After the slow, hot days of summer, September with its often cooler, drier days is a welcome relief. Most of the fair-weather songbirds are still here, but some are already on the move by the beginning of the month. I looked out on a wet day in early September and caught a flush of birds […]
Category: Wildflowers and other herbaceous plants
Food for Wildlife
After three lean years, our oak trees finally produced a bumper crop of acorns last September. Forewarned by hordes of blue jays screaming from the treetops as they plucked ripe acorns from the oaks, I had to be careful on our steep trails not to slide on the fallen nuts that were more hazardous than […]
Pancake Flats
On a cool, breezy day in late July, my husband Bruce and I decided to hike on Green Springs Trail in Pennsylvania State Game Lands #108.
The Amazing Mayapple
After twelve years, the first mayapples bloomed inside our three-acre deer exclosure. Almost as soon as we put the fence up in March 2001, mayapple leaves popped up in the lower, wet, wooded section of the exclosure. But they were single leaves, not the double leaves with a notch in the middle from which a […]