Some of you wonder what I do during the winter. I do spend some time outside, but typically snow/ice cover and frozen ground makes it close to impossible to do work. Not this winter! This week has been crazy hot...and I do mean crazy. I've been trying to make the most of this weather by spending as much time outside as possible.Even though it's nice and warm outside, there's still the winter challenge of vegetation identification. There's no leaves on the trees and shrubs. The herbs and grasses sometimes require some sort of CSI technology to identify them. Then there's the secret skunk cabbage. Skunk cabbage is a very wet plant so it's important to find it. Here's what it looks like in late winter...if you are lucky you can spot one.
Here's what it looks like in the summer. Big difference!
During my monday outing, I was getting frustated because of the secret skunk cabbage, being super overdressed for the warmth, and having to check the soils like a maniac before being able to hang one wetland boundary flag. So I needed some comic relief and here I am on top of a tree that I thought was like nature's chaise lounge. It was a tree that had a second life. It had fallen over, but it still was able to bend towards the sun and survive into a mature tree. Not soon after my comic relief I lost my sweater in the wetlands. Of course the sweater was a nice forest green and blended in well with the mossy ground. I eventually found it all sprawled out on the ground not that far from the chaise lounge.
2 comments:
one time i lost my awesome polaroid cool-ray 60s sunglasses in the woods in VT. and magically i found them again! but then they eventually broke irreparably. one day i shall have a pair again.
I too have lost several pairs of sunglasses in the woods. My favorite red shades were lost during snake trapping work. I had searched the woods and couldn't find them, but when we came back in the fall I found them. No matter I soon after completely crushed them when I accidentally stepped on them.
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