April 9: First flowers

that point in early spring

even skunk cabbage

is a welcome flower

March 12: Skunk cabbage

Skunk cabbages are very interesting plants that generate enough internal heat that they can melt snow in the spring. There's been no snow-melting necessary this spring, so today on our walk we were able to observe the fresh shoots of skunk cabbages raising their mottled heads in the cedar swamp.

 

Skunk cabbages rise.

Walking past we two

generate our own spring heat.

Posted with Blogsy

April 29: Bones and blossoms

My husband and I went looking for a some birds today and found a few other things besides. In the woods surrounding Weskeag Marsh, we came across the old bones of what we think must have been a moose--or a very lost (and large) cow. The bones were huge, scattered across both sides of the trail, picked clean by time. Curved bows of ribs, puzzle pieces of vertebrae, leg bones like clubs--such odd objects to come across as the woods come to life: coltsfoot blooming, skunk cabbage unfurling amid the tangle of alders, palm warblers flitting along the marsh's edge.

Amid the old bones
rise again flowers, unfurl
again the green leaves.

Moose boneyard

Skunk Cabbage

Coltsfoot