Spring is coming!

Wonderful walk today. I'm noticing so many species flowering or budding. The hazelnuts right outside had catkins galore and several female flowers which are so lovely now that I know how to spot them. Interestingly, several trees have almost no catkins/flowers at all. Those are the trees that are in the deepest shade. Now I'm understanding why certain trees produce more nuts and others almost none at all. A gray squirrel was on a tiny branch in a big-leaf maple, munching away at a whole bunch of seeds he'd grabbed from the end of the branch. He was shoving them in just as fast as he could.

The wildflowers are coming! The milkmaids are everywhere in the understory, but the fetid adder's tongue have mostly already been pollinated and are done - I was surprised to see that. Up on "Trillium Hill" as I call it, the namesake flowers are literally everywhere. A huge redwood met its end this winter, and I wonder if the sudden burst of sunlight has prompted the little beauties to go wild. In the meadow I'm already seeing buttercups, and the wild plum trees are just white with blossoms. The neglected old apples and cherry tree haven't even leafed out or bloomed yet. Mugwort and coltsfoot are already coming up and the beginning of Solomon's seal is coming as well. The wild roses have their leaves coming in and the lone Acacia is started to leaf out too.

Mushrooms are still popping up here and there, mostly inky caps in the wood chips, some huge cup fungus in another leaf pile and a couple massive springtime amanitas.

The creek's level looks low to me but I haven't devised a way to measure that. Nonetheless there is a good-size steelhead roaming around the usual swimming hole that a fish always chooses and that always dries up in summer. Happily, the fence that was blocking the watershed further up was FINALLY cut so that fish could pass. Maybe a fish will go up further next time, now that they can. I'll keep watching the fish, as we usually do, and root him on to go up further or make his way to the river - they say March will bring more rain that could make it possible.

Posted on 23 de fevereiro de 2016, 04:37 AM by bjoelle