News from the woods

Apparently the world didn't stop turning while we were on vacation: the perfoliate bellwort went ahead and bloomed without me, the trilliums drooped and faded to pink, the rain kept raining and the grass kept growing. In fact, what I've mostly been doing since we got back from our trip is first waiting for the rain to stop and then frantically mowing before it started up again. But today is dry and lovely so I decided it was time to see what's going on in our neck of the woods.

We were surprised to see that birds had built a nest just below the eaves on the front porch, which is kind of a bad spot because the bird skedaddles every time we open the door. Looks like a phoebe, although the poor light makes it hard to be certain. Further over at the corner of the house, the lilac bush that I gave up for dead a decade ago produced many fragrant clusters of blossoms, and all those columbine seed pods I've been tossing onto a slope in the back yard have finally resulted in some blooms.

Down in the woods above the driveway, fire pinks and mayapples are blooming and the wood thrushes are filling the woods with song. I may not see them all season long, but their music beautifies the woodlands. I think I caught a snatch of oriole song in the tulip poplar out front, the one where orioles have been known to nest in the past, but that tree may get cut down this summer when AEP comes to replace electric poles and lines. Nesting orioles will not deter the power company.

On the hillside along the road I saw many shades of blue and violet--blue-eye mary, wild geranium, waterleaf, phlox--plus corn salad, stonecrop, and a riot of Solomon's seal preparing to bloom. Poison ivy and garlic mustard have also returned, alas, and I probably ought to spend some time pulling up the garlic mustard growing along the edges of our property but after all the mowing I did yesterday, my muscles keep begging me to stop, sit, stay.  

Walking up the big horrible hill I saw signs of violent weather: a huge dead tree that used to hang menacingly over the road was torn up down to the root-ball, while up the hill on the other side of the road I saw the remains of fire. Further up a cedar split and one half fell, releasing that distinctive cedar scent to mingle with the honeysuckle.

Up the hill I heard more wood thrushes, prairie warblers, and common yellowthroats, plus turkeys gibbering in the woods. Coming down the hill toward the county bridge over the creek, I sat on the guardrail and watched a yellow warbler flit in the trees and a pair of phoebes perch on the opposite guardrail, dipping down behind it periodically in a way that led me to wonder whether they might have a nest back there.

Back home I found our resident phoebe on the nest out front and I pondered how I can arrange my life to avoid disturbing it. The lock on the back door doesn't work right so we can't just stop using the front door, but I hope we can learn to get along with each other. I doubt that the electric company will leave a problem tree standing just because orioles happen to like it, and likewise I can't abandon my house just to make the birds happy, but for a little while I think I can give nature some space.

 

chickadee cracks a seed

chipping sparrow

an outcrop of stonecrop

Solomon's seal!

blue-eyed Mary

trilliums on the decline

Greek valerian, I think

Buckeyes! (Watch me start sneezing....)

These phoebes kept ducking down behind the guard-rail.

The nest on our front porch