First Trees to Bloom of the Year: Silver Maples

It's a few weeks yet before the magic that is spring begins, but already the earliest bloomers have gotten going and for sure there are sprouts pushing up out of the ground too.

Tulip Tree Seed Pods in Winter

You gotta look up every once in a while if you want to know a little something about trees. What remains of last year's blooms is still hanging on the Tulip Trees in late February.

Winter Bloomer (Witch hazel)

If a winter bloomer doesn't impress you, it's likely nothing will.

Man, is it killer to see some color like this in February.

Berries, buds and bark: some of what's happening in winter

It can be downright orientating, when being indundated by the unreal and non factual world being presented to you in the news or social media as is happening in our time, to concentrate on what you can be sure is some real world stuff right before your very eyes.

You could get to know some berries or buds or bark this winter instead of bullshit that some reporter or publication is trying to pretend is news or anywhere near real life is I guess what I'm saying in a way.

Red Branches in Winter

Red branches in winter and the days are already getting a wee bit longer? What's there to complain about that?

Winter Grace

Buds, bare branches that seem frozen in a graceful dancer's pose and the remains of last seasons blooms on a winter walk this morning.

New

Magnolia buds in winter

It's a new day and a new year. Even now in the bitterest cold, new leaves and this spring's blossoms are here. You just have to look up and at the evidence on the ends of the bare branches everywhere to see that this is true. It's a good time to start paying attention to buds.

Bookends

December isn't the worst time to think about how things begin and end.  

Since It's December Again and You Still Arent Dead...

Since the first day of spring is a whole season away, you may as well embrace the winter.
There's bark to see and some  grasses that look pretty fine too.

And purple berries.

What's Past and The Future Outside Now

Among the plants it's easy to see how the seasons bleed into one another. The ghosts of the season past persist on the branches of a Japanese Maple above, while not far away in the same moment next spring's rhododendron flower waits out the winter as a bud.

Sun Catchers

It looks like me and the grass seedheads are up to the same thing on these darkest days of the year, just catching some sunlight while we can.

Seasonal Sleuthing

It's time to play the what's still hanging off the trees game to see if you can figure out what you are looking at. I spy long seed pods, so I'm going with the Northern Catalpa, or Cigar-tree.

Another Self-Decorating Tree

This one has "ornaments" it almost looks like you could eat too.

Picture Yourself Outside Now, Naked, With the Snow

Instead of these sweet and beautiful things, picture yourself outside now, naked, with the snow at your feet, and then try to tell me some delicate-looking flowers aren't Fierce, with a capital F. Spring may be just around the bend, but March is still roaring like a lion not like a lamb. And these earliest of bloomers? They are the best show in town.

Waiting For the Sun

wishing for a camera and bumping into some crows wherever I go, the new year begins.

On Seeing The Forest And Seeing The Trees

(But I was not in the forest, only the park.)

They say that you cannot see the forest for the trees meaning that you are paying too much attention to the details to see the larger picture.  I get the gist of the idiom, but to really see the forest you must also see the trees. There is no either or. The mind is like the eye in its amazing capacity to switch focus from near to far, and to perceive also, however dimly, those things just sneaking up off to the side and at the edges.

Joe dragged me to Prospect Park to see the blooming witchhazel and I so I went out for the flowers (yay!) but also saw the trees. Joe also brought home a book from the library which I have swiped out from under him, The Man who Planted Trees by Jim Robbins with a subtitle Lost Groves, Champion Trees and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet. I expect it will switch back and forth from specific beetles and regional forest die-offs to global perspectives, particular species and things in between, notably one man's quest to clone the world's champion trees (I read the bookflap). I expect to oscillate between being sad and hopeful, wanting to read it whole and taking my time with it. There is no either or.

On the books cover is an image of a tree cutting in a test tube presumably one of those cuttings from a Champion tree. Or to put it another way, there is an image of a small piece of one big tree.

Back in the Park Again

Aster, winter, Floyd Bennett Field

 

I have written many nerdy posts about this garden in this old airfield and happy moments here. But I haven't gone so long without seeing this place though as I have recently, so this first moment this year at the garden this weekend might be the happiest yet. (and there was snow)

Come January

 

Come January and the community garden at Floyd Bennett Field mostly belongs to the birds.

 

Sometimes the snow.

 

 

And what lingers from last season's blooms. 

Tis The Season

Chinese Scholar tree winter silhouette

 

Here, we mark the beginning of the calendar year in the time of bare branches, the landscape largely a canopy of silhouttes and the stubborn remains of flowers past. And though I shouldn't have to remind myself to spend some time outside among these things, it seems somehow again I do.

 

                                                           Monarda seedhead and stalk

I Had No Idea

 

Seriously. I had no idea every that I was ever going to be the kind of person that enjoyed arranging boughs even a little bit. Had I never sown a spinach seed, I might have never known.It wasn't weeding a green roof or catching a sedum in bloom, but it was work, the last day of mine for the season a week or so ago and though my fingers felt like they couldn't be any colder, it was fun,