was at the beginning. Like, in autumn the cold weather is novel and interesting. But in March . . . it's not.

It's Not Dark Yet

It's after 6:00 in the evening and the sun is still up.

How is this possible?

There They Are!

This is the second year now that I've grown basil indoors. It takes about 10-14 days for the seeds to sprout. I haven't yet lost my amazement that it actually works. Little tiny green sprouts come out of even tinier black seeds. And then they get bigger. It's astonishing.

(Yes, we always had a garden when I was a kid. And I must have been amazed then too. But it's different when you're doing it yourself -- in a pot, what's more.)

I don't know what kind of tree it is . . .

I'm not good at identifying trees. But it was welcoming the spring so exuberantly that buds were sprouting out all over its trunk, as well as on the branches where they normally belong.

Turtle Rock

I can't remember if I've written about the turtle rock before.

In the river near my house there's a rock that sticks up out of the water. (When the water's low, you can see that it's actually a cement block. But it serves the purpose of a rock.) Last spring, a friend and I were walking along the river when we observed, "Those things on that rock look exactly like turtles." Shortly thereafter we observed, "They look exactly like turtles because they are turtles."

I saw them throughout the spring and summer, into fall. Then they went away. Now, today, is the first really nice day we've had. The turtles are back.

Happy spring, turtles.

Later (August 25) - Here is an illustration:



(While I was taking the pictures, the turtle lifted up its head and turned around on the rock, almost as if it were posing for me.)

Early Spring

pussy willows
robin
someday, lilacs

I saw buds on the lilac bushes

Yes I did!

Forsythia and Lavender

We didn't have any forsythia where I grew up. I never saw it until I moved here. So it remains exotic for me. It's a sign of spring, but not a nostalgic one.

One thing we did have was those tiny, pale purple butterflies. I saw two of them while walking in the woods yesterday. The insides of their wings are the palest lavender, or perhaps violet. The outsides of their wings are gray and colorless. When they sit down and fold their wings, they look like nothing at all. But flying, they are so beautiful.

New Buds of Spring

Some people think that Nature is a cruel and violent place. I was on a web site recently where someone commented, "Once you start looking closely at nature, all you will see is things killing other things." Death is part of nature. Certainly on this blog I write about dead animals rather a lot.

But anybody who has looked closely at Nature in the springtime will see more than things killing other things. The trees are budding out in green and red. The birds are suddenly making a lot more racket. In some places (not here) frogs' eggs will soon be hatching and at night the little tadpoles will start peeping. Not to mention all the flowers, which get mentioned so often.

Nature is about life: life passing into death and returning into life. If it weren't for Nature, none of us would be here. We are the natural world.

We are the natural world.