My favorite place to stop to eat a cheese sandwich on the way home from Dad’s: the old “National Road” through the Laurel Highlands of Pennsylvania. About 70 degrees at 12:30 today, but Spring is only just getting started.
Seasons
What we did last summer
Last August 20th, Mark Galvin and I painted the cover to the drain in the pond at Harwill Acres. (The county required our homeowners association to do this, indirectly as part of protecting the Chesapeake Bay.) Mark did the side using a borrowed canoe, and I did the top from the bridge. I documented the adventure with Mark’s iPhone:
Mayapple
The Mayapple plants suddenly popped up about a week ago, in patches, here and there in the woods. This is the patch near the woodpile. Will keep an eye open for any flowers.
Bluets?
Didn’t Wena call them bluets? We’ll have blankets of these soon, mostly in shady places on the lawn, but this is the first patch so far. Sometimes in the past I’ve been moved to mow around them. These are under the swing, where there’s not much grass left to mow anyway. Who knows what their real name is?
Magnolias finished
We still have one or two left . . .
. . . but after their glorious peak, it’s only a few days until most of the petals look like this:
Still, we shouldn’t shed a tear. With a little luck, there’ll be even more next year.
Camellias in bloom
Saturday afternoon, in the triangle garden.
Wikipedia Reference: Camellia
Magnolias in bloom
Above, 6:30pm Wednesday 14 March 2012. Below a shot in the dark from tree number one, about 6am Saturday 17 March, then again below, tree one about 9am. (About 5:30am, I’d been awakened by an owl of the variety “ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, UH-OOOOOH”, and subsequently dragged out of bed by young dog Cadbury.)
Wikipedia References: Magnolia, Magnolia Soulangeana
Presidents’ Day
Our second major snowfall this winter, twice what we had in January.
About an inch, Sunday evening, just in time for the Presidents’ Day holiday.
A walk in the park
Five miles on the trail from Oak Ridge to the Mawavi Road bridge and back in Prince William National Park on Saturday afternoon. Mostly sunny, about 60 degrees.
Half-inch of snow last night . . .
. . . but not much left by 10:30 this morning. Went for a run in shorts and t-shirt about 3:30, when it was 50 degrees. Perhaps winter hasn’t really got started yet.