This red-wing blackbird followed me for a while as I walked along the berm, every once in a while flying down before veering off to land on another branch from which he could keep an eye on me. I guess I was passing through his territory and he was making sure everyone knew it.
The bushes in the 95 planting area are in bloom. The lilac and honeysuckle above are quite pretty. The one-seed hawthorn (below) is also very showy. In the picture at bottom a bee and a flesh fly are visiting the much less showy european buckthorn.
The silver maples in the 95 planting area are producing a heavy crop of seeds. This black squirrel was very busy gorging on the silver maple keys.
The trilliums seem to be holding their own against the garlic mustard. There are seven trilliums flowering in the patch rescued back in 2010. The hot and dry weather over the past week has compressed spring. The trees are leafing out already. The crabapples are blooming as are the wild plum back in the corner and the serviceberry. In addition to the trilliums and garlic mustard pictured above, there are dandelions, yellow rocket, forget-me-nots, violets and wild strawberry blooming.
Last year I don't think I saw one of these traditional looking lady bugs; this is the second one I spotted this year. Last year about this time I saw loads of the twelve-spotted lady bugs that aren't so hemispherical and are a paler shade of red. I haven't seen any of those yet this year.
A troop of scouts have planted a bunch of pine seedlings in the 2011 area. The place needed it as many of the evergreen trees had not survived the past two summers of drought. I'm not sure how well the new trees will do. The scouts seem to have just sliced the sod with a spade and then dropped the seedling into the groove without much thought of trying to match the soil depth or using loose soil to pack in the root ball and avoid air pockets.
Spring has arrived and in three weeks it has gone from snow to shorts weather. Someone planted a few crocuses along the fence by Newhaven. They popped up within a week of the last snowfall.
Crocuses are foreigners but they aren't exactly invasive. Not invasive like the garlic mustard below. That stuff carpets parts of the 1995 forest. The Fletcher Wildlife Garden blog has a good article about this invasive plant. You can't really do much about it unless you're willing to commit yourself long term to the eradication. I'm not so inclined, the more I learn about the environment the more I realize that almost everything I see around me is a newcomer. The garlic mustard is going to elbow its way in just as the dandelion, the plantain, the wild parsnip, the buckthorn, the honeysuckle and the wild carrot did before it. Even the rabbits and cardinals are newcomers to this area. Hopefully the garlic mustard will reach a balance and leave room for the other spring ephemerals.
This evening it was warm and pleasant when I went out at dusk to the berm area. I saw bats flying overhead catching insects on the wing. Every year I go out at dusk on a warm spring evening to see the bats. They move so quickly in the gloom just above the tree tops of the newly planted trees, it gives a bit of a thrill to spot them. They, at least, are one native that appreciate the naturalization area we planted. Then I stood still just inside the edge of the 1995 forest. Earthworms were all about, rustling the leaves from previous years. Everything is springing back to life and while this roadside patch of ground might be filled with foreigners and invasives like crocuses and garlic mustard, it is still exciting after a long winter to feel the pulse of life quicken around you.
This snow mold seems to be actually growing from the snow. Or perhaps, as is more likely, the mycelium was growing in the melt water between the ice crystals and as the snow melted away it draped the web of mycelium fibers on top of the grass. In the spring time great mats of the stuff are revealed on the grass as the snow melts away. The threads are even more delicate than a spider's web and only remain visible for a day or two after the snow melts away.
Snow mold is a fungus that feeds on grass in cold wet weather. It doesn't necessarily need snow and is a problem for golf courses and other turf grower even where it does not normally snow. There are several different types of snow mold; the two most common being the grey snow mold and the pink snow mold. I believe the above image is of the grey snow mold as the reddish-brown sclerotia are visible embedded in the grass leaves. In the image below you can more clearly see one of the sclerotia after the thatch has dried a bit and the mycelium has disappeared. The sclerotia is the dormant form of the fungus that stays in the thatch through the hot and dry weather of the summer. The fungus starts growing again in the fall when the necessary cool and wet conditions are present.
The pinkish hue on the lower portion of the grass leaf in the above picture is a bit of a mystery. There are patches of this faint pink on the dead thatch all over the grass. I thought it might be from the spores of pink snow mold but I am no longer sure. I couldn't find any good close-ups of what pink snow mold is supposed to look like. All the pictures I found on the web were only useful for identifying the circular patches of dead grass it creates in lawns and golf courses.
It felt quite spring-like last Sunday when I visited the south side of the berm; the ground had thawed; the tiny wolf spiders were scurrying through the long grass, and the buds on the silver maples were swelling. But yesterday, winter had one last encore.
