Two Thoroughworts & Gerardia

I headed out with Daisy and Dukie mid-morning, prepared to stay out for my usual long morning in the field.  The sky was hung heavy with dark clouds and a cool, damp breeze blew from the west, which felt wonderful.  As we passed through the woods I noticed mushrooms. White ones, brown ones, yellow ones, orange ones, gilled and boletes... lots of mushrooms!  They were everywhere, reminding me that I must post my last journal entry from late August that is all about mushrooms, which I'll do soon.  Today though, I wanted to get out to the fresh breezes of the pipeline and let the dogs get some exercise, so we continued on.

We passed a patch of purple top tridens (grass) and I grabbed a seed head to pull the seeds off, which I often do, tossing the seeds here and there as I walk.  This time though, the seeds weren't ready to fall off, but I did get a handful of the tiniest little insects - smaller than my pinkie fingernail.  I first thought,  baby grasshoppers, but their skinny black legs were the same width (less than a hair's diameter) all the way from body to foot - none of the muscles you find on a grasshopper.  I leaned in to other grass plumes and saw that they were everywhere - 10 - 20 on each.  Further down the hill I checked again and found a few more, although not as many as on top of the hill.  It was fairly quiet as I walked, except for the soft trill of field crickets.  A red bellied woodpecker chirred in the woods, and a lone crow flapped over my head with a single, unenthusiastic caw! 

I settled to draw next to a round-leaved thoroughwort.  It's such a tidy, well behaved plant, I can imagine transplanting one into my garden.  It's cousin, hyssop-leaved thoroughwort, is a different matter.  It grows everywhere across all three pipelines, so I imagine it does a better job getting its seeds out and about - not a good candidate for a garden, but a nice home for tiny crab spiders!  I picked one branch to draw (both plants are much fuller than these on the page) and ended up bring two size X-small spiders back to my seat. After studying them I set the spiders in the grass away from me.   

I drew for an hour or so, until I felt some tiny spits of rain.  I packed quickly, and then realized it had stopped spitting rain for the moment, so even though we still headed home, we went the long way.  I wanted to look for a third thoroughwort I know grows down by the creek, named boneset.  I couldn't find it, but that's ok... the dogs and I all needed the extra exercise.   

I returned home with soggy shoes and pants wet to the knee.  The dogs slurped the ice water I put down for them (yes, I admit, they are spoiled) and then collapsed on the cool floor for naps.

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A few photos from the past few weeks around Middlewood: a tiny mushroom,

a dead butterfly's wing,

a handsome Assassin Bug,

a beautiful mushroom with a beautiful name: Lactarius indigo,

a macro photo of a spider web in the sun,

a Fiery Skipper on thistle,

a Pearly Crescentspot.

NEW PHOTOS:  the tiny insects on the grass seed heads... anybody know what they are? 

 Click on images to enlarge.

 Look who I found snacking on a mushroom... yum! yum!

Fossil Plastron, Turtle Shell, Armadillo Scute, Feather, and Sea Glass

Here is another journal entry from the beach trip.  This one was drawn on the beach on a hot, but very windy afternoon.  The wind was too strong for an umbrella, so my friend Pat and I sat in the glaring sun to draw in our journals.  I pulled the fossils out of the ziploc bag at my side, some of the morning's finds.  The other bits were picked up from the beach where I sat.  It was a wonderful time!  To be beside the ocean, drawing with a friend was a great way to spend my last daylight hours.

After a while we all headed indoors to get going on dinner, which was a well-known South Carolina specialty: Low Country Boil, made with local shrimp, fresh corn and new potatoes, and sausage, all boiled together with seafood boil seasonings.  Did I mention that pouring a beer in the pot makes it taste better?  Or, that serving it means dumping the drained pot of goodies on a paper bag in the middle of the table?  Oh my.  So good.  Such a wonderful week.

Edisto: shells, fossils, pottery, sea glass, and sinker

Last week while at the beach with a bunch of girls, I was asked to do an impromptu workshop on nature journaling.  We had so much fun!  Here we are, staying out of the midday sun, working on slowing wayyyy down, paying attention to details, listening to the many sounds around us, and drawing what we'd found on the beach earlier in the morning.  Such a peaceful day.

Queen Ann's Lace & Daisy Fleabane

Today was so beautiful!  A front came through and dried up the humidity of the weekend and blew a steady breeze through the trees all day. The sky was deep, clear blue. Around midday I headed through the woods to the top of the hill, where Old Thompson Road meets the pipeline.  This spot almost always has more than just a regular breeze, probably because the open field that stretches from east to west is like a highway for the wind. Sure enough, a cool, stead wind blew across this pine-shaded spot.  I spread a beach towel out and settled down to draw. Daisy and Duke stretched out for a nap nearby.  It was heavenly. It's hard to believe the end of the week highs are supposed to be near 105 degrees.  I hope they are wrong.

In another corner of Middlewood, we've had hungry visitors return to my flower garden after a 20 year absence.  When we first moved out here we lost some day lilies for two summers, then it stopped.  Perhaps our other dogs did a better job of keeping wildlife away than our present combination of Daisy and Duke. From the look of my garden, I'd say it's a whole family of white-tailed deer nibbling in the night.

The only deer I've seen in person, during the day, is tiny and delicate.  I call her Bambi, and I no longer care about the flowers.  There are enough blooms left for us to enjoy, and the tiny fawn can have her greens.   I hope to get a photo of her soon.  Stay tuned...

The phlox Bambi forgot to eat.

 The hydrangea Bambi couldn't reach.

Waynesville, NC - Strawberry-Raspberry!!!

CHECK UPDATE AT THE END!

This flower cannot be found in any of my field guides.  It grows along a shady path behind our cabin outside of Waynesville, in the Southern Appalachians, opening in June.  It's neighbors are Christmas and Lady Ferns, Hemlock Trees, Jewelweed, Mountain Asters,  Yellow Buckeye Trees, various Maples and Ashes, Virginia Creepers, and a healthy population of Poison Ivy plants. It looks like it would be in the Rose family, but the seed looks not at all like a Rose Hip, and more like a big, red, but very dry raspberry.  The leaves are very angular and stiff, and have thorns along their main stems.  When I tried to pick this branch I got quite tangled in its thorny hold.

Anyone with information on this flower should contact me immediately!  (This is not the first time I've tried to figure out what it is.)

The nice part of the outing was being with my friends and neighbors, Rose and Rachel, who walked down the hill mid morning with their sketch books.   We wandered down the path that runs behind their old farmhouse to find something to draw.  Even though the bugs were out - mosquitoes being the main irritant - we persevered and got a good bit of drawing done.

We were at our cabin in the mountains for a week, with cool and wet weather for the first half, listening to the rain on our tin roof - and cool and dry weather for the latter half of the week.

Here are some photos from our week in the mountains.   As you can imagine, it was hard to come home.

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!!! UPDATE !!!!  

I went to a botanist's house for dinner tonight and took my journal with me.  With the help of her 6" thick, Manual of the Vascular Flora of the Carolinas, we figured out what the flower is:  Rubus illecebrosus, common name: Strawberry-Raspberry, member of the Blackberry family.  A rare plant, it is a native of Japan.  My friend said it would have been an early garden plant that escaped.  The fruit was stewed or made into preserves.

The plant was first recorded by Wilhelm Olbers Focke (1834 - 1922), a medical doctor and botanist who did much work throughout his life on the taxonomy of Rubus (Rosaceae) and published several studies.

One of several websites where Rubrus illecebrosus can be found:
 PLANTS for a FUTURE.

:-)  I am happy now!  Thanks Gil!

Bunny in our yard

 Rhododendron blooming beside the cabin

 my favorite morning activity: breakfast with the birds

East Fork of the Pigeon River

 Wonderful big rock

 a storm rolling in over the mountain

 storm clouds hover over the mountains

 Fog rolling over Devil's Courthouse - we drove in thick fog for quite a while

 Skinny Dip Falls in Pisgah Nat'l Forest

 Looking Glass Rock as seen from the Blue Ridge Parkway

Nature Journaling Classes today!

I was invited to be the guest author at the Spartanburg Junior Writers' Program this summer.  It's an annual summer event located at USC Upstate.  There were two classes, and in the first gathering it was great to see more adult teachers (from another writing program taking place) than kids.  After a 30 minute talk about the hows and whys of journaling, we all went outside to the Arboretum.  The weather was the best imaginable for June in South Carolina - 70/75 degrees, breezy, sunny, with no humidity.  Wow!  Those of you who live down here know what I mean.  There were huge tadpoles in the creek, many little wildflowers, interesting trees casting deep shade, and numerous birds singing around and about: the mockingbirds and blue jays were the loudest.

My visit left me with a big question.... what kind of tree has leaves like the one above?  They were lovely, but I know they're not native, and although we were sitting in the arboretum, there was no name plaque for the large tree.  If any of you tree experts out there know what it is, please let me know. 

On the way back to the classroom, the kids I walked with complained that the day wasn't long enough.  ;-)  Ha! That was good to hear.  

What a fun day!

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Here are a few photos I snapped while everyone concentrated on their journals:

The Program Director sent me these photos - here I am watching the geese fly over!

Yellow Mushroom Under Pine

A delightful morning to be hiking with the dogs to Lawson's Fork... except that half way there I remembered hearing two four-wheelers yesterday afternoon, and my husband saying, "They never came back -  I bet they are going to camp out down by the river."  Hmm...  In case that guess was correct, for their privacy and mine I decided not to hike that far.

It was a beautiful day no matter where we went.  The stiff, dry breeze along the pipeline felt cool and kept the morning bugs away while I picked out birdsong: yellow-billed cuckoo, indigo bunting, wood thrush, brown thrasher, and in the distance the repeated screams of a red-tailed hawk. I rambled around inspecting blooms: Queen Ann's lace, butterfly weed, meadow beauty, white yarrow, and scattered here and there, the remaining lance-leaf coreopsis. All of these grow in full sunshine.  I wanted to draw something in the shade

At the top of the hill I noticed a splash of school-bus-yellow in the fallen needles of the piney woods.  It was a mushroom with a white stem rising from the earth, still wearing a cap of pine needles. The breeze was strong here, the dogs exhausted from running, so I sat to draw the mushroom.  Daisy and Duke collapsed nearby. Duke put his head down and immediately went to sleep. Daisy put her face into the wind and half-closed her eyes, guarding me like I was her sheep.

I drew slowly for over an hour, so that by the time I packed up, the mushroom had grown a bit, and its pine needle hat had shifted, separated, and begun to slide off.

Coreopsis, Deptford Pinks, & Venus' Looking Glass

The dogs had a despondent look about them this morning, as if they'd given up once again on going out on a nice long ramble.  I know how they feel!  Lately, many things have kept me away from journaling.  But this morning was cool and sunny and there were no plans for the day, so off we went.

Many birds were out today: Indigo Buntings sang from their perches along the trail, Goldfinches twittered, a pair of Downy Woodpeckers searched for goodies on a dead branch. A group of about six birds were making strange gurgling calls to each other, but before I got a good view they flew to another tree, and then off to the woods.  It is so  frustrating to be stuck on the ground in a human body and not be able to fly up to where I could identify them.  While I was looking up at them though, I spotted a Red-Shouldered Hawk soaring above me, his wing windows shining bright in the morning sun. 

I followed the dogs downhill where I looked for a place to sit in the shade, only to find the Coreopsis I wanted to draw were already in the sun. Drifts of Coreopsis are bright and showy now, and even though you don't notice right away, hiding within the drifts are many other flowers: Deptford Pinks, Venus' Looking Glass, Spotted Cat's Ear, Southern Ragwort, Pasture Rose, White Yarrow, English Plantain, and more.  Butterflies were busy sipping: Great Spangled Fritillaries, American Painted Ladies, Buckeyes, various skippers. I sat in the middle and wanted to draw it all!  However, I didn't count on the heat of the sun at 10:00 a.m., nor did I count on the number of bugs that found me.  Not biting ones, thankfully, but they still tickled and bothered me, so I only got a few flowers drawn. 

On the way home I heard a distinctive song I didn't recognize, but was able to remember it by saying, "Quick, three beers, Chick!"  Try as I might, I couldn't found the bird through my binocs, so I finally called my birding friend and described the song.  "I think we went through this last year," she said, "and it turned out to be a White-Eyed Vireo."  She was right - when I got home I found a song online that was very close. Thank you (again), Susan!  

As the tired dogs stretched out on the cool floor for a nap, I grabbed my binoculars and tiptoed outside to watch the birds in my garden around the house. My favorite sighting: a White Breasted Nuthatch fledgling being fed by the daddy Nuthatch. 

Great Spangled Fritillary on Nodding Thistle

Thistledown from spring blooming Carolina Thistle

One of the Longhorn beetles on Daisy Fleabane

Buckeye on Coreopsis

Exciting News!

...MIDDLEWOOD JOURNAL, the book!

Go HERE to see the publisher's description of the book, and hey, go ahead and pre-order if you want to!  If you like the blog, I promise you will love the book.  Much effort has gone into making sure the art is reproduced perfectly, and the daily essays will still take the reader on a walk in the woods with me.

The book will be released in November, so think how great it will be for Christmas gifts!

Thanks to each of you for visiting and revisiting Middlewood Journal blog, and for staying with me during the distraction of producing the book.  Now that the book-work is over, I look forward to having time to posting more often.      

Again, here's the link:
http://www.hubcity.org/press/catalog/nature/middlewood-journal/middlewood-journal/