Zooming – November 2016

November is my second month with my new camera (Canon PowerShot SX720 HS). My earlier posts this month have used a lot of zoomed images…but I’m sharing 7 in this post that are new. The first is an immature milkweed bug. See the stubs where the wings will be in a later instar? In October, I thought they would gone by November but the weather stayed reasonably warm and there were still green milkweed pods well into the month. Some of the bugs probably didn’t make it to maturity before the first frost.

November included the brightest fall color this year. I like the light shining through these maple leaves.

The Bald Cypress cones were more obvious against the rusty brown of the foliage being shed this time of year.

Ferns have sporangia on their underside; these reminded me of the dots on dominos.

Inside the conservatory at Brookside the banana plant had maturing fruit.

I’m not sure what this is…but it is growing (and blooming) in the Brookside Gardens conservatory.

I discovered Virginia Creeper growing on the brick in front of my house. It is turned red with the cooler temperatures.

Brookside Serendipity

When I walk around Brookside Gardens – I savor the little serendipities of even a familiar place. This week I made an effort to photograph some of those surprises: a yellow petal that had landed on a very green leaf,

A turkey tail shelf function on an otherwise smooth stump,

Sunflowers in the children’s garden (I imagine this is a photo stop for many groups of children; I was too early for them although there was a mother reading a nature book to a young child at one of the tables in the children’s area),

A hat on a rock (there were a lot of volunteer sin the garden but nowhere near the hat),

A chipmunk that sat still long enough for a portrait,

A bald cypress knee in the plantings just outside the conservatory (the tree is on the other side of the sidewalk and there are no knees closer to the tree).

One of the reasons, I like natural areas – including gardens – is there is always something new….something not quite anticipated.

Tree Hike at Belmont – August 2016

I volunteered to lead a tree hike at Belmont Manor and Historic Park last weekend. I went out the Friday before to walk the route I’d planned. Even though the hike was in the morning – it was going to be a hot day so I wanted every part of the hike to be worth the effort. The river birch would definitely be the first stop – with it distinctive curly bark.

Some Norway Maples had been planted near the cottage – and I decided that I’d point them out to encourage people to plant native maples instead if they wanted a maple tree in their yard.

I decided to not make the down and back (with no shade) hike down to the pond to see the bald cypress that is the tree with the rounded top to the left of the pond. I pointed it out to the hiking group from about where I stood to take this picture.

We didn’t walk over to the magnolia either. It was enough to view it from further away and talk about the history of large magnolias planted in front of the manor house and the possibility that the large specimen there now is missing the large English Elm that grew uphill until about a year ago when it was cut down before it succumbed completely to Dutch Elm Disease.

On my pre-walk, I walked all the way over to the horse chestnut. The tree is not in good shape. The top was rotten and it broke last spring. The leaves are distinctive but looked pretty battered already.

I opted to go in the direction of the dawn redwood and talk about it being the second example of a conifer that loses its needles at Belmont (the first was the bald cypress mentioned earlier).

We saw two kinds of nut producing trees: a black walnut

And a pecan.

The row of white pines has a few pine cones but the ground crews have thoroughly cleaned up any that fall to the ground.

On the way back I noticed a mushroom under a sweet gum – with bits of dirt clinging to its cap.

There were other trees along the route. The hike on Saturday was almost two hours and we saw something I had missed on my pre-hike: A large English Elm that was being treated for Dutch Elm Disease. The injection ports for chemicals were all around the base of the tree. I hope the tree survives!

Belmont Manor and Historic Park – April 2016

I volunteered for a preschool field trip and finished up a Master Naturalist project at Belmont Manor and Historic Park this month so was able to look around at the spring unfurling there. Early in the month – the maples provided a lot of color. The red maples are indeed very red.

The sugar maples are more subdued but still colorful compared to a lot of other trees that were still looking like winter time in early April.

I’ve already posted about the Horse Chestnut buds and the Ginkgo from earlier in April. Someone commented that there was a female tree somewhere because last fall there was an awful smell from some kind of fruit tracked into the nature center by a field trip group. I had somehow missed the female tree, so I made a trip specifically to photograph it. The male tree was unfurled a bit more – everything a little battered looking because of some frosty mornings.

The female tree is not as far along and the structures are not as large. The buds near the base of the tree are still tightly curled. I’ll continue to take pictures of both trees through this season (and try to avoid stepping on any fruit in the fall since they are reported to smell like vomit).

The black cherry was full of new leaves and reproductive structures by mid-April

And the Dawn Redwood (a deciduous conifer) was getting new needles.

I enjoy the stands of lilacs at Belmont. They remind me of several family homes I visited as a child.

Dandelions are everywhere.

I checked the bald cypress by the pond in mid-April. Tree swallows were buzzing past close to my head as I hiked down – they must have already staked out the nesting boxes and are defending them from anything that comes close. The bald cypress was not as far along as the one I photographed at Brookside earlier. The buds on the lower branches were still very tight.

Higher up the buds were just beginning to open.

And the dried cattails from last season were full of noisy red-winged blackbirds. They’re defining their territory too.

Brookside Wetland

The boardwalk between the Brookside Gardens and Brookside Nature Center goes through a wetland where a little stream of running water runs and after rains the ground is soggy. The fence to keep the deer out of the garden crosses the area and the boardwalk. By the end of March, the skunk cabbage is rapidly spreading its leaves under the Bald Cypress trees (see the cypress 'knees' in the picture) and the red winged black birds are screeching and move around in the trees jockeying for territory and mates.

A few of the of the skunk cabbage have blooms – those odd looking purple and white structures hugging the base. In other years those blooms can be seen when snow is on the ground but this year March was very warm.

The plants like to very wet areas but not necessarily in places where the water is constantly in motion.

Most of the time the cypress knees look old and worn. But they must be growing too this time of year since many of them amongst the skunk cabbages has a smooth reddish sheen that was new growth.

As I neared the gate going back to the nature center, there was a cardinal in a holly – on the garden side of the fence. I posed with its feathers fluffed…between songs.

The little stream that runs between the wetland and the parking lot has a rocky bottom – probably scoured with the runoff from every rain. Wet rock always looks more colorful than the dry.