Autumnal 1

Woods
November 26, 2021

This year two of our cat buddies passed away, Grey and Blondie. Grey got awfully sick in late spring and that’s when he received the diagnosis of congestive heart failure. His condition was stabilized and we brought him home. He was able to be with his cat buddies, Kitty Boy, Peach Blossom, Blondie and Willow, and was starting to get along better with Tansy.

The inevitable end came in mid-August. He was able to be outside, this and the two following photos were taken the day he died, being in the world he loved with his buddies nearby.

The woods always has elements of birth, life, and death. It had rained heavily the night before. Drops are held by a small spider’s web.

Leaves fall and they hold rain drops for a while.

Blondie had a range of serious health problems but he always sprang back and if anything was better than before. A month after Grey died he was chipper and full of adventure one day, the next he was not. He passed away shortly afterwards.

We posted this photo by Molly of Blondie two years ago and it is still one of my favorites. We all miss our two guys.

Spring Green

General | Woods
June 26, 2021

In spring our woods transform from an overall brown appearance to a lush green. It seems to happen overnight, but it isn’t quite that quick. These photos were taken in the last few weeks.

In May I had to get the chainsaw out and cut small trees and brush along the edges of the garden. If we’re lucky we won’t have any trees fall across the road and I won’t have to use the chainsaw again until next winter when I cut firewood.

In the previous post there’s a photo of the rocks road. This is closer to home but gives a good idea of the transformation the woods undergoes in spring.

I begin mowing the yard, the garden, and some of the roads in May. Our yard is mostly moss because we’re heavily shaded when the trees leaf out. This year there was a large area to the north of the house where Indian Pipe began to emerge.

Indian Pipes are fragile little plants that have no chlorophyll. They depend on fungus in the soil which supplies them with nutrients from nearby trees.

Late Winter

Woods

Our previous post was about the ice storm that we had in February. After the storm we had sunny skies and warmer weather.

Winter is when we can see the sky at our home. After the ice storm the tree limbs were covered with a thick layer of ice, almost like clouds in the blue sky.

The start of spring has us looking for morels in the woods. This year wasn’t a good one for finding morels. They seem to be getting rarer and rarer for some reason. Still, it’s always wonderful to be out in the real world..

Everything is so brown in early April. A closer look finds the maple trees are budding and there are early spring flowers, especially down in the hollows. This is the Rocks road. One of the Sheep Rocks can barely be seen in the distance. There’s an army survey map in Winfield, our county seat, made during World War II of the coal field here owned by Raymond City and the map shows the Sheep Rocks and down in the hollow, Yankee Camp, where a unit of the Union army had a camp during the Civil War.

Bluets are tiny flowers that appear in our yard in early spring. They bloom for a little over a month.

I like to take photos of vernal ponds with their layers of light and color and, when the tadpoles are hatched, life. This year the reflected sky through the trees shows as pale blue bands on the pond surface.