Nature is Never Spent

My fingers are stained with blackberry juice. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to devour the berries as soon as I picked them, considering what rabbits may have rubbed against them and what trucks may have spewed noxious fumes in their general direction, but I just couldn't help myself. It's warm outside, and somehow they're cool and sweet and dripping with pinkness.

In other news, the black cherries are starting to form little green cherries, I spotted my first trumpetvine blossoms of the year (again, I think it's early!) and the little elm seeds have started to fly and are everywhere.

Blue and green are my favorite colors.

Here are some birch trees in the wind. (Video quality is poor, but you can hear birds!)



Happy Arbor Day!

I identified a new-to-me tree yesterday. I love that I've been observing trees in my area for at least 20 years, and I still come across ones that weren't common where I grew up, or I just never noticed enough to name before. This one is in the park, and I noticed it especially yesterday because it's got seeds now: pairs of wings like maple, but the leaves were un-mapley. They were compound, mostly in threes, kind of elongated with teeth and if I hadn't known they were definitely growing on a tree and not a vine, I would have thought it was poison ivy.

Well, it's a box elder, which actually is a kind of maple, Acer negundo. Box elder! It's a name I've heard my whole life and I'd never put a tree to it. I was sure when I found it in my field guide, but when I read, "They resemble leaves of Poison Ivy," that clinched it.



Hello, box elder! Of course now that I've put a name on it, I see it everywhere, and I realize I've been seeing it for years.

After the deadly storms last Thursday, we had another round of destructive (but not deadly) storms on Tuesday evening, plus pretty much an entire day of ordinary hail/lightning thunderstorms on Wednesday. During one of my wet forays outside, I saw something interesting on one of the young trees next to my apartment building.

It looked like a long, slender, leafy lower branch had partially broken next to the tree's trunk, and the branch was now leaning downwards all the way to the ground. That made sense until I realized that the tree was a Southern pine, and those a) tend not to have lower branches and b) they aren't leafy! (More like needley.) What had actually happened was that a large, vigorous poison ivy vine was growing most of the way up the tree. Poison ivy vines put out tiny little root-like feelers that help it stick to the tree's bark. In the storm, something had caused this vine to be stripped away from the pine trunk, starting at the top of the vine and continuing to about halfway down, where the now-loose portion of the vine plunged tip-first to the ground, like a ladder falling over. I imagine it was probably caught by a larger, falling hickory or pine branch, though I didn't see that branch on the ground. On the other hand, I didn't want to wade into that huge bush of poison ivy leaves to investigate.

I hope everyone around knows what it is and that they should avoid it!

First an update: when I arrived at work this morning I checked the goldfish pool, a little nervous. The water level was high and the base was clear of algae and pennies. It was raining, so the surface was rough. Finally I located the fish, clustered together near the base of the tower column. Relief! They survived and they look nice and healthy. I had counted 12 recently, and I counted 11 today, so it's possible they're all there. (There's usually at least one little rascal that escapes my count.)

We had storms in the morning and as the sky cleared in the afternoon, wind picked up. The hackberry tree where I park is definitely leafed out now, which I noticed because of the way it was tossing in the wind. Trees don't do that when they've got no resistance; the wind goes right past their twigs and branches.



The azalea bushes are still covered in blossoms but there are pink or white carpets of blossoms on the ground beneath them too. When I pulled into my apartment parking lot, there were white wisps blowing across the pavement, almost like streamers of paper sand: the tiny laurel blossom petals.

There's a goodly amount of tree shade now, enough that when I'm walking in the sun I can choose a path that keeps me in the shade. About time! Temperatures and humidity have reached the point where they can wear you out in a short time.

Still, some of the trees are just now working on their little baby leaves. I love that the different varieties of oak are so different in their timing as well as their acorns, leaf shape, bark, leaf shedding habits... One of my favorites is the willow oak. When its leaves are new, they're as slender as pine needles, splayed out in a starbeam pattern. They gradually fill out and become flat leaves (though still long and very narrow, like the willow leaves they're named after) but when they're new, the tree is covered with a fine green fringe.

A few days ago, I noticed the first leaves on the crepe myrtles!

I talked about crepe myrtles several times last summer and fall. They're shrubs or small trees (depending on how they're pruned) that have crinkly clumps of white or pink or fuschia or even lavender blooms all summer. They also produce spherical seed pods about the size of a marble. This spring, those seed pods are still on the trees, cracked open in four sections, while the little green leaves are starting to peek out.

The black cherry trees have their smooth, pointed leaves and some are in full blossom, with long cylindrical brushy clusters of white flowers all over the trees. Other trees have just got tiny white buds about to open. Eventually those bottle brush blossoms will be long stems full of little green (then pink... red... purple black) cherry fruits.

My willow trees have got leaves! Every year I wonder if they're going to make it, living in those pots on my balcony.



The little elms are also starting to leaf out, and the maple has pretty, swollen red buds. Best of all, in one of the willow pots, confederate violets have sprung up. These are the descendants of a few rhizomes I brought from the farm years ago and put in one little plastic pot.

I wonder what it would be like if redbuds bloomed after the trees had started leafing out, instead of before? Would the buds be easier or more difficult to see against the green? I said before they're subtle among all the brown and grey. I think that makes them more valuable as a touch of color.



In my parents' yard there is one redbud, right next to a red maple which has its hundreds of pink and green helicopter seeds dangling now. I love how they look together.