The Backyard Science group regularly publishes The Daily Bucket, which features observations of the world around us. Insects, weather, meteorites, climate, birds, flowers and anything natural or unusual are among the worthy topics.
Please let us know what is going on around you in a comment. Include, as close as is comfortable for you, where you are located. Each note is a record that we can refer to as we try to understand the patterns that are unwinding around us.
Yesterday morning was sunny and warm, but clouds were gathering on the horizon and I'd heard reports of buckets of rain just south of here. I decided it would be a good day to stay inside and catch up on indoor tasks that I had neglected because of the recent spate of good weather. I intended to get going after a quick read of the DKos (my favorite tool of procrastination). The first thing I went to was a photo diary of an
Oregon hike by
Ojibwa. The photos made my feet itch--made it difficult to sit still. I immediately turned off the computer and before the rains came, went for a long walk in the
woods regenerating clearing across the street from my home.
Join me below the twisty, orange blackberry vine for a look at what I discovered while I was out there.
Last month I published a photo diary of what was blooming in the 90-acre mix of logged land and planted stands of timber across the street from my home. Most of those flowers are gone now, but others are coming alive in the warmer weather. A few, like that thimble berry blossom that greeted you at the beginning of this post, will be replaced with edible berries later this summer.
The native trailing blackberry vines are climbing the stumps left from logging, which makes for easier picking if you can beat the birds and other critters to the berries. We frequently come across coyote scat full of blackberry and Indian plum seeds, so we know they're enjoying the fruit, too.
We actually find most of the ripe berries closer to the ground where they "trail" in the tangle of everything that grows around them. These are the only native blackberries in the PNW:
A blackberry blossom holds the promise of one of the sweetest tastes of the PNW summer:
Western Trumpet (or Orange) Honeysuckle. Part of the reason the hummingbirds love it so much here:
Western Starflower.
Startlingly delicate and beautiful:
Fringecup. These tiny flowers have an amazingly strong, fragrant perfume for their size:
Oxeye (?) daisies. They come up out of the long grasses in the clearing and along the edge of the road, and unlike the fringecups, do not have the greatest smell:
Still life with moss on dead twigs. Or is it lichen? Moss and lichen identification is not my strong suit. I just think it looks cool:
This salal bush also produces edible berries--not as sweet and juicy as the blackberries, but blended with other wild berries, they make for a nice jam or jelly. However, the land owner allows crews to come in and harvest the salal greens for floral arrangements and wreaths, so we don't get nearly as many berries as we used to due to them cutting the bushes low on a regular basis:
Salal berry blossoms:
They're interesting flowers--not your typically pretty bloom. Take a closer look:
Of course, all the fir trees big and small (replanted after logging) are fuzzy with soft, new growth:
There's more scotch broom (invasive, non-native) now than we have seen in all the years since these acres were logged. The bushes exploded with yellow flowers when the temperatures were in the 80s last week. Most of the wildflowers were in the shadier areas where the broom doesn't grow as thickly.
Here's the path/road through the woods back in April:
The path now--not from quite the same vantage point, but it all sort of looks the same at the moment if you aren't making the effort to discover hidden treasures:
I noticed that the scotch broom bushes thinned out near the stream and the wetland, so maybe the roots don't enjoy the moisture. Makes sense since the plants flourish in lots of light on roadsides and in clearings. We make it so easy for stuff like this to take over.
Your turn: What's going on in your neck of the woods?
"Spotlight on Green News & Views"" is posted every Wednesday and Saturday at 1:00 pm Pacific Time on the Daily Kos front page. Take the time to read, recommend, comment, and then link to your other off-Kos groups.