AUTUMN SLIPS IN

Autumn slips into our lives during warm, butterscotch days

and creates ripples of rainbow waters.

Blue skies tease into eternity

And foggy mornings kiss the earth.

 Then leafy flowers rest on pastel colored trees

 

while mountains sculpt their image

 across the sky.

           The leaves begin to drop one by one 

from tree to ground

till trees stand dark and shiver in the cold

and winter bears down with claws of ice.

EARTH DAY 2014

This view from Bickle Knob in Randolph County, WV, is a reminder of the fragile yet magnificent beauty that we enjoy. Although it has changed much over the years due to logging and commercialization, we must protect what remains and keep it the unique place that it is. Greed for oil, gas,wind power and other more subtle forms of destruction must not prevail.

A Glorious Morning

What a beautiful morning. 

About 7:00, the clouds diffused the early

 morning  sun giving everything a pink hue.

Even this weathered pole had a soft, warm glow. 

Jewelweed, browneyed Susans, phlox, asters and goldenrod.

Disorganized and weedy, a chaos of color, yet delightfully
 pretty in the early morning's light. The butterflies
 gracefully drifted about this buffet of  flowers, while
 hummingbirds performed aerial combat overhead
 for the rights to the nectar plants.

This feels just like the mood set in  a 

famous poem by Robert Browning:

Morning's at seven;

The hillside's dew-pearled;

The lark's on the wing;

The snail's on the thorn;

God's in his heaven--

All's right with the world!

And the Sun Spilled Onto the Mountains

The sun spilled onto the mountains,

 and they reflected back to the heavens.

Just Flying By

A Magnolia Warbler in the birch tree.

In May, while I was fixing dinner, I saw a pretty, little, yellow and black bird looking back at me through the kitchen window. I grabbed my camera and took a few pictures.

I had no idea about the species of this bird because I am a neophyte in birding. This visitor wasn't hard to identify with the yellow stomach and distinctive head coloration and eye band.

I learned that my new friend was a Magnolia Warbler, a wayfarer on the way to Canada and the summer breeding grounds. Although it was new to me, the bird is considered one of the most common of the warblers.

The Magnolia Warbler was given this name because the first specimen was collected among the magnolia trees in Mississippi around 1800. An insect eater, the female will lay three to five green or white eggs with brown markings.


I finally decided that this was possibly a female beyond her second calendar year. I used an interesting website for identification that was created by the McGill Bird Observatory, a project of the Migration Research Foundation in Montreal, Canada.

http://www.migrationresearch.org/mbo/id/mawa.html#asymb

ON THE EVE OF SUMMER

The Lady Slipper: Spring's Beautiful Maidens

The spring orchids, especially the lady slippers, (Cypripedium acaule) are among the biggest treats in store for the person who ventures into the woods on a May or June day. They have long been the subject of folklore.










A native American chief was going off to war, and to comfort his young daughter, he promised to bring pink moccasins to her when he returned. He was killed, and she then died of grief. The mother fell asleep on the girl's grave, and when she awoke, she saw the pink moccasin flower. Thus she knew that the father and his loving daughter had been reunited.

The scientific name for these delicate and beautiful flowers has an equally interesting origin. "Cypripedium" is the Greek name for the slipper of Venus, the goddess of love. Other common names for it are not so flattering. They include camel's foot, squirrel's foot, steeple cap, whippoorwill shoes, two-lips, and the worst of all, old goose.

The pink one is not found west of the Mississippi River.



The lady slipper will only survive for a year or two if transplanted because it depends on a symbiotic relationship with a the Rizoctonia fungus where it is growing. The rhizomes for it can be as much as three feet long. Also, the flower should never be picked because it will interfere with the plant's life cycle and it's chances for reproducing. It is illegal to pick or dig these plants in several states.

While the average life span of the plant is twenty years, it may take at least five years to go from seed to flowering stage.

Although the lady slipper does not produce nectar, its pollinators are attracted by its color and fragrance. There is speculation that it produces a pheromone scent that attracts the males to mate. Bees enter from the front of the pouch but can't get back out that way so they must exit through a narrow passage. It is here that they get pollen on their back hairs.

The seeds are as tiny as a grain of powder.

The lady slipper was so popular during Victorian times and dug so frequently, that it was thought to be extinct.

The roots have been used for a number of medicinal purposes including pain relief. Native Americans used it to treat toothaches.

There are lots of hairs on this plant to keep it from being eaten. They contain a fatty acid that can cause a rash similar to poison ivy, another good reason not to pick it. This same fatty acid is also poisonous to people and animals.

And this reminds us of a quote by President Theodore Roosevelt.

"Wildflowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow"