To all of the Mothers - Happy Mother’s Day! The lilac festival is going on now, but that’s not what we’ll be doing today! More on that later!

Lilacs at Wave Hill, April 30, 2006.

Have a happy day!

I hate to mow my “lawn” because the “weed” flowers are so pretty, even though I’m sure my herbicide, insecticide, pesticide loving neighbors highly disagree. I don’t c*a*r*e how they feel, I really don’t. I’ve paid for this patch of land, what are they gonna do? While they’re mowing their lawns to an inch of its’ life and it turns brown in the heat of the summer, I’m here mowing mine at 3″ and enjoying a green “lawn” all spring/summer/fall.

I took turf in college (so yes, I know *how* to have the perfect lawn) to try to gain an appreciation for lawns (it didn’t work) and ended up learning and appreciating the turf “weeds” the best. I do have some plants in my “lawn” that aren’t typical turf “weeds” must be from previous owners or real tenacious wildflowers.

Daisies are about to burst forth:

Henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) that I don’t mind at all:

It’s very hairy, but doesn’t sting like nettle:

Closer view of the henbit flower:

Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale). Now I’m really sorry to those that *hate* dandelions, but I *love* dandelions. Really. I do.

And someday I’ll tell you all of the reasons why I do, besides it being a really cool flower.

Tons of common blue violets (Viola papilionacea) are blossoming:

I love violet leaves:

Wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana), mmm, except I never get to eat them because the lawnmower doesn’t ever allow them to mature.

Mmmm, if I could just hold out mowing until they ripen so I could eat these! Or at least the animals could eat them.

Tons of yarrow (Achillea millefolium), mmmm, makes for a soft, nice smelling “lawn” when mowed, and doesn’t mind being cut:

And this little flower, which is all of a 1/4″ across, is making me have to get out my Weeds of the Northeast book, which I had purchased at Cornell Plantations, and then it ended up being one of our turf textbooks. Slender speedwell (Veronica filiformis).

Don’t be sad that this is ending, I have tons of other “weeds” in my “lawn” that I’ll be sharing later! And if you look closely at some of my “weed” photos, you’ll notice there are blades of grass. Hope I didn’t give any lawn affectinados a heart attack with my “lawn.”

I love watching the Kentucky Derby. Just the racing part that is. I don’t need to watch the hours before leading up to the thing and after talking about it forever. Hearing My Old Kentucky Home makes me tear up. I love looking at the ladies’ hats, and I would love to taste one of those fresh mint juleps, mmmm. Oh, and I *love* horses.

Not my photo.

I love the beautiful horse farms in Kentucky, the green grass and white fences and of course, the beautiful horses.

How do I know? I actually lived in Kentucky for 11 months of my life. Really. Don’t ask.

While investigating the flowering plants at my Mom’s home one day, I came across a bee on her grape hyacinth. Of course, I had to investigate what a bee finds so interesting about such a little flower.

Here’s the bee, a little blurry, but nice to see the bees again

Aha! They crawl up the little “grapes” to get to the goods

It’s so cool to look really close at flowers, isn’t it?

So I got new Anti-Virus software, woo-hoo, it is supposed to protect my computer even more than my last package. Except it won’t let me freakin’ blog and I haven’t figured out how to make it let me yet, grrrr. How am I blogging now? Don’t ask. So much for the new and improved version, huh? Phew, thanks for letting me get *that* off my chest. I will figure it out. And I won’t spend 20 hours on some phone with their technical staff, because I know how irritating *that* is.

Just a few of the many photos I’ve been taking - Daffodil perfection, before the rains came and ruined them all.

Ahhh, I love daffodils!

And sweet kitty faces.

She was smooshing her nose into the knees of my pants after I had been working in the garden. She’s such a little sweetie, my Dad’s little kitty. Can you believe she still misses him and looks for him?

Oh yeah, I just realized it’s my second blogiversary.  Woo-Hoo.

This spider kept running away from the camera so it was really hard to capture him, and he turned out too bright, but still, these little spiders I never really looked at before are soooo cool! He was running around on a box elder.

Finally! I was able to get out into the woods yesterday afternoon after having spent all morning and early afternoon first working on my yard and then my Mom’s yard. And I was hoping, based on the past dates in my Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide that I would be able to find some of my favorite spring flowers in bloom. And we did! Yay!

We were so excited to spy some lovely little patches of Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis)

I *love* this flower. And in New York State this plant is listed as Exploitably Vulnerable

And then we spied tons of Trout Lilies or Yellow Adder’s Tongue or Dogtooth Violet (Erythronium americanum) (don’t you love all of the common names).

You can see the brown mottling on the leaves.

And then another favorite of mine, Cut-leaved Toothwort or Pepperroot (Dentaria laciniata), and you can see where both the common name and latin names come from by this next photo:

Here’s one with a white flower and a little bee pollinating it:

And one with pinkish flowers:

This next flower I know is a Hepatica (Hepatica nobilis), but I’m not sure whether it is a sharp-lobed or blunt-lobed since I didn’t look at the leaves (bad Pam).

Another favorite of mine, and one of the 100 herbs I had to learn inside and out, Skunk Cabbage (Symplocarpus foetidus)

I love the way the leaves come up (and don’t you love the way they poke right through the dried tree leaves)?

I love the leaves when they’re unfolded:

And, of course, I have to show the coolest parts, the spathe and spadix (the spathe being the outer hood and the spadix the knob-shaped cluster inside of it).

We also saw Marsh Marigolds or Cowslip (Caltha palustris) but it was too early for their blossoms:

(sorry no closeups, I wasn’t prepared to go into the water, and I don’t really know how deep it is).

There’s a platform at the edge of the swamp that you can watch and listen to all kinds of birds. I accidentally flushed out a turkey, but didn’t capture a photo of it. Here’s last year’s cattails:

And I spied some eyeballs, can you see them?

Here’s a crop of this photo so you can see the eyeballs a little better:

There’s tons of frogs here.

We tried finding sunning turtles, but I guess we were too late in the day for them. We did see a couple of snakes, but I was only able to capture this Common Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis):

I love snakes! You can also see how profuse the Trout-Lilies are here, along with the Cut-Leaved Toothwort. And I love my new book The Amphibians and Reptiles of New York State because I don’t have to weed through a million species! (P.S. Mary, you’ve *got* to check out the cover of this book)!

Another one of my favorites, moss around the base of a tree in the swamp:

And a burl. I would love to see the inside of it.

And you know I can’t walk through the woods without photographing fungus:

That’s basically it! Except for all of the tremendous sounds in the woods - the bird calls, peepers, etc. We couldn’t have picked a better day to go into the woods! I used to walk through these woods every day, and I miss them very much!

P.S. And for the record, it was 86 degrees F today. Yes, in April. Very unusual for this time of year.

I was outside minding my own business taking photos of my daffodils, which seemed to have all blossomed at once given the great weather we’ve been having, when I spied insects on one of my daffodils.

Already then, I couldn’t wait to blow this photo up to have a closer look, because it looks like they’re doin’ “it!”

I’ll look this bug up in my bug book when it’s dark and cooler out. For now, I want to show you the coolest spider, and then get back outside!

It looks like he’s transparent! Hmmm, I’ll check this guy out later, too! Enjoy the weather!

While I still just have crocus in blossom at my home, my Mom now has violets in her lawn:

And her tulips are coming out:

Some daffodils in blossom:

And primroses:

And her lilac buds are starting to burst open:

Ahhhh, color is coming, slow but sure!

Hearing about people’s illnesses. I’m just too empathetic. Yesterday one of the employees was throwing up and she came to my office with her throw up voice to ask me if she could go home because she was throwing up and she proceeded to tell me the details of what she was throwing up. Now I am a very compassionate, sympathetic / empathetic person, but I really don’t need the details. Because it makes me want to throw up, too.

And another thing, one of the problems of working with women is having to hear when they are having their “monthly” and the details of that, too (and this includes my boss). WTF? Really. Details.  I’m a female, I don’t need “those” details, seriously.

And diarrhea. Why do I have to hear that someone has taken 20,000 Immodium things and still is having diarrhea?

Since when have we gotten so open and vocal about these personal things? I really don’t want to know details, do you? Blech.

Here, let’s have another view of the man with chaps to take our minds off of the gory details:

Ahhh, that’s better!