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The thread "related garden stuff + some walks around the neighborhood in 2015" in Orchids forum

Today was a lovely sunny pre -Spring day, the temperature climbed to a balmy 61 degr F. We have been taking walks along the Saddle River, tracking the emerging snowdrops.
Today we came across many clumps of these pretty little plants and due to the sunshine many were open.
We find lots of the plain Galanthus nivalis on one side of River and if one takes the time to walk deeply into the muddy mess on the other side of park, one finds clumps after clumps of the double flowered form, Galanthus nivalis f. pleniflorus.

Glad you started your 'walks' for this year. Always enjoy!

Thanks Roberta! It seemed the thing to do as nature wakes up again.

I've never seen the double variety...they are quite beautiful...and these are all naturalized?

Aren't they pretty?
Yes, they are naturalized. A few days from now there will huge patches of them on that side of the "park". These are just starting. We have this wonderful bike path which runs along the Saddle River through several towns with ponds on either end and one in-between, it is well loved and used, but most people stay on the path and don't venture into the wooded area around it. Last Spring I saw a lot of plants coming up a bit later, super garlicky, I think they are Ramps.
This fellow was painting the waterfall yesterday.

We spent some time this weekend at our place in Pennsy/Lackawanna County. Nature is always lagging ca 10 days behind NJ, but even this Tundra is slowly starting to wake up!
The very first blooms of the season are always Colt's Foot and sure enough the yellow blooms lined the walkway.

The Claytonias started to show their delicate flowers

The tips of Mayapples are breaking through the soil

And some small Trilliums started to show buds

Our fish in the pond came forwards, wanting to be fed

and something has been raiding the numerous mussel beds around the pond

We took a walk along the path through the woods and I also checked up on things inside the forest. We need to take the machete along next time to clear some of our "blue-dot trails"

When we bought the place more than 30 years ago, it came with some old cars, left in the woods. We simply left them and always used them as markers, ( "walk past the cars and make a left at the high stand... :smily:" ) and they are slowly decaying and sinking away. Here is Klaus pretending to be McGyver.

I love your adventures in Pennsy!

I am glad you enjoy it!

It's always a treat to walk along with you at your Pennsy place.

Jim

So beautiful...I LOVE the stacked stone walls! How pretty to see the Mayapples coming up, I've only seen them fully grown.

The advantages of living in a climate that has such clear seasons are many and beautiful. I don't believe I have ever seen Mayapples emerge either. Ursula, I love how you take the time appreciate the little things like the tiny spring ephemerals.

To us one of the attractions of this place is "checking up" on the many different wildflowers as they come up through the season. I still have the picture books I made in the earlier years to identify and document the wildflowers by months. I suppose that gets us out of the cabin so to speak and makes us walk. Doing the whole tour around the place, stopping to take pictures, walking over rough terrain straight through the forest, that takes about two hours.
Besides, we are truly away from things, the place is so quiet, you hear maybe two cars a day driving by!! If you wanted to write a book, that would be the perfect place to do it.
It is nice to sit by the pond and read.

I think we have about every fern and club moss and moss in the book, that is another whole kettle of fish. I tried to tackle the club mosses at one point, but I couldn't ever find a good system to id them, so I just look and enjoy them too. And don't get me started on the different grasses growing around the pond. This never ends.
Lindsey, there are several of these stacked stone walls. Properties like that were usually combined by marriage, and we see the remainder of those walls/borders.

Great pictures Ursula! I have never been to Pennsylvania - it looks awesome. Love to see trilliums in the forest - they are a little harder to find around here.

These are pictures of Idlewild Park in Old Reno. The land, 50 acres, was a gift to the city (from the state of Nevada) on the completion of the first transcontinental highways (Highway 50 and Hwy 80) in 1927. It must have been pretty wild and woolly back then - my Uncle, who was born in 1928 - says it became home to a herd of Antelope.

The geese and ducks have become year 'round residents. Apparently, flying south for the winter is over-rated. Every park and golf course in the city have a flock of geese and ducks.


A row of old apple trees in full bloom


Someone stacked these rocks in the middle of the Truckee River last fall when the river almost went dry.


It was raining. Except over there.


Rainbow trout by mosaic artist Eileen Gay. I think it was done about 10 years ago.


Daisy

Ursula, I grew up just north of Boston , we had a lot of stone walls in our neighborhood, but they are all roundish rocks, cleared from fields so crops could be grown...your's are interesting as they seem much flatter..and certainly stack more neatly! The folks that made those stone walls were artists!
Daisy, that is the most vivid colored Robin..and the apple trees in bloom are a spectacle!

Speaking of trilliums, as a rule they do not do well here in our excessivly humid climate with this one exception. A few years ago our MG group was invited to visit a private sea island where trilliums abound in one specific area. It is thought that the site was an old shell midden, where the Native Americans deposited their oyster and clam shells over hundreds of years. The soil is quite alkaline and sandy.
No one knows how the trilliums got there as they are certainly not native to the coast.

Daisy, I am enjoying your beautiful pictures very much!! It is so nice to see pictures from your "neck of the woods!"

Alice, how interesting! And that is one gorgeous, gigantic patch of Trilliums!! Very impressive!!

Thanks Ursula, the trilliums actually cover several acres, all in one spot. It is a beautiful mystery.

Trilliums! With polka-dots!! Oh wait, Palm trees.... Does not compute... In my mind, Trilliums are Alpine plants.

The Cypripedium acaule are budding south of the Driscoll bridge in NJ!!
These are growing along a bike path, almost in my daughter's backyard.
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What made me take an extra look at this spot some years ago was the patch of wild Lily of the Valley, which always flowers right along with Cyp acaule.
Here they are also starting to emerge and some are budding too.

That is quite a find, Ursula!

Jim