Monday, March 26, 2012

Wildflowers to Wood

2012 03 22 With the warm-hot weather all plants have been popping out early and fast.  I picked up my sweet sister, Sugar, (she must be sweet we call her Sugar, hey why didn't they call me sugar?  Oh well) and we visited Minnie Skwarek Nature Preserve, Ottawa County, Michigan (Land Conservancy of West Michigan). 


There was still more brown than green as we started off. 
The swampy area was full of big, green, Skunk Cabbage leaves but when we got to the first bridge I saw what I came to see.  A Marsh Marigold blooming!  Just one blooming, many coming up.
Marsh Marigold

We also saw, newly out of the ground amazingly, Mayapples, "Umbrellas", no flowers of course, but a little forest of green making their way up through that cold hard packed earth. 

Mayapple

We saw just one hepatica blooming, it was pale compared to mine here at home. 
Round-lobed Hepatica

There were frogs and birds singing. 

Bridge at Minnie Skwarek
It was a warm day but nice to be out.

Also going on this week was woodcutting, splitting, and stacking, March is a good month for this because the leaves aren't out on the trees yet. 
One of my smaller piles of split wood.
We worked hard and there is much more work ahead.  It's actually fun when the weather isn't too hot to work.  And this log splitter makes it much easier.  It's my job to keep the home fires burning and to do that I need wood.
That's just some of this busy week.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another pleasant walk in the woods, thank you! I'm not sure I needed to see the wood splitter though. ;)

kayak1 said...

Another set of Great Pictures and comments...
Kind of wished I still used wood to heat, now that splitting is much easier... And the chain saws actually will start without yanking your arm off... Great bonding with my Grandfather while cutting/splitting wood...
Thanks...

New Hampshire Gardener said...

I'm really surprised by how far ahead of NH you are. I haven't even seen a skunk cabbage bud yet. You reminded me how much i miss splitting, stacking and burning wood.

Plants Amaze Me said...

quietsolopursuits, Yes Another pleasant walk in the woods, then the OBNOXIOUS chain saw and wood splitter takes the pleasant out of the woods. But we save $ and have continuous heat all winter long. Thanks for stopping by the blog. :)

Plants Amaze Me said...

kayak1, Thanks again, yes splitting with that machine is so much easier than swinging the maul!
Uncle George donated that wood to us, he had a couple trees too close to his house. We have 6 cords ready, now we have to fill up the lean-to at Charlie's garage and keep the renters away! :)

Plants Amaze Me said...

New Hampshire Gardener, You won't believe what we saw yesterday, March 27th, Large-flowered TRILLIUM in full bloom! That's 6 weeks early for us.

The wood processing is rewarding work and like $ in the bank. We have a woodstove in the living room, it is very efficient - so no smelly smoke in the house ever and very little out the chimney. Our furnace (and water heater) use propane (because we are far from the road) propane has gone from
70 cents, to $3.80 per gallon! Since we have many acres of trees, there is always an abundance of fire wood. Thanks for visiting the blog. :)