Great documentary

This is a really good documentary, both visually pleasing and an excellent overview of some questions and answers facing our local farms. 48 minutes, well worth it.

Farms for the Future

Tick

This shows a tick hanging on the end of a blade of grass. My camera isn't terribly good at close-ups. A little later s/he was crawling up my shirt.

Other than that, 2 interesting sitings: an electric blue dragon fly, and a six-leaved Virginia Creeper, right in front of me.

Cardamine Impatiens

Plant X has a name: Cardamine impatiens. aka Narrowleaf Bittercress. It's cruciferous and a Brassica and it tastes pretty good, with a slight mustard tang. It's the auricles that give it away, little bits of extra leaf stem that stick out and partially surround the main stem.

The snake pictured in the last post has dots behind its head. A red-bellied snake. Storeria occipitomaculata. Now I know what a keeled scale is.

I'm distracted from my sit spot by the lower field, it's got all sorts of things going on and the dog loves it down there.


(Click to enlarge images)

Pond

Question: what's growing in the pond? There seem to be a lot of little leaves as well as the bigger water lily leaves, so I took the canoe out to investigate. This fellow came with me.

As it turned out, I think it's all small round water lily leaves. I'm not sure why some are fully formed or even blooming, while others are little and round. A lot of them had disease of various sorts, speckles and such.

Great fun being out on the water, although I had to back into the wind most of the way back, which was flowing steadily from the south and would push my nose around too much if I faced it.

Golden Alexander

Fri May 15, 6:15 pm. The quince is blooming, 5 white petals veined with pink, lots of stamens, a few insects buzzing around. The grass next to me is taller than from my finger tips to elbow. Beech leaves are thicker and bigger, and one shows some white stuff stuck to the bottom. A beaver is making its way leisurely towards the far shore, and some of the water lilies already have yellow buds showing. There may be something besides lily pads down there now, there seem to be smaller stationary things on the surface. A great blue heron is sitting on a stump over the water and sticks his head under his outstretched wing for a bit. Plant X has upright stems now, sturdy, watery green a bit like jewelweed, with ridges. The leaves are alternate, divided and then lobed, and have two little protrusions clasping the stem. The Golden Alexander has tiny yellow flowers now. 10 ft in front of me a patch of stems rise, I think of this as goldenrod but have never been sure of the connection between these leafy things and the later flower. Next to me there are two stems of the same; when did they appear? They're a foot high. Round, fuzzy stems, soft white fuzz, alternate leaves long and thin, with teeth, also a bit hairy. The quince smells sweet. It's in the low 70s, still, humid, sunny, a few clouds some wispy and a cumulus. Plenty of black flies, and a cloud of some small fly up near the maple, like 100 in a round cloud 2 feet across.

Nope, not wisteria...

Fri May 1, 3 pm. Trace of rain, 60s, everything smells good. Black flies seem more numerous or are flying lower, maybe cause it's not windy and quite damp. Trees across the pond are full of greenish yellows now. Wisteria leaves are like little upturned fingers bunched together, getting ready to open.

Sat May 2 10 pm. Moon around it's zenith, halo'd by orange in a band of high clouds. Peepers. Something in the north pond making a rasping noise, about a second long. One star visible to the East, with an occasional blue twinkle in it. Parts of the big dipper visible. Two spots of activity in the leaves, one to the right, one to the left. A rustle here, a rustle there. Charged, semi-magical feeling.

Sun May 3, mid afternoon. The wisteria are opening, revealing 5 leaves. Virginia Creeper?! Plant X, up near the house where it's found a spot in gravel with no competition, has formed a stem which is round, about 1/4 inch thick, fleshy or watery, leaves clasp stem in alternate fashion, looks more familiar. Like something I've pulled up a lot later in the season, a 'despised' weed. My feelings are conflicted: "Oh, it's 'just' that?" (even though I don't know it's Latin or vulgar name). But down next to my sit spot it remains part of the whole. Off to the side I notice a fat black ant. Do they care for wet woodsy places? I look at the grass some more. There are 3 types I think. 2 have the 'velcro' trait -- run your finger one way and it catches on something too small to see, a bit uncomfortable. Seems to run along the edges and midpoint, one seems to have more of it than the other, or maybe it's older. The day has been densely cloudy and with slow sprinkles a lot of the time, upper 50s, quiet. There're a lot of smells, something smells a bit like licorice to me.

Wed May 6, late afternoon. My first mosquito. Black flies still about. Wisteria seed wrinkled. Got 1/2 of rain last night. Sun now. Monday I sat and there was a wind and I saw the beech leaves and branches moving in the wind and it was like a whole new wind language had emerged: wind in leaves, and the beech tree branches weren't reaching up so much as now they carried the weight of the leaves, the whole balance had shifted. The beech leaf color continues to amaze. There's yet another herb just sprouting, although how it's going to do amongst all these front runners I don't know. Charlie said one of my little herbs looked like a young aster, and were the underside of the leaves purple, and, lo and behold, they were. Just the bottom leaves. I'd looked at that plant a number of times and never flipped the leaf up.

Sat May 9, dusk. All of a sudden it's a race to the top. The average height of everything growing around me -- grass, bedstraw, Virginia creeper, golden alexander -- is 9 inches with some things a foot tall. The grass has really bolted in the last few days, round stems with leaves sticking off them. And then the maple trees are suddenly there in a whole new way, so sure of themselves with their leaves almost full, moving in the strong, damp breeze. Cloudy again -- we've had another .8 inches of rain with some sunny breaks here and there. Something keeps flying by trilling, do bats sing? Kind of like the duck sounds but it's moving back and forth. The peepers, the real soprano ones, are a steady noise but the ear is drawn to another rythmic trill, this one more of an alto. Near me something cheeps loudly, I suspect a lost amphibian. A few last bird calls; one very melodious, another blackbird chirp, then silence. The beech is fuller but quieter tonight compared to the maples. The maple to the North towers over me, I realize the drip line from the top leaves, 50 or 60 feet up, almost reaches me. A few rattles in the dead ground leaves here and there. The pond has some rippled spots, some smooth, the smooth lee seems to run along the East shore so perhaps the wind is predominantly east? The leaves all around are moving in various eddies of air, definite wind but not steady. And the pond is broken here and there by the water lily leaves now. Even Plant X has bolted, now it has upward reaching stems and the leaves are reaching up. I have about six black fly bites and a touch of poison ivy rash from the last week, but tonight no bugs find me. Oh, and the quince is full of beautiful pink buds, little conical spiral patterns with the 5 calyx arranged just so around them.

Brown thrasher

First time I ever see this fellow (or gal).