Flowers and Plants

Teasel (Dipsacus sp.)

It was a chilly but very pretty day outside today and I took the opportunity to get out of my office for fifteen minutes and wander a little while in the woods next to my building. Toward the other end of the empty lot is a clearing that is filled with teasels. So, today you get a picture of one against the blue sky.

Fall Bramble Colors

What beautiful colors the brambles turn in the fall. I’m not sure why I think of them as stained glass colors, except they seem to come alive in the sun. I took some pictures of a great blue heron today, as well, but it was too far away for them to be any good. With the warm weather we’ve been having, there was also a dandelion in bloom. Spunky little plant, the dandelion. But these colors are what attracted me the most.

Camellia japonica ‘Lady Clare’

Azalea Leaves

Old Allium Blooms

We had Second Thanksgiving today. If hobbits can have second breakfast, I don’t see any problem with Second Thanksgiving. There were sixteen of us at mom’s house this year, which is pretty close to the limit for her dining room table. There was more than enough food, of course, with plenty of leftovers for everyone to take home.

I took a little time in the afternoon to go out in the yard and enjoy some Thanksgiving-season color. First up is a Camellia japonica ‘Lady Clare’ in the back yard. There is currently just this one bloom on it but it is absolutely covered with huge buds and before Christmas it will be in full bloom. How can you not love a plant blooming this time of year?

The second photograph is not of a flower, although it certainly competes with flowers on color. It’s a little roseate of leaves on an azalea bush in the front yard. Many people think of azaleas as a one-season shrub, blooming for a few weeks in spring and doing nothing the rest of the year. That’s certainly true of some but many of them have leaves that turn all sort of shades of red for the winter. To my way of thinking, those are to be preferred over those that simply stay green. Look at all the color in those leaves!

For our third and final photo, we have something that is flower-related, although not a flower itself. These are the pedicels from allium umbels, or, in layman’s terms, the flower stalks from the ball of flowers on an ornamental onion.

Illuminated Leaf

There are many, many (many) beautiful things in this world of ours. I’m one of those old fashioned types who believe that there is true, objective beauty. I won’t say that nothing is as beautiful or even that nothing is more beautiful than sunlight shining through a leaf but that is certainly one of the beautiful things. I’m not, of course, claiming that this is an ideal or even a very good representative of that beauty, but I was outside today and saw it all around me. Even on the edge of a parking lot, there is breathtakingly beautiful color. Thank you, to the creator of beauty and whose face shines brighter and purer than the sun.

Autumnal Orange

When I took this picture, I know I was thinking how orange it was. Looking at the pictures later, there is more yellow than I remember. Maybe it’s a trick of the light and a consequence of the way the camera sees light as compared to how we do (or how I do). Anyway, this is the view out my office window. I could certainly have a worse view. Of course there is a parking lot if I look a little lower but there is no building next to us in that direction. Anyone who has been following my photographic doodling for a while knows that there is a ten or twelve acre lot next to my office. It happens to be on the same side of the building as my office. I know people with offices in more scenic places but I really cannot complain.

This is a willow oak, Quercus phellos. It gets its name from the leaves, which are similar in shape to willow leaves rather than the lobed leaves we normally associate with the oak genus. The willow oak makes a good, if somewhat large, tree for a yard. Its smaller leaves are easier to deal with and fall sooner than those of the red and white oak groups (although the willow oak is actually in the red oak group, section Lobatae).

Oak Leaves

Hurricane Sandy took care of knocking most leaves from trees but of course, that doesn’t apply to many oak trees, whose leaves cling tenaciously to the branches until the depths of winter (or even early spring!). I took a nice walk out in the lot next to my building today. Not at lunchtime but later in the day, as the sun was getting low in the sky. There are lots of bare trees but the oak leaves till have some color and looked very nice against the beautiful, pale blue sky.

American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana)

I went out for a walk this afternoon and noticed a persimmon tree (the American Persimmon, Diospyros virginiana) with quite a good crop of ripe persimmons. I gave the tree a shake and picked up a good handful to bring home. I do like a good, ripe persimmon, even though they are mostly seed. Be careful to wait until they are ripe, though, or they will turn your mouth inside out. This one is just about perfect, sitting on a sycamore leaf, almost begging to be eaten.

Walnuts and Leaves

I know I’ve recently posted a picture of black walnuts but I was out taking pictures and came across another tree that had just dropped most of its nuts. Not too surprisingly I took pictures of them on the ground.

I find it interesting that there are certain memories that are indelibly recorded in our minds and they are released by particular sights, sounds, and above all smells. The smell of the flesh of black walnuts is one that brings me back to my childhood. Blessed is he whose indelible memories are good ones.

Black Walnuts

Willow Oak Leaves

Of all the tree nuts, I’m the most conflicted by walnuts. Cashews are my absolute favorite, and I love filberts and pistachios. Pecans and walnuts, however are a bit more complicated. I like them well plain, just as they are. It’s also hard to resist such things as pralines or pecan pie. Walnut and maple syrup is a pretty amazing match-up, as well. When it comes to crushed walnuts on brownies, though, I’m a little less enthusiastic. I’m not really sure why. I obviously like the taste alright, and I don’t object to filberts or cashews combined with chocolate.

Anyway, most of the walnuts you buy in the store are from Juglans regia, the common walnut, also called Persian, English, or Carpathian walnut. What you see here are J. nigra, the eastern black walnut. They are a harder to get out of their shells, which are significantly thicker and harder than their more genteel counterparts from the old country. They also have a more intense flavor, however, making it worth the effort. Since there are so many of them on the ground in the empty lot next to my office, I went out and collected a big bag of them this afternoon. I’ll let the husks dry a bit, clean them off and then crack them in a vise.

The second picture here is not really related to the first except it was taken on the same outing. These are leaves of the willow oak, (Quercus phellos).

Red and Gold and Brown

With apologies to the late Mark Heard, I’ve given this post the title of one of my favorite songs, Appalachian Melody. It’s so sad when anyone dies young but we particularly miss those with exceptional talent. Mark was only 40 years old when he died in 1992 of a heart attack. I hum and sing this song to myself often, particularly at this time of year, of course. “How peculiar liking old dead leaves against the sky.” I do, because there is something more than meats the eye.

Actually, I think this photograph would make a really good jigsaw puzzle.

Appalachian melody drifting softly down
Instruments of gold and red and brown

You can read the rest of the lyrics to this song and to Mark Heard’s other songs on www.markheard.net.

Dried Samaras

Another beautiful day today. I had a meeting in the next building over and I decided to take my camera with me. On the way back I wandered a bit along the woods and took some pictures of colored leaves, some honeysuckle berries (Lonicera maackii), and these maple samaras. I like the pattern of the veins in their wings.

Dogwood Leaves

You can always tell a dogwood by its bark. But this time of year, the leaves are fairly easy to spot, as well, because they turn such a beautiful, deep, rich red. These are on a small dogwood that self-seeded in the front garden before we bought the house. It’s actually one of the few trees in our yard that I have no complaints about. It’s in a good spot for a small tree and it gives us a couple good seasons, with flowers in the spring and the wonderful fall color now. This one is a keeper.

Rose ‘Perle d’Or’

Most references I’ve seen list this rose as growing to a size of three to six feet tall and three feet across. With the mild winter we had last year and the hot dry summer, mine has grown to about seven feet tall and nearly as far across. Actually, it’s getting a little too big and I’ll probably prune it back fairly hard this winter. On the other hand, I don’t think there has been a time since spring when there weren’t at least a few flowers open on it and there have been a few times when it was absolutely covered. The fragrance is wonderful and strong. On warm, humid days (not too uncommon here) it hits you as you walk up to the front door.

I don’t think this is a great picture but I do like flowers with sunlight shining through them. It’s hard to capture, though. I wanted to get a back-lit bloom but without a lot of past-their-prime flowers around it, so there were only a few to choose from. This is the best I got without going in for secateurs. If I had done that I would have missed the light, in any case.

Fall Color

The wonderful fall weather has continued and the trees are starting to take note. There is still a lot of green but more and more yellow. Here and there are splashes of early red. I love the red trees. It used to be that I only really liked the bright, orange-red of (for example) the maples. Now I like the purple-reds, the clarets, the maroons, and even the deep rusty-reds of the oaks. Still, there is something to be said for a happy red maple on cool autumn morning. Even nicer that it’s right out my back door.

Ampelopsis brevipedunculata (Porcelain Berry)

What a beautiful day it was today. Cathy called and asked if I wanted to go for a walk during lunch time. We walked around the block from work, which is about a mile and a half around. I took a few pictures of deep red sumac leaves (both Rhus copallina and Rhus typhina), Virginia creeper berries (Parthenocissus quinquefolia), and, as shown here, porcelain berry (Ampelopsis brevipedunculata). It was named Vitis heterophylla but is now classified in a different genus to the grapes, which are similar plants.

Cosmos

It’s great to have flowers booming this late in the year. We have a frost warning out for tomorrow evening but so far, we’ve been spared. This cosmos is growing in a pot on our driveway and it’s a cheerful sight. I have a rose that’s still got a lot of blooms, as well. How can you not love that? Won’t be much longer, though.

Seeds

It was a beautiful day today and I decided to get out of the office for a few minutes and wander in the empty lot next to my office.

I’m not sure what these are, actually. I didn’t really look at them well enough to identify them. They’re pretty though. I didn’t have a tripod with me, but I used a nearby tree branch to help steady the camera. Still, not as sharp a picture as I’d like.

Turning Maple Leaf

It’s that time of the year and the leaves are starting to turn all the bright colors of autumn. This maple leaf was sitting on the prostrate juniper in the back of our yard. I love this time of year, don’t you?

Mushroom

It’s mushroom time in the yard again. These clumps came up last year for the first time and since we lost a tree a little before that, I have to assume they are growing on the rotting roots of that tree. At least, that’s what I hope. I certainly don’t want them to be growing on the rotting roots of trees that are still ready to fall on our house. Last year they came up and were all over the yard for a few days. Then they turned to mush and were filled with fly larva, which I assume we’ll see again this year. Lovely.