Walk at Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary...April 3, 2013

Early Wednesday afternoon, the temperature was about 40 degrees Fahrenheit (between 4 and 5 degrees Celsius).  The wind was blowing in fits and starts but the SUN was shining.

All the way to Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary, Tom kept telling me,  "This is a waste of time.  There won't be any flowers.  It hasn't warmed up since our last snow."  He was talking about the snowstorm  that had arrived on March 24 and  dropped between 4 and 9 inches of snow (10.16 and 22.86 centimeters) on our area by the afternoon of  March 25.

But we had seen Harbinger-of-Spring at Garbry before the snowstorm so I knew it would be blooming.  As it turned out we found a lot of signs of approaching spring.

Tom found the first one...Waterleaf. ( I think this one is Hydrophyllum virginianum).  We were only a short distance into the woods.

Then he found another leaf...a Trout Lily leaf, also called Adder's Tongue or Dogtooth Violet. I don't know whether the leaf belonged to the white or yellow species.  Both are Erythronium.   Tom hadn't bothered to take his camera out of the van so I took this photo.  Every leaf counts, especially if it is a sign of spring.

Soon the trail curved  and  we started finding the Harbinger-of-Spring, also called Pepper-and-Salt (Erigenia bulbosa)...a lot more than a few weeks ago.  This is another of my photos.  I doubt that many people who are not looking for it ever see it because the entire umbel of many five-petaled flowers is only the size of a green pea, the kind we eat as a vegetable.

Tom put his scooter on speedy and was soon far ahead of me but not so far ahead that he didn't hear me when I called out, "Tom! Hepatica."  That brought him back to me in a hurry and that was when he decided to go back to the van and get his camera.  This is one of the Hepatica (Hepatica) portraits he took.  The lavender is a delicate color, hard to get with any camera so he tried several light settings before he settled on a -2 exposure because the day was extremely bright.  There are even a couple Harbinger-of-spring umbels between the Hepatica for a size comparison.  There are two Hepatica species in our area, H. americana, and H. acutiloba.  The leaves are slightly different at the tips.  I'm not good at diagnosing the difference.

Once we found the Hepatica, we looked with expectation and we were rewarded.  We saw a lot of Hepatica and Harbinger-of-spring, more Trout-lily leaves, and other things, too.

The rest of the photos in this blog are Tom's.  There was a Cut-leaf Toothwort, also called Pepperroot (Dentaria laciniata) showing buds.

And a Purple Cress (Cardamine douglassii).

Also Sessile Trillium (Trillium sessile) with  buds.  It is also known as Toad Trillium or Toadshade.  I like the idea of a small toad finding shelter under one of its three leaves.

 A bit further along the boardwalk, Tom called back to me, "Look at that Hepatica, all by itself  among the Waterleaf."

 I stooped and looked closely.  The leaves were narrow, a bit like blades of grass.  He had spotted a Spring beauty (Claytonia virginica).  If you look closely, you can see its narrow leaves on the left side of the flower.

The day was a cold and windy but we were glad we had walked.

A Walk at Brukner Nature Center...March 29, 2013

Stephen found the turtles.

We had started our walk at Cattail Pond hoping the sun had brought  them up to the surface to bask on the last year's cattail mats and the old log.

We walked down the trail to the bench that overlooks the pond and found turtles on the old log, too.  They are Painted Turtles, a common turtle in our ponds.

We looked all around the pond but didn't find any snakes or frogs.  The day must have been too chilly for them.

Stephen said he'd walk with me down Hickory Ridge Trail to look for the Snow Trillium which I hadn't seen this spring.  About two-thirds of the way down the trail we found them.  There was a scattering of flowers across the hillside.  I know there will be more in a few days.

And then I found a wildflower that really surprised me.  Usually most of the Snow Trillium are blooming before I see this little beauty...a single Hepatica.  The leaves which have been green during the winter are now changing to maroon.

As we were heading back up to the Interpretative Center by way of Short-Step Hill, along with more snow trillium, we found a little bouquet of Hepatica.

Adult Watercolor, Their Paintings

For the last few weeks I have been teaching an adult watercolor class for beginners.

One student decided to start with this painting which is shown as a step-by step painting in Jan Kunz's book, Watercolor Basics.

Here is the student's version.  I like its vigorous style and bold colors.  She drew only a portion of the original sketch.  She added Indian Yellow and Alizarin Crimson to the Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Sienna that were suggested in the directions.

Another student liked a painting from Julie King's book, How to Paint Flowers in Watercolour.

The photo I took was not well lit so the colors are only an approximation of the completed painting.  The student put her own artistic thoughts into the painting. The leaves are her own style and so are the flowers.  I can  feel a light breeze and spring sunshine as I look at her creation.

The third student elected to use a pot of tulips  for inspiration.

The leaves  are a company of dancers. The tulips have the starring roles. Again, the lighting was not good so the photo below is an approximation.

Earth Colors by Sarah Andrews, a Book Review

I read a lot of mysteries.  Sometimes, in the winter when the weather is bad, I will read as many as eight in a month.  Usually I get the books from the local library and that is where I found Earth Colors by Sarah Andrews.  I liked this book so much that I bought two copies, one for myself and one for my daughter who has a masters in geology.The mystery revolves around a Remington painting.  Is the painting authentic or a copy?   The sleuth is Em Hansen, a geologist looking for a subject for her master's thesis.

What, I , as a mystery reader, really want is a good entanglement where right triumphs over wrong in a few hundred pages.  Mysteries are an escape for me from the entanglements of real life where motives and solutions only evolve over years of a person's lifetime.  And Sarah Andrews provides this escape, along with interesting and believable characters, some of whom appear over and over in the series.

What makes this book different from most  mysteries is not only the amount of information Sarah Andrews incorporates about geology in general but also the history of pigments and their relationship to the geology of  Pennsylvania which she explores as the mystery progresses. Being an artist, I found that history  interesting as well as the information about analyzing those pigments which Em Hansen learns.

Sarah Andrew's thoughts on environmental issues are always interesting to me, too, and come up in other books of this series.  One of her characters in this book, Jenny, said something that impressed me so much I added it to my little book of inspiration to live by.

Jenny and Em, the geologist, are discussing how Jenny is able to maintain a happy attitude when she loses battles to preserve significant features of the landscape.  Jenny tells Em about the chestnut tree blight  that  destroyed all the chestnut trees in the eastern United States many years ago. There are still very old stumps sending up new sprouts.  The sprouts die when they reach a flowering age because the blight kills them.  These are wonderful trees, extremely rot resistant.  A person can still find barns and homes built with chestnut lumber.  Scientists have been working for years to find a way to counteract the blight.

Jenny tells Em,  "Nothing lasts forever in this world, not even blight.  So I think I'll just honor my roots and keep on sending up my sprouts."

More Signs of Spring

On March ninth , I asked Tom to stop at Garbry Big Woods Sanctuary on the way home from our birding trip to St. Mary's so I could look for Harbinger of Spring, also known as Pepper and Salt.  He laughed.  I walked a few yards into the sanctuary and returned to the van.  The woodland floor was covered with snow.  If the Harbinger of Spring was blooming, it was under the snow.

But on March 15, I persuaded him to drive up to the sanctuary again.  This time the boardwalk was clear of snow and so was the woodland floor.  AND we found Harbinger of Spring.

It is always hard to show in a photo how small the flowers are.

The day before I walked at Charleston Falls and found a few Water Striders walking on the surface of the creek.

Yesterday Stephen and I searched the yard for signs of spring.  We found crocuses although they were furled because the day was cold and gloomy.

And there were buds swelling on the daffodils.

Stephen even found a few tiny green leaves on the old-fashioned Quince Bush that Tom's dad dug up for us out of his yard.

First Birding Weekend, March of 2013

It's time for the migrants to head north so we decided to look for ducks.  We kept our eyes open for other visitors and recently arrived summer residents also.  I'm not listing all the birds we found, just the ones we found notable for one reason or another.

At Spring Valley on Friday afternoon we saw swans across the lake among the old cattail stems, probably Tundra Swans (Cygnus columbianus).  From there we drove to Eastwood Lake where we saw Lesser Scaups (Aythya affinis),  Ringnecked ducks (Aythya collaris), Buffleheads (Bucephala albeola), and American Coots (Fulica americana).

On Saturday we drove  through the fish hatchery at St. Mary's, then  around the lake and stopped at Mercer County Wildlife area. On that trip, we added a Canvasback (Aythya valisineria)

Monday was rainy but we drove to Englewood Lake and found two addtional species, Northern Pintail (Anas acuta) and Redheads (Aythya americana).  Tree Swallows (Tachycineta bicolor) were swooping above the rafts of scaups.  Must be enough insects have emerged for them to find lunch.

The Worst sighting...evidence of the Emerald Ash Tree Borer which has invaded our area.  Ashes are one of the trees that are prevalent throughout many wooded areas of Southwestern Ohio.  We will miss them.  Scientists are working on ways to save the trees but haven't come up with a surefire way, yet.

And the best sighting on Saturday...a male Lesser Scaup and a Canvasback swimming close enough to get a good size comparison.

We saw this groundhog at Eastwood Lake, one of the Dayton Metro Parks on Friday afternoon.  It is the first one we've seen this spring.

Troy Civic Theatre...Boeing, Boeing

From left to right...Bernard, Gabrielle, Berthe, Gloria, Robert, and Gretchen  played by Steve Dietrich, Jo Grandel, Jessica Suba, Samantha Persing, Scott Atkinson, and Tina Hayes.

This is  the cast of Troy Civic Theatre's production of Boeing, Boeing greeting the audience after the Sunday matinee.  They clearly have enjoyed preforming as much as the audience enjoyed laughing at their antics.  The women in the blue, red, and yellow suits are the stewardesses, all of whom think they are the fiancee of Bernard (Steve), the smiling architect.  Poor Berthe (Jessica), in the white blouse,  is Bernard's housekeeper and cook whose job is to keep everything running smoothly for Bernard as the stewardesses run in and out of the apartment in Paris.

When Robert (Scott) comes to visit and the airlines change their schedules because airplanes are now faster, the five doors on the set open and close in wild succession as the cast runs in and out, sometimes avoiding one another, sometimes meeting.  Tom and I laughed out loud at the wild antics though we had expected that we would only smile at the nonsense.

The play, written by Marc Camoletti and adapted by Beverly Cross and Francis Evans, ran for seven years in London in the nineteen sixties and also ran for a short time on Broadway in New York.  It was  made into a movie starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis.

The play is a wonderful escape from the reality of everyday life.  If you live in the Troy area, I hope you find time this weekend to see a performance on March 8 or 9.  You can find more information at

www.troycivictheatre.com

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