Skunk Cabbage @ Brookside Gardens

I’ve been looking for skunk cabbage sprouts every time I’ve gone to Brookside Gardens since I saw the plants emerging from the swampy area at Mt. Pleasant Farm back in January. Earlier this week, I finally saw some. They are in the wet area crossed by the boardwalk between the Brookside Gardens Conservatory and the Brookside Nature Center. I’d noticed the plants in previous years among the cypress knees.

The weather had been cold the previous days and I wondered if their contractile roots had pulled some of the plants back down into the soil. Since some of the plants seemed almost buried in the mulch under the cypress trees.

I zoomed in to two different hoods trying to see the ball shaped flower within – but they appeared to be empty. The structures are still interesting. Once I saw one of them there were quite a few just barely above the mulch.

Brookside Gardens with a Cell Phone

Earlier this week it was such a warm day that I wanted to get out and about - chose to go to Brookside Gardens. About halfway there, I realized I had forgotten my camera but then realized that I had my new cell phone (a Samsung Galaxy S7); it was time to experiment with the cell phone camera. I headed to the boardwalk between the conservatories and the Nature Center. The skunk cabbage was still not up under the cypress trees but there were crocus

And some dried ferns that were catching the sunlight (they look like big feathers!).

I walked toward the ponds and saw other early bulbs blooming

And turtles taking advantage of the warm day to come out of the mud at the bottom of the pond. I was beginning to learn about the camera in the phone; it does zoom (8x) but it’s all digital so the zoomed images sometimes look fuzzy.

As I trekked toward the witch hazel I had seen last time I visited Brookside – I saw a butterfly and managed to get a picture! It looks like a Question Mark Butterfly…hope there were others it found that were out and about.

Then I found the witch hazel trees again. They were still very bright with streamers around their blooms.

Some trees still have fried leaves clinging from last fall.

I learned that the camera in the cell phone does relatively well close up too.

As I completed the loop back to my car, I noticed some greenery between rocks (daffodils?) near the stream and wondered how the bulbs got wedged in that location.

Ten Little Celebrations – February 2017

Usually February has been a low-key month with weather dampening activity. This year – the weather has been mild – and my celebrations have been more active than usual for February.

I celebrated outings to 1) Conowingo (for Bald Eagles), 2) Brookside (for witch hazel and snow drops), 3) Mt. Pleasant (skunk cabbage), and

4) State College (to see my daughter and son-in-law.

There were also learning experiences to celebrate: 5) the TED dialog with Yuval Harari (I enjoyed his “A Brief History of Humankind” via Coursera back August 2013) and 6) The Changing Global Order course on Coursera (from Universiteit Leiden).

There were new (big) purchases to celebrate: 7) a Samsung Galaxy S7 and

8) a new Honda CR-V for my husband (I am celebrated more room for me in the front passenger seat than in his previous car…and I am still celebrating my Prius Prime every time I drive it).

Two things for myself that I celebrated this month: 9) a short haircut that maximizes the little bit of natural curl my hair has and 10) lots of lots of Zentangle tiles (new pens and more time than usual to create tiles).

I had a lot of celebrate in February 2017!

Brookside Conservatory – January 2017

There was work replanting some of the conservatory beds at Brookside Gardens when I was there last week. There were still enough plants in bloom to enjoy….and it was much warmer than outside! I liked the view from one of the bridges over the bubbling water…so dense with foliage that the water itself couldn’t be seen.

Pink and green always seems like a beautiful color combination.

A bloom had fallen into the water and looked very much like a butterfly.

The bird of paradise flower always reminds me of a spiked mohawk haircut!

And there are plant pompoms (or powder puffs) too.

The banana palm had bananas! The plant seems to frequently be in some stage of fruit development but I’ve never been around when the bananas were any color but green.

And then there were flowers for zoomed portraits.

The tree fern had many fiddleheads. I enjoyed photographing them and savored the memory of my trip to Hawaii a little over a year ago.

Brookside in Winter

It was a very cold morning when I made the trek to Brookside Gardens last week. I made a very short hike. The first destination was the place where Skunk Cabbage grows – the boardwalk between the gardens and the nature center. The wet area around the Bald Cypress trees is think with it…but not yet. The needles of the cypress cover the ground with the cypress knees breaking the monotony. There are not skunk cabbage sprouts yet.

I headed up to the small rooms of gardens and a gazebo and made some photographs of benches and stone walkways. I didn’t pause to sit on a sunny bench.

The plant I was very pleased to find in bloom was Witch Hazel. I found one in a location I had not noticed before and two others that I had seen in previous winters. They are a welcome burst of color in winter. The petals look like narrow ribbons sometimes curled tight.

And with that…I headed into the conservator where it was warm!