230: Columbines at Longwood Gardens

One of the flowers in bloom during our visit to Longwood Gardens last week was the columbine.  I have never seen columbine before.  They are beautiful flowers that come in all sorts of colors and variations.  Its genus name, Aquilegia, is from the Latin for eagle.  The shape of the flower petals are thought to resemble the talons of an eagle.  Columbine, on the other hand, means dove or pigeon.  There are some who think the petals resemble five doves nestled together.

Having immediately fallen in love with the columbine flowers, it was only natural that I would take a ridiculous number of photos of them.  I’ll be posting columbine photos from now until next year if I decide to post them all (which I won’t, because that would bore everyone to tears).

I will scatter these beautiful flowers throughout future posts so we can savor them.  Not all of them.  I promise.  I took photos of other flowers as well during our visit, and I am sure they will want to spend a little time on the blog too.

It’s happened again

I have been Freshly Pressed.  Wow!  Thank you so much, WordPress.  I love you, too.  🙂

I was Freshly Pressed around this time last year so I knew where to look when I saw my stats jumping up to numbers I never see on a regular basis.  The post that was Freshly Pressed today, in case you’re interested, is A Visit From the Green Man.

Today’s outdoor adventures

Storm moving towards the pond

Storms rolled through the Bogs last evening.  There were a few rumbles of thunder along with a few flashes of lightning.  We didn’t get much rain.  That’s okay.  We’re still drying out from all the rains of April.

Smile! The sun is shining today!

Today has been sunny, clear, and very warm (in the 80s).  All this sunshine is delightful.  I find it difficult to stay indoors when it’s so nice outside.  I may take my proofreading assignment outside to the deck since the breeze is light and not likely to start scattering pages all over the land.

The bird pictured above was hanging around near a male red-winged blackbird.  I am fairly certain it’s a female red-winged blackbird.  They must have had a nest nearby as both were chattering at me in a “go away!” tone.

The mystery plant

The mystery plant has changed since yesterday.  The bud has opened, or peeled back, to reveal leaves.  I suspect it’s some sort of tree.  (Click on the link to see what it looked like yesterday.)

Wood strawberry flower

I was able to walk into the upper part of the woods today.  It’s still muddy, but not nearly as mushy.  The apple trees scattered throughout that section of the woods continue to bloom, their scent perfuming the air.  Bouquets of bluets have popped up in the sunny spots, and I found a large patch of wood strawberries blooming, their little white flowers turned towards the sun.

A cascade of apple blossoms

Our blooming-for-the-first-time crabapple tree is really taking off.  The blossoms are starting to open.  As with a lot of slow bloomers, it’s making up for lost time.

There are blooms in the pond, too.  But you don’t want to see photos of that.  The warmer weather has brought us algae blooms, not a particularly pretty sight to behold.  No worries, though.  After a decent period of warm weather, the water in the pond will darken, a condition the algae doesn’t like.  M and I have learned (sometimes the hard way) that Nature can be good at dealing with these things on her own, thank you very much.

One puzzling aspect of my recent outdoor adventures is the lack of frogs.  I saw some early in the spring season, but they seem to have disappeared.  Normally they are quite noisy by now, especially the green frogs who pong away all night long.  We slept with the window open for part of the night and I didn’t hear a peep (or a pong) out of them.  The turtle population, however, is greater than usual.  Perhaps the snapping turtles, which I read eat nearly anything they can wrap their jaws around, have been eating the frogs.

Playing hide-and-seek with the red ball

That’s it from Breezy Acres for today.  Thank you for dropping by and spending time with me here in the Bogs.   🙂

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