oak — 2017 — The 21st Century Matriarch

There were a lot of rainy days in May and June – so far – has been relatively cool here in Maryland. The plants seem to be thrilled. I’ve already trimmed the bush beside our garage and it already needs to be trimmed again. My husband parks his car on that side of the garage and is keen for me to do the job ASAP.

2017 06 IMG_0128.jpg — The milkweed in the front flowerbed looks great – and there don’t appear to be any more caterpillars on it. Pooh!

I might cut down the plants toward the front of the bed so that the ‘predator’ lights will be more visible to the deer. So far the gizmo has kept them from eating the day lily buds.

The trees are still getting a lot of new leaves. The new maple leaves start out tinged with red.

2017 06 IMG_0142.jpg — The tulip poplar leaves are miniature (somewhat streamlined) versions of the larger leaves. Most of the flowers are fading now and the seed mods are forming.

Our oak tree is trimmed up so high (it’s close to the street and the country trimmed it high enough that fire trucks would not be damaged if they needed to come down our street) that I decided to take a picture of a leave that had fallen. The tree has grown a lot since we moved into our house 20 years ago and I like the shade it provides to the front of the house on summer mornings.

There lots of big oak and tulip poplar trees at Brighton Dam Azalea Garden that provide the dappled environment that azaleas need. The surprise for me this time was the large number of smaller oak trees. There must have been a large crop of acorns in the past few years that the squirrels planted and forgot and the result were a group of foot high oaks with tehri leaves unfurling. The leaves of one were still wrinkled and red.

Another was a little further along and the leaves are looking more like oak leaves (red oak probably).

I wish there was a stand of young oaks like this to show the pre-schoolers when they come for a Nature Tales field trip and we talk about the life cycle trees.

The is such a great time of year to see how trees come bare from the bare branches of winter – and the small trees are much easier to observe than the giant trees with their branches so far above eye level.