Another walk in the woods April 17, 2016

For a few weeks we had cool and cold weather. It was practically a weather stasis. That ended a few days ago.  It got warm. A week ago we had a fire in the fireplace. This weekend we turned on the air conditioning for a bit to cool the upstairs.

As a result the garden is accelerating through April. But it is also dry. I have not gotten out the hose yet. There is some welcome rain forecast for Tuesday.
I will put up posts in the next week about particular plants in the garden.
For now please enjoy an encore and updated presentation of the walk in the woods.

We went for another walk in the Ryerson's Woods on Saturday (yesterday). That was just about two weeks since we had been there before. I shared some of those pictures with you last Sunday.

Gardening is all about progressions. Spring bulbs give way to bluebells and then there are the hosta and the iris and the daylilies. Wildflowers have their own progressions. If you go back to the same place over time you learn the progressions in a particular place. When we went to the Woods two weeks ago. we saw some early bloodroot and a few dutchman's breeches.

This trip, right after we started down the path, we saw the first emerging jack- in-the-pulpit. They are not entirely up yet.

The floor under the canopy was covered with dutchman's breeches and may apples.

This yellow flower is called merry bells. This plant was entirely new on this walk. It is interesting how so many of the early flowers are white. Think about it. Bloodroot, dutchman's breeches and dog tooth violets are all white.
Just about the only other colored flowers were the occasional violets, which were yellow and blue.

Moss creates wonderful microclimates. Here the dutchman's breeches grows in with the moss which itself is putting out new growth.

This is a wonderful little dog tooth violet. I cannot begin to describe how many of these plants there are. Stars in the sky. Sands on the beach. Pairs of pants on the dutchman's breeches at Ryerson's Woods.

Here are the mayapples. They were just emerging two weeks ago. In another two weeks they will get taller with wider leaves like little umbrellas and have the little flower underneath. I have a little patch of them in my garden. I dug some up last year. They make roots like spokes of a wheel. At the end of each spoke is a new plant.

More Mayapples.

Here is a nice clump of the blooming dog tooth violets.

This is a little rue anemone.

Here is the leaf from the bloodroot, which is mostly finished.

But not entirely finished. It seemed like the ones that were still blooming were bigger.

The logs give a home to mosses.

More merry bells.

The dog tooth violets have speckled leaves.

I will put up posts in the near future about
Tree peonies
Epimedium
One special bed, that is almost finished
Seedlings


Just before posting this I realized I had to give you one garden picture. This is the tree peony seedling. This is a tree peony that I grew from seed. But I had collected seeds from several plants. I do not know which one this is from.
It is only a matter of days I think before the bud opens and two things happen. First we will learn what color it is. That should determine its parentage.
Second we will learn if this 12 inch tall seedling can bear the weight of a 6-7 inch wide flower. If you are in the neighborhood this plant is by the curb on Fairview,  under the pink crabapple trees.

Enjoy the week, and if you are in the Iowa City area, go to Ryerson's woods, now.
Philip