Spring News

One of the joys of spring is that things change and develop every day. New things bloom, leaves unfurl on the trees, and if you go outside for a walk every day, each one is different. I have been looking forward to walking in our woods in the springtime since we bought the land last summer. I love walking around my backyard in the spring, and I figured that it would be thrilling (in my estimation of what is thrilling) to extend those wondrous walks into a larger landscape. Spring can be slow in coming, but today in my woods I saw a flower new to me. I get as excited about new flowers as I do about new bugs, but new flowers in my yard are even rarer than new bugs (I think there are probably more species of bugs than flowers, and they are more mobile). I haven't looked it up yet.

Here it is:

 It was growing right on the edge of a stream. Edit: Marsh marigold, which I know thanks to my friend Karen.

 Also blooming beside the stream: skunk cabbage.

 Crane fly on skunk cabbage leaf false hellebore leaf.

Backyard Bug of the Day:

 Wasp on forsythia flower, covered in pollen

 Midge

 There weren't many candy striped leaf hoppers on their favorite tree, even though it was quite a warm day (though only intermittently sunny).

 I think it is because they have dispersed from their winter hangout, as I am now seeing them in other places in the backyard.

 Twice stabbed lady beetle

The water in the small pond in the woods has receded a bit since yesterday, so I was able to get closer to the egg masses in the water. I hope it won't recede so much as to doom the eggs. It is supposed to rain a couple of days this week.

 This mass is almost opaque, but you can see the eggs inside.

 

 These are transparent, so you can see the eggs better. I am not sure how well you can tell in this picture–the glare on the surface makes it hard, but you can see that there are individual globules surrounded the darker shapes (the embryos, I assume) in the mass.

Arachnid Appreciation:
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The leaf litter was full of these spiders today.