I ventured out this afternoon into a brisk north wind, wearing my heavy winter jacket. Where had spring gone? The high wind made it considerably more difficult to photograph new growth on the shrubs and trees along Piney Woods Church Road, including this tulip poplar seedling. When the sun emerged from behind a cloud, though, the late-day lighting was marvelous. I fear for all these tender leaves, though, with temperatures expected to reach the mid-20s overnight.
As I near the Hutcheson Ferry end of Piney Woods Church Road, I glance to my left and my eyes catch a lone oak leaf from last year. It waves at me, greeting me with shades of red, orange, and yellow-green.
I’m on my way again, returning home down Piney Woods Church Road. I pause to appreciate the shadow of a pasture gate on the gravel roadway surface. Only later, going back through the images to select one for today, do I notice the cow grazing in the background. There are always more things to discover, all around us.
I spent a marvelous couple of hours this afternoon looking for signs of spring with my dear friend Sarah Crutchfield at her forest haven, The Cabin Path, in unincorporated South Fulton County. And what adventures we had! In addition to finding abundant rue anemone and hepatica in bloom, we also discovered a number of bloodroot flowers, plus a Virginia pennywort and a red trillium whose bloom had not quite opened yet. We also saw quite a number of cinnamon fern fiddleheads, and a spider’s web that caught the afternoon sunlight beautifully. My harvest from the day’s outing is posted below: hepatica and bloodroot (first row); pennywort and trillium (second row); fiddleheads and spider’s web (third row).
Last Saturday (the first day of Spring), a search for signs of spring took the author to Newman Wetlands Center in Hampton, Georgia. Operated by Clayton Water Authority, the wetlands is part of the county’s innovative wastewater treatment process. It features a lovely half-mile trail, mostly boardwalk, crossing expanses of open water with cattails, as well as through several forested wetland areas.
In North with the Spring, Edwin Way Teale observes that “Spring begins in a swamp…. All along the line of its advance the most sudden changes, the swiftest growth, the most exuberant outpourings of life occur in swamps.” And indeed, a Saturday afternoon saunter through Newman Wetlands afforded abundant evidence of spring’s arrival.
In a small patch of weeds and grass by the trailhead could be seen the familiar ruderal, hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta), introduced in an earlier Examiner article. It was accompanied by a few early purple blooms of henbit (Lamium amplexicaule), a member of the mint family, and some blooms of a forget-me-not (Myostotis sp.), light blue with yellow centers.
Along the wetland’s edges, maples were in bloom. The red maple (Acer rubrum), a denizen of woodland swamps, was alight with clusters of tiny red blossoms on short stalks. At the edge of a hillside lined with stately beech trees stood a sapling of silver maple (Acer saccharinum), covered in greenish-yellow blossoms that clung tightly to the delicate branches.
The wetland was full of life. Overhead was the insistant call of an eastern wood-pewee, interpersed with the cheery sounds of black-capped chickadees. Minnows swam in the shallows, and a muskrat was briefly glimpsed swimming across a channel. Insects were few, though, so early in the year. A lone black-and-yellow mud dauber paused on a wooden bench just long enough to be photographed.
Turtles were everywhere. Yellow-bellied sliders and painted turtles sunned themselves lazily on logs, while a feisty stinkpot musk turtle trudged across the pond bottom beneath a couple inches of water, busily feeding. The result was the opportunity to take several photos of the “how many turtles do you see here?” variety.
A pair of Canada geese wandered the wetland, one feeding while the other stood guard. They offered a narrative thread for the author’s journey, reappearing at different locations along the trail loop at almost regular intervals. The first animals to appear at the beginning of the walk, they could also be seen at trail’s end, paddling away through the cattails.
This article was originally published on March 21, 2010.
Almost everywhere I look along Piney Woods Church Road, buds are bursting open and new leaves emerging on the trees and shrubs. I feel so ignorant, because most of them I cannot actually identify yet, until the leaves unfurl completely and flowers bloom. And maybe not even then…
This post is in honor of LBJs, or “Little Brown Jobs”, as birders refer to a range of fairly nondescript small brown species. I welcome a correct ID on this particular specimen, who was looking contemplative on a wire beside a fence along Piney Woods Church Road today.
Along Piney Woods Church Road, the earliest to bloom of the red maples have begun producing seeds. These nascent maple keys have not yet developed their final shape, but are merely tiny, oval forms suspended where the flowers used to be.
Yesterday afternoon, I went on a short hike at the Boundary Waters Park in Douglasville, Georgia, about twenty minutes northeast, by car, from my home. The red trail there leads up and down hills (quite steeply in places), through a mature deciduous forest. On my walk, I was delighted to discover several early spring wildflowers: violets in abundance along the floodplains of streams, and rue anemone, cutleaf toothwort, and hepatica blooming on the forested slopes. I also saw a wild turkey dash across the path in front of me, but he (or she) was far too quick for my camera. Pictured below are a violet and rue anemone (top row) and cutleaf toothwort and hepatica (bottom row). What lovely discoveries on a mild early spring day!
This photograph is just what it claims to be, taken late this morning about a third of the way along my walk down Piney Woods Church Road.
