A FEW PARTING THOUGHTS ABOUT WINTER BEFORE SPRING BEGINS (with time -lapse video)

A special edition! A 3 month long Time Lapse video of Morris Park in just one minute! Imagine that, the bulk of winter in just one minute! First we write and reflect, then we watch:

Before Spring Begins

 

Before Spring begins remember that every Spring is different from the last so it makes it difficult to plan for a perfect spring day. That is why it is important to take a Spring Vacation, hopefully one of those days will be that one day we were waiting for, when the weather is balmy and wildflowers are blooming, and we are there to enjoy it. In every region, this Springtime happens at different times of the year, here in Morris Park, Philadelphia, it happens from late March into early May. In the Southeastern Pennsylvania region, April is the special Spring month, mark your calendars!

 

However, before Spring begins, we must experience our winter. We have been seeing a lot of different types of snow, from dry and fluffy to wet and heavy. Some windy storms, drifting and dramatic, to just a heavy fall, creating a quiet cold and white world. And then the ice storms and the old snows crystallizing, becoming  architectural and difficult to transect. Winter becomes increasingly wearisome and monotonous, the cold, the darkness, the ice, the dirty snow piles and the daily slush.

 

Before winter ends, we must do our best to embrace the beauty of even the most challenging conditions, starting with the skies and the winter light-that low sun-how generous it really is to the barren landscape. The old city, with dirty piles of snow and aged buildings is most often basking in a winter’s glow, a light that is kind upon the decrepit brick piles and worn architectural profiles.

Upon the Forest remnants of the city, along with the open parklands, the winter’s sun explores the landscape for us, allowing ours eyes to stretch the distances and see the land before us, the hills and valleys, the details of the topography, the erosion of the landscape along with its deposition, the floodplains and streambeds, the broad rivers, and the vast expanses of flat lands of the coastal plain. The barren lands exposed before us in the winter’s glow undulate with old eroded hills and grand valleys that span thousands of winter’s time. We can look at the land in the winter, and see the hills.

With the ground exposed, there are rocks. And when the snow cover becomes more permanent, the hillsides, clothed in white, reflect an atmosphere that is quintessentially winter, white hillsides, sometimes glistening in the low winter sun, and sometimes barriers to the sunlight, becoming heavy monuments to winter’s dominance in the landscape and the time.

Before winter ends we gain so much aesthetic fulfillment from our appreciation of the trees. Each specimen like an x-ray of itself, the trees lay bare for so many months, like skeletons, except that these are common enough skeletal forms, a good part of the year they are exposed in silhouette, creating an elegant backdrop to the winter season. This is indeed the time to study and enjoy the shape of the trees, to see the inherent patterns of the growth forms, because each species is so distinctive, after awhile, we can distinguish the types of trees from their winter silhouettes, and this is a fun habit and exercise!

 

These silhouetted landscapes  of the winter and the beauty they convey to us, after our own needs are met, provide a sublime beauty, one that we want to embrace and share, to paint and ink, to photograph and relate poetically, the winter forest is that accessible and enchanting, the raw forms of life and shapes, and the stark contrasts of colors, the winter-scape is a silhouette we can grasp and appreciate.

Learning a language is enlightening enough, try learning the language of the trees in our forests; there is that one day when we start to see the exquisite results of our efforts at learning, and we can distinguish them, and the forest is new to us again!

The trees have a universal language of shape and habit, and once we recognize them we can see them everywhere, on the city streets, on lawns, cemeteries, parks and in the forests alongside the road, the trees become ours as we distinguish them and begin to understand them, their habits, habitats, forms and limitations. To see them in winter is so dramatic, because we can really comprehend their growth form and structure, we can appreciate the structure before Spring begins. Seeing a bare forest in the winter is mesmerizing because of its intricacy and raw beauty, with the trees lined up, side-by-side and intermingled, jumbled, the endless branches, twigs, trunks, all of them silhouetted in the winter’s sun, there within we see the beauty of the trees, the winter forest, the winter sun’s light, our eyes can stretch into the landscape, beyond our imaginations, just what we need in the cold relentless winter.

 

Into the landscape and beyond, through that stand of trees caught beautifully in the sunlight, beyond into the sky, past the farm fields and subdivisions, highways and strip-malls, and best of all, the preserved lands and the forgotten ones, we must continue to stretch our vision into and through these forests of continually growing trees. If we keep looking, we will see Spring burst forth eventually from these isolated stands of silhouetted trees, area by area and spot by spot, and below them, we will see the flowers bloom. The sky changes, and the world moves into a different light.

 

And goodbye winter!

Moving right along, it is indeed movie time, all of winter in one minute! So the Ipod touch was set up on a tripod in the Living room window facing the forest-land of Morris Park. This device was in dedicated service with this project and could not be used for anything else. the O-Snap app was used which is very good for time-lapse photography. The app was adjusted to have the camera take a picture every two hours. the night shots were deleted manually, ending with 385 pictures. Take note of the numerous snowfalls exhibited and also notice how the setting sun moves from the left to the right as the axis of the earth changes in relation to it and it sets further and further north on a daily basis.

Also the tripod was bumped a few times very slightly altering the video by Nuage the cat who took great interest in the birds visiting the bird-feeder just outside the window.

Nuage the cat took great interest in the birds just outside the window. A pair of Mourning Doves loved  to rest on the window sill. Here she is next to the tripod staring at the birds.
Nuage the cat took great interest in the birds just outside the window. A pair of Mourning Doves loved to rest on the window sill. Here she is next to the tripod staring at the birds.

By having the birdfeeder and the Ipod on the tripod , not to mention the beautiful forest just outside the window kept us very entertained throughout the long dreary winter days. Enjoy the Video and Happy Spring!

CLICK ON THE LINK BELOW TO EXPERIENCE WINTER IN ONE MINUTE!

http://youtu.be/GByrzVNVDXs

 

POLLINATING BUMBLEBEE VISITS BLOOMING BLOODROOT IN MORRIS PARK, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

APRIL 9TH, 2014, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-  Breaking: This just in, fresh as the white flowers blooming before your eyes is the news: A bumblebee was spotted pollinating the Bloodroot in Morris Park !

IMG_5199

 Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com

Where is this Bee? Wait and you will see! Until then enjoy the blooming flowers and see if you spot any other pollinating insects.

IMG_5201 IMG_5202

 Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com

Removing those exotic Ailanthus trees and Norway Maples as well as Japanese Honeysuckle and Garlic mustard has likely made a difference in this patch. It is so huge and picturesque now, and there are so many native pollinating insects buzzing around it. 6 years ago it was just a few plants under a mass of vines. In other areas nearby that we have not removed the invasives, there are no early spring blooming wildflowers, no bees, no pollinators. Now there are many more patches of Bloodroot than  there were back in 2007, when we started mapping the populations and individual specimens.

 Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com
  Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com

IMG_5214 IMG_5216 IMG_5220 IMG_5221 IMG_5234 IMG_5241 IMG_5251And the star of the show has arrived! This bumblebee visited many flowers and was a joy to see.

 Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 9, 2014, www.thesanguineroot.com

IMG_5272 IMG_5277 IMG_5287Springtime is here!

 

 

BLOOMING BLOODROOT AND SPICEBUSH, MORRIS PARK, PHILADELPHIA, APRIL 8TH, 2014

Bloodroot is blooming in Morris Park. Over the next few weeks look for the fresh white flowers on warm, sunny afternoons on some of the well-drained south and west facing hillsides, especially near the park entrance at Morris Park Road, a bit up the trails. If you show up at our door and we are home we will gladly show you the blooming patches!

Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com

If you see us walking slowly along the paths, staring at the ground, we have not lost our marbles, we are actually looking to see the Bloodroot flowers, which can sometimes escape the eyes of the unaware.

Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com

This is a patch that used to be covered in Japanese honeysuckle and would only bloom a few flowers. Now that the invasive vine has been removed, this population has increased ten-fold in size.

Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in Morris Park, Philadelphia, April, 8th, 2014.www.thesanguineroot.com

It is very satisfying to see the direct results of the success of this beautiful native spring wildflower from the action we took to remove the invasive exotic vines, in just a few years time! Now there is much more pollen for the species-specific dependent pollinating insects on this early Spring day.

 Bloodroot blooms in area once dominated by Multiflora rose and Japanese Honeysuckle. www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in area once dominated by Multiflora rose and Japanese Honeysuckle. www.thesanguineroot.com

The picture above is special and momentous. This specific flower is also attributed to our efforts. It is growing in a spot that was once nothing but invasive vegetation: The Pennsylvania state listed noxious weed Multiflora-Rose, covered in a thick matte of Japanese Honeysuckle, with a thick shrub layer of the invasive Burning Bush and a tree canopy of Tree-of Heaven, another invasive introduced from China as well as the Norway Maple.  All of these species were removed from the site. A few seeds from a nearby population (300 feet away) of Bloodroot were collected and tossed on the site 5 years ago during the invasive to native transition. It has established itself and now this flowering plant is an herbaceous layer testament to the success of this re-forestation project!

Spicebush Blooms in Morris park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 8th, 2014. www.thesanguineroot.com
Spicebush Blooms in Morris park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 8th, 2014. www.thesanguineroot.com

This is the site where there is Bloodroot blooming today, which was once dominated by exotic vegetation introduced mostly in the past 150 years.  Now there is an early successional growth of Tulip Poplar and Sassafras, as well as saplings of Oak and Dogwood growing on this site. Mayapple is also beginning to establish itself. Invasives such as Tree-of Heaven , Garlic Mustard, Japanese Angelica Tree, and Japanese Honeysuckle are increasingly less frequent where they were previously quite prevalent. We remove the invasives on a regular basis and allow the native plants to grow.

This site has become less and less maintenance as the years go by.

We have a wait -and -see approach as to how this re-forestation effort will turn out.

Seeing the Bloodroot bloom this year for the first time since tossing those seeds in is a landmark moment for the restoration of this site.

On a philosophical note, our own intervention upon this ecosystem is not lost on us; on one side we just want to see and appreciate this natural beauty as it is in the world, as if we were initially unattached and we were uniting with this beauty and finding within it something that can inform and guide us-(perhaps a myth in our search for finding  philosophical and spiritual direction in nature)-but there is something to this, being that we encounter areas of the world we have never encountered and may never again, ones that may inform us in our worldviews; but here in Morris Park specifically, is a situation where we have willfully intervened in the natural world before us, one just outside the house in the City Park, in what we initially perceived as an overgrown area, one that seemed out of place and disturbed.

From our outreach and researches and discussions and conversations as well as our observations, we made the decision to remove the species of plants aforementioned, with the anticipation that there was a whole new set of species ready to grow there if the conditions were right, and we decided to make that decision and take that risk and we started with a very small area as a test and today, this balmy, sunny Spring day, the Bloodroot blooming on the site, we are seeing more of the results of these decisions.

At once we are disconnected from the feeling of interacting with a ‘raw’ nature that can inform us impartially on a philosophical level and we are now wholly responsible and ‘involved’ with nature on this specific site, so it is no longer wild to us in that regard. Wild without quotes because wild has become something of a societal obsession as we try to find our place in the world among species. We have made the plunge to become completely un-wild by altering a place in the world we have no history with and yet somewhat ‘wild’ by interacting with this place so thoughtfully, with such a sense of speciation and human and plant history in mind.

As humanity grapples with wilderness, at once romanticizing it and destroying it, we choose the fun and enlightening path, which is to romanticize, of course, and that is where the answers can begin to be addressed, and we turn to science for that, again, of course, because all practical and philosophical matters look to science to keep on track. And Science, with its tested and tested again and again and scrutinized again and again is what ultimately informs our philosophy, the testing is like a conscious form of evolution, it guides and informs us, it is wild in that way.

It has been a wild, natural ride, taking the plunge and removing plants from the park, our yards and watching new ones grow, collecting and tossing seeds from time to time, proceeding slowly and cautiously all the while.

The trade off to this work, this decision, is that what we see in this specific area of Morris Park is not a truly ‘wild’ place, one which we have had no prior connection with and one we can appreciate as an outsider viewing the area as a natural place regardless of its history, influenced by humans to varying degrees. Instead what we see is a place that we have intervened with, one of which is no longer wild in this sense. It is an adventure, having made the plunge, these waters we have jumped into where we are so involved with the natural world, we as a species have altered it so much and now we as individuals and communities are compelled to interact with it on much more intensive levels than we feel comfortable with, we debate about wild vs not wild, who are we and what do we do?

 

For now, lets just enjoy the beautiful flowers and enjoy the warm sun on this balmy early Spring afternoon.

 

Bloodroot blooms in area once dominated by Multiflora rose and Japanese Honeysuckle. www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in area once dominated by Multiflora rose and Japanese Honeysuckle. www.thesanguineroot.com

We love to stroll up the path and enjoy the flowers!

Bloodroot blooms in area once dominated by Multiflora rose and Japanese Honeysuckle. www.thesanguineroot.com
Bloodroot blooms in area once dominated by Multiflora rose and Japanese Honeysuckle. www.thesanguineroot.com

While the Bloodroot is a very glamorous early Spring native bloomer, we must also notice the blooming Spicebush!

Spicebush Blooms in Morris park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 8th, 2014. www.thesanguineroot.com
Spicebush Blooms in Morris park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 8th, 2014. www.thesanguineroot.com

Not to be missed!

Spicebush Blooms in Morris park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 8th, 2014. www.thesanguineroot.com
Spicebush Blooms in Morris park, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. April 8th, 2014. www.thesanguineroot.com