Saturday, 21 March 2015
Evergreens like this yew (e.g., Taxus, Cephalotaxus—generally the order Pinales) do the spring thing in a different way than showy, decorative flowers and ornamental fruit trees.
Beautiful spring day—BSD—and people jammed both the BotGarden and PiedPk. Cook-outs. Joggers. Kiddies playing. Babies sleeping. There were weddings and receptions, and I saw one proposal on the dock at Lake Clara Meer. I felt like a voyeur just strolling about.
Friday, 20 March 2015
The BotGarden’s featured displays these days are orchids, all indoors, of course. On today’s visit, we stuck to the outdoors (mostly), and found lovely beds of tulip-masses, some fully open and some on the cusp of opening….
We also found a few forest natives, like the toadshade/trillium sessile above. The triangular layout of leaves and petals always holds me spellbound the first few times I find Trillium species on display in the spring, because of the balanced asymmetry that creates (to me) an obvious aesthetic.
Thursday, 19 March 2015
Rain today brought changes—it downed pine (and other) pollen, and it downed magnolia petals…and petals of many hues. These are a type of deciduous magnolia with far larger petals than the ones I showed the other day. This tree was so prolific that it created a veritable carpet of petal-decay, still fresh when I strolled by in the mist, but no doubt chemically shifting to the brownish hues as the night marches on.
Wednesday, 18 March 2015
I watched a goose-spat that got closer and closer to me. The guy-geese squabbled over the lady-goose, there in the back right. Now, why the left guy-goose was encroaching is a mystery to me, as he had his own lady-goose (not shown).
I also watched the GBH* fish for a bit, but s/he didn’t linger, I think because of the HDC.
* GBH = great blue heron; HDC = high dog count
Tuesday, 17 March 2015
You may have been thinking of today as St. Green-guy day, but here, as in Israel, we voted*. I almost forgot about it; thankfully, the Guru remembered!
During our walk to the poll and back, we angled our route this way and that to stroll in the shade as much as possible. Not the easiest task. Fortunately, it was late enough in the afternoon that we had some building-shade.
* Two things on the ballot, both infrastructure funding. Probably the turn-out will be something like 10%, although I sincerely hope it’s higher.
Monday, 16 March 2015
I looped afoot through some of the usual haunts. Only a single pair of Canada geese at the #H4WP pond (groundskeepers cut all the protective grasses, and I think the waterfowl feel…exposed). Good crop of exercisers along the BeltLine. Crews of workmen working on a few houses (fresh paint!). Nothing out of the ordinary.
Right now, it’s the time of the deciduous magnolias. They’re peaking.
Sunday, 15 March 2015
Skipped the BeltLine, and discovered that Piedmont Park was jammed (almost certainly the BeltLine was too). Glad to see the park so heavily used…. So, we headed for a little-used corner, and saw fewer people. I spotted this hellebore in a garden on our return route….
Saturday, 14 March 2015
As we drove near the northern Mississippi border, I realized I thought of the area only in what I imagined the heat of summer is like. Seeing it under winter overcast, cool(ish), with plants still rather dormant, in essence I couldn’t quite believe I was along the MS-TN border….
PS Happy Pi Day!
Friday, 13 March 2015
Somehow the stars aligned and this morning we joined a private tour of the restored house of Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (the son). The man is revered for many things, including drafting the secession papers for the state of Mississippi (leading up to the Civil War), then becoming “rehabilitated” (essentially) after the war, becoming not only a member of the US House of Representatives, but also a member of the US Supreme Court. He is still the only Mississippian to have served on that court.
This is the ancient osage orange that survives next to the house Lamar built on 30 ac on the outskirts of Oxford MS, named for Oxford GA and Oxford in England. The town has now crept up to the front yard, and the four-square house is now on what seems like a city lot. Even on a rainy day, it’s a special place, and worth the time to visit.
This monumental tree in the side yard was a total surprise. It’s an ancient and outsized osage orange tree.
Thursday, 12 March 2015
Found this derelict cooling facility that made an ice-company’s insulated rooms cold…while wandering the not-yet-abandoned industrial district of a contracting second-order (maybe third?) central place in the rural south….
Do you remember having concentration like this? When playing on the floor was a natural thing and your knees didn’t creak….
More evidence of concentration, this time by the elder offspring in the family we’re visiting…make your own board game! And you should see her pencil sketches…such talent! I’m in awe….