US National Arboretum - Fern Valley

We walked around the US National Arboretum in Washington DC this past weekend.  We went for the azaleas but there were a lot of other things to see. One of my favorite areas was Fern Valley - which includes native ferns, wildflowers, shrubs and trees of the eastern US. There were jack-in-the-pulpits, of course.

I found a plant new to me and it had both flowers and newly formed seed pods: celandine poppy. I took lots of pictures of it and then identified it after I got home. It is about the same height as the May apple plants. It might grow at the edge of our woods. I may try to get some seeds to plant next fall to establish a stand; evidently once they are started they come back every year either from the roots or seeds.

Here are a few other images from our walk around that area.

Ten Little Celebrations - April 2015

Noticing something worth celebration each dayis an easy thing for me to do. The habit of writing it down reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are my top 10 for April 2015.

Countdown to a little vacation - Even though lots of my days feel like ‘vacation’ I have adjusted my definition for vacation to equal ‘away from home’….so I savored the anticipation of the North Caroline road trip in the days prior to leaving.

Otters - There were so many plants and animals I could have celebrated from the North Carolina trip but I am singling out the otters because it was the first time I has seen the animals in the wild.

A barbeque dinner - Sometimes a high calorie splurge is truly worth it. The restaurant advertised ‘Texas Barbeque’ and they delivered.

The Elizabethan Gardens - A lovely place in Manteo, North Carolina. A garden is a great place to celebrate spring.

Maymont - This was a spur of the moment stop in Richmond VA on the way home ---- a gold age mansion and grounds that was donated to the city after the owners died in the 1920s. It is now a park. We were there on a Monday when the mansion and visitor center is closed….but the park is well work the stop. I have post planned for it in a week or so (it’s taking me some time to get all the posts done from the North Carolina trip.

Home Again - I always celebrate coming home after being away….no matter how great the ‘vacation’ was.

Cherry Blossoms - We didn’t get down to Washington DC this year for the cherry blossoms but the tree in our yard had its best year ever….timed perfectly to welcome us home.

Last Master Naturalist Class - I celebrated getting through the 8 class days - not missing a single one! And now I am waiting for my final exam to be graded!

GreenFest - I celebrated finding the native plants I wanted for my yard at the county celebration - along with some additional reusable bags and information on dealing with deer in the neighborhood.

Figuring out a technical problem - I figured out how to use the GPS info from a series of picture to overlay a map. It was easy than I thought it would be….something to celebrate.

Native Plants for the Yard

I was motivated by the lecture on native plants in the Master Naturalist class to augment the plantings around my house with some new additions. This past weekend was the perfect time to do it: there were native plants on sale and for free at the Howard County GreenFest on Saturday and the weather was good for planting on Sunday.

I replaced two bushes that had died in the front of our house with Ninebark. Hopefully they will fill in the space between the irises I planted last year to partially cover the void the old bushes had left.

Under the deck where there is too much shade for the grass to grow well, I planted two Christmas ferns. Both of the plants have old green fronds that made it through the winter and fiddleheads that are emerging now. It seems like they unfurled a bit over Saturday night while they were waiting in their pots on our deck to be planted in the ground. If these ferns do well, maybe they will propagate or maybe I’ll just plant a few more every year until I get some greenery under the deck again.

In the back of our yard where the grass is not growing well at the edge of the forest, I planted 4 understory trees: 2 spicebush, a sassafras, and a witch hazel. I will probably have to put a small fence around the area to keep the deer away from them for a few years. They are very small. The picture is of one of the spicebush plants; do you see the little green leaves?

Over the next few years, I’ll continue to extend the forest into our yard by a few feet every year. It is very easy to rake all the fall leaves to the part of the yard I want to ‘give back’ to the forest and then plant a small tree or bush in the area the next spring. I am still trying to decide if I want to plant winterberry somewhere in the yard this season or wait until next spring to plant it in the area reclaimed by the forest next fall.

Master Naturalist Training - Week 6

Last Wednesday was the 6th of eight days of training to become a Master Naturalist in Maryland. We managed to go out for a short history walk at Belmont before the rain started. I noticed a lower branch of the English Elm on the slope in front of the house and got this close up of the buds.

Back inside we talked about native and invasive species in Maryland. I’m motivated to think about planting some ‘natives’ at the edge of the forest behind our house. The area has a lot of deer traffic so I may have to protect whatever I plant.  We have big trees but not many samplings because of the heavy browsing. I am starting with two items in a two small areas: ferns in the dampest area of the yard and a spicebush or service berry or winterberry to provide a shrub or understory level plant in the area where it has gotten too shady for grass to grow well. I still love the crocus, snowdrops and daffodils in the spring - even though they are non-native. Our neighbor has an expanding clump of daffodils at the edge of the woods and I enjoy them every spring. Maybe I’ll plant some bulbs next fall around my young understory tree.

In the afternoon the topic was fish. After a short lecture we did several classification exercises with various fishes on newspaper. I appreciate that gloves were provided…and that my pen worked just find to spread the fins and open the mouth! We headed out to the pond; it was cold and we did not get a single fish in the net although we did recognize scat (from our week 3 lecture on mammals). This one had a lot of hair - so a predator - and too big for fox - so probably a coyote. They seemed to frequent the area around the pond.

I also got some images of the bald cypress from the other side of the pond. See the people to the right of the tree…for scale.

Also near the pond are some trees that were planted in protective tubes that seem to be thriving. One had a delicate birds nest from last summer. The ornithology segment of the course is part of the last class.

I did some follow-up work at home from the week 4 lecture on microbes. I made a spore print with a baby bella mushroom I had from the grocery store. It is an easy process: 1) remove any remaining veil covering the gills on the underside of the mushroom and the stem 2) turn it gills down on a piece of paper 3) cover it with an upside down bowl to keep it from disturbed 4) come back in 12+ hours, carefully remove the bowl and mushroom…the spore print will be on the paper. I was surprised at how much moisture the mushroom leaked onto the paper…next time I’ll not used paper that has printing on the other side!

Another follow-up was from week 5. When we went to the stream - we scraped the rocks with a toothbrush and kept the sample of watery debris in the refrigerator for a week. There was no compound microscope in the building for week 6 as originally planned so I took the sample home to look at with my microscope. And there were living diatoms in the sample! I same two different kinds right away….and will look again sometime this weekend.