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| Beverly National Cemetery in Burlington County, New Jersey. |
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| Linden trees are blossoming in my neighborhood. The air smells wonderful with them: bright, floral, sweet, piercing, lemony, honeyed, and delicious. Click to enlarge. I write a little something every year to note the event. Type linden into the search box on this page to read all about them and how much I love this smell. |
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| Under a branch of the linden in front of my house -- dangling buds almost ready to open. |
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| Here's the same spot three months ago. And a haiku by Kobayashi Issa that comes to mind while savoring the aroma of linden flowers in spring: |
still I see them
how they were ...
bare winter trees
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Pink lady's slipper orchids are blooming in south Jersey right now. I saw this one in open woods in the pine barrens last Tuesday. Click to enlarge.
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| To celebrate their return, a poem by Wendell Berry, from Given Poems, Sabbaths II: | |
"I dream of a quiet man
who explains nothing and defends
nothing, but only knows
where the rarest wildflowers
are blooming, and who goes,
and finds that he is smiling
not of his own will."
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| Swamp azaleas are blooming in damp places in South Jersey right now. I saw these while talking a walk in the spring woods at Rancocas Nature Center in Westhampton, NJ, today. Click to enlarge. |
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| Mayapples are blooming, too! The first part you see of a mayapple is the big umbrella leaf. The plant is also called American mandrake or wild mandrake. |
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| You have to poke around under the big leaves to find the downward-facing flowers. Mayapple plants are famously poisonous. |
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| Then there were long lovely branches of blooming barberry bells. |
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| And sweetgum tree saplings just leafing out. |
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| A lot of the little sweetgums had this kind of corky bark. Check out the protrusions and spikes. I've been told that this deters deer from eating the branches. |
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| It was cool, quiet, and breezy in the woods. |
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| Found a fallen branch with woodpecker holes. |
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| Crossed a stream. |
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| Made it down to the Rancocas Creek. |
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| And found our way back home. |
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| This is an annual cicada. They are also called dog day cicadas because they appear during the hot humid "dog days" of late summer. We see some of these big green guys every year. Click to enlarge. |
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| This is a periodical cicada. Black body, red eyes, orange trim. This kind is famous for emerging in large groups at intervals of 13 and 17 years. Lucky for us, different groups are on different schedules so we don't have to wait that long to see them. Brood II (two) emerged in 2013: you can read my eyewitness account by clicking here. This spring we're expecting Brood X (ten) -- also called The Great Eastern Brood -- to emerge over an area that spans from Georgia to New York and into the Midwest. Click here to link to a 2021 cicada map published by Newsweek. |
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| The cicadas of Brood X have been underground in wingless nymph form for the past 17 years, feeding on tree root sap. But this year, when the soil temperature is just right, probably in May, they'll begin to burrow upward. They'll dig out of the ground, climb a tree or whatever seems good, attach to it, shed their skins and emerge as winged adults. That's an empty skin pictured above. Then they'll call, fly around, find mates, and lay eggs. They've got just a couple of weeks to make a racket and reproduce after which they die. Another few weeks and their eggs will hatch in the tree branches and this year's tiny nymphs fall to the ground and hunker down to suck sap for the next 17. |
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| We see Brood X again in 2038. |
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| Yesterday was National Haiku Poetry Day. In celebration I give you the view from the bridge at Batsto Lake in Hammonton, New Jersey, and the haiku below from poet Kobayashi Issa. |
"stillness --
in the depths of the lake
billowing clouds"
