“Where are you?” is a question I sometimes get on my cell phone from Marge.  My walk home from work is only about fifteen minutes if taken at a standard pace, so she tends to be a bit concerned if my walk is going on some forty minutes or so and she’s ready to put the beans on the stove.  The problem is that I am wont to amble: “to go at a slow, easy pace; stroll; saunter.”  And spring brings on radical ambling on my part–especially if I have my camera and/or binoculars with me.

It’s my old orchard that’s the issue (“My orchard” because I never see anyone else in it).  It lies between work and home and it will suck me in—a curiosity quagmire in all seasons except the dead of winter.  Like yesterday. The whole orchard was in glorious bloom, and I had to go in and shoot some pics of the many different varieties.   Then looking for nests in a few of the red cedars that have volunteered to fill the open spaces, I also found some galls—little balls of vegetation that look like miniature maces—that horrible weapon of the Dark Ages: a heavy, spiked iron ball on a chain.  They’re called “cedar apples,” and they’re created by a fungus that has to live part of its life both on the cedar and on apples or crabapples—both of which are certainly abundant there.  Of course a botanist like my friend Lytton Musselman would remind me that the blob is not an apple and the cedar is not really a cedar.  It’s a juniper.  But the scientific term for this oddity leaves me totally uninformed: Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae.

My search for nests, however, did pay off.  I found a robin’s nest that was still bearing eggs.  Others had already been robbed by crows.

And did you know that poplars have beautiful catkins—much more attractive than the pussy willow ones.  Port wine in color, the male ones hang down like miniature grape clusters. In another month, these will bloom with tufts of white “cotton” that will drop from the trees like puffs and blow into tiny drifts.  The cottonwood, of course, is the most prolific “snow” maker of this sort.

On my way home this week I do have to go out to our RBC water runoff catch pond to check on a pair of geese nesting there.   As I expected, the parents were a bit testy at my approach; so I moved in and out quickly.  My guess is that the goslings will be hatching in a day or two.

So with all that important stuff going on outdoors, it does take a bit longer for me to get home.  It’s a good thing that Marge has learned not to turn on the stove until she sees the whites of my eyes.

See you outdoors,

Dean

Protective mama