April in the Woods

Yesterday I took a short walk along the C&O canal, just upstream of the DC/MD line.  The woodland was all abloom!

An allover carpet of green-and-gold

Chrysogonum virginianum

played host to Virginia bluebells,

Mertensia virginica

phlox,

Phlox divaricata or P. stolonifera?  I don't know.

and a mystery yellow flower.

??

Bluebells also lined the canal.

More Mertensia

Overhead, a shrub had some exotic-looking red flowers.  And idea what this is?


A friend gave me the answer to this one:  it's a paw paw!

 Back in my own garden, I have phlox and green-and-gold growing.  I've planted bluebells in the past, but they don't seem to think my yard is woodsy enough.

April Foliage

The day started out gray and dreary. Then the rains came. Then the wind and storms. I've been inside being lazy all day. It has been so dark I've had to have a light on the whole time.

It is Spring; I want to be outside! I want to look at the trees putting forth their new leaves. I want to watch plants emerging from last year's debris. And I want to show them off for today's Foliage Follow-Up.

I'll just have to content myself with looking at pictures from earlier in the week, like these:

Soft leaves are beginning to show themselves on the weeping Japanese maple.

I didn't have my camera with me when I first spotted these. They looked just like asparagus to me. By the time I remembered to take a picture, they had started to leaf out some. You don't get the whole asparagus effect, here, but maybe you can imagine:

They are really not asparagus, but balloon flowers.

Yesterday I showed off the Pasque Flower. Nearby is this similar plant, the native Anemone patens. I've had it for several years now. I do love the foliage, but it has yet to flower.

I also showed my white bleeding heart yesterday. In the background was this:

Mertensia virginica, Virginia bluebells. If these were going to flower they would be doing so now. But this plant has had a very hard life, and I'm just really happy to see it return at all. We can wait another year for flowers.

And here's something I was not at all happy to see. Several years ago I had a horrible tree-of-heaven taken down. Why is it so horrible? It grows super-fast and procreates like crazy. The entire root of the young plants must be removed, or the trees just grow back. Like this one:

Because it is buried in my out-of-control rosemary, the original seedling got a really good toehold in that spot before I pulled it out. I go most of it, but apparently not all, because it is back again this year. And once again it's had a chance to spread its roots before I noticed it in there. I'm hoping today's rains make the ground nice and soft so I can pull it out tomorrow.

Go see Pam at Digging for links to some more great foliage!

Spring Stats

When I started this blog, I didn't do an intro post about the blog, my motivations for starting it, what I hoped to accomplish, or anything like that. I just dove right in. Like much in my life, doing is preferable to planning. So I did.

A year and some later, it's time to highlight one of the things this blog does for me: it is a repository for my meager record-keeping. But without it, I'd have even less in the way of records.

One fun thing I can do now that I have a little bit of history, is compare signs of Spring in the yard. Last year, I posted that on the first day of Spring my first white daffodils opened (yellow had already started), the first dandelion bloomed, and the mint appeared. Oh, and there was one lonely moss phlox flower.

This year, I've had daffodils for over a week already (both colors), I first saw the mint sprouts nearly a week ago, and I've been picking off dandelions for 2-3 weeks. (No phlox, but that was an oddity last year) So is my yard ahead of schedule this year (I think it is), or was everything late last year? With only one year of history, I don't really know (I just have a feeling, but that's not very scientific). So I'll have to keep this blog going long enough to make another comparison next Spring.

Meanwhile, let's look at what's noteworthy on this year's first Spring day. Since Spring represents the promise of things yet to come, here's what's about to happen in my yard:

Virginia Bluebells are emerging from the ground in the side yard.



And next to them the bleeding hearts are coming up, too.



There are reddish buds on the redbud.



This is the week I call the plum tree the Popcorn Tree:




Pop!



Happy Spring, y'all!