Presenting to you even more flowers enjoying the sunshine. They were being visited by lots of bees, butterflies, and dragonflies. And other pollinators we didn’t notice, no doubt. We did have a south wind, a breeze actually, which made some of the flowers almost as difficult to photograph as the ever-in-motion birds.
‘Tennessee White’ dwarf crested iris
yellow trillium
foamflower
‘white lady banks’ rose
♡
South winds jostle them — Bumblebees come — Hover — hesitate — Drink, and are gone —
Butterflies pause On their passage Cashmere — I — softly plucking, Present them here!
~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #98)
♡
‘white lady banks’ rose
Japanese jack-in-the-pulpit
fern-leaf scorpion-weed
bluets
atamasco lily aka rain lily
highbush blueberry
Unlike Emily, I didn’t pluck any of the flowers, but have presented them to you by way of photographs instead. There is always something new (to me) growing at the botanical garden, and it’s also fun seeing the familiar plants and noticing how they keep changing with the circle of the seasons.
We chanced across a patch of yet another species of trillium. This lance-leaved trillium is the 12th kind of trillium I have pictures of on this blog. There are about 50 known, worldwide.
lance-leaved trillium
wild blue phlox
Last fall when we saw the huge leaves falling down around the bigleaf magnolia I did some research and learned that people often miss seeing the flowers in the spring because they are so high up in the tree. So I’ve been looking up on every visit since spring got started. On this day I saw some buds and new leaves emerging and used the zoom lens to get a picture. (above)
spreading Jacob’s ladder
spreading Jacob’s ladder
Florida anise tree
Mountain witch-alder or large fothergilla is a 6-12 ft., sometimes taller, deciduous shrub with picturesquely crooked, multiple stems. Dense, dark blue-green, leathery foliage becomes colorful in fall. The fragrant flower, appearing as a mass of stamens, is white and occurs in thimble-like, terminal spikes after the leaves have appeared. ~ Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center website
mountain witch-alder
Venus flytraps
Maybe the sunlight was different this year but the Spanish lavender’s hues seemed a lot deeper, compared to last year’s photos. I love this vivid color!
Tuesday’s visit to the botanical garden was bright and sunny, and we enjoyed seeing the gentle, even light of the approaching equinox illuminating grasses, spring ephemerals, and shrub buds and blooms. Every year before spring arrives there are controlled burns in some of the piedmont and coastal plain gardens, and we happened to catch sight of one that day. We even spotted a squirrel along a path, so busy eating a bundle of plant stocks and leaves that he didn’t notice how close we were to him.
I can scroll and worry indoors, or I can step outside and remember how it feels to be part of something larger, something timeless, a world that reaches beyond me and includes me, too. The spring ephemerals have only the smallest window for blooming, and so they bloom when the sunlight reaches them. Once the forest becomes enveloped in green and the sunlight closes off again, they will wait for the light to come back. ~ Margaret Renkl (The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year)
dimpled trout lily
little sweet Betsy
‘lemon drop’ swamp azalea
‘Georgia blue’ speedwell
Lenten rose
By Chivalries as tiny, A Blossom, or a Book, The seeds of smiles are planted — Which blossom in the dark. ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #37)
weeping forsythia
The native wildflowers and grasses in these gardens beds evolved with periodic wildfires, which keep trees and shrubs from growing in and return nutrients to the soil. In a few weeks, new growth will be emerging from the ashes. ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden (Facebook, March 10, 2025)
a yearly controlled burn in the Coastal Plain Habitat
So many simple ‘chivalries’ exist and noticing even a few of them can bring us great pleasure and help us to ‘remember how it feels to be a part of something larger.’
As we walked along the Streamside Trail, our Merlin Bird ID app indicated that we were hearing a phoebe singing. I was delighted to finally spot the little sweetheart and get a couple of pictures before he flew away to the next tree.
eastern phoebe
first spider web spotted this year
After walking that trail we went through a back gate into the botanical garden to see what signs of spring we could find there.
3.4.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
An American hazelnut shrub (close-up above) was flowering. The dangling yellow catkins are male and the tiny magenta flowers are female, but the shrub does not self-pollinate. We’ll have to come back in the fall to see if there will be any hazelnuts on this one.
‘Arnold Promise’ witch hazel
A walk through the Mountain Habitat provided glimpses of a few spring ephemerals just getting started…
dimpled trout lily
It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold — when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade. ~ Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
tufted titmouse
We stopped by the bird blind at the Children’s Wonder Garden but the feeders were empty. However, scratching around on the ground with the squirrels, through a pile of discarded sunflower seed hulls, I spotted a couple of song sparrows!
song sparrow
They weren’t singing and they were hard to catch, but I was happy to capture with the camera my first song sparrow in North Carolina!
4.2.24 ~ ‘old blush’ rose arbor North Carolina Botanical Garden
It was spring vacation week so we had a chance to take Katherine with us on one of our walks at the botanical garden. Like her grandmother, she was enchanted by the rose arbor. And we finally saw tadpoles in the frog pond!
And of course we saw lots of flowers…
lobed tickseed
Florida flame azalea
Virginia spiderwort
bogbean
wild geranium (with tiny ant)
great white trillium
Katherine knows a lot about cinnamon ferns and she located some starting to come up in the Mountain Habitat (above). And then, in the Coastal Plain Habitat (below) she spotted some more that were taller and starting to unfurl. My granddaughter informed me that, among other things, cinnamon fern is the oldest species of fern on earth. (70 million years!)
learning about cinnamon ferns from Katherine (photo by Tim)
Of course there were some birds to enjoy and a couple even paused for a photo or two…
Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal he was feeding her but I couldn’t capture it!
northern cardinal
white-throated sparrow
What a blessing it was to share a beautiful day with our granddaughter, to share our interests with her and to have her share hers with us.
3.30.24 ~ ‘old blush’ rose North Carolina Botanical Garden
It’s always a pleasure to be greeted by the roses dangling from their arbor each time we visit the botanical garden. It never gets old! Like sunrises and sunsets, I suppose. A steady presence. But we were on a new mission this day to locate a Virginia dwarf trillium, another tiny ephemeral we heard was blooming. Along the way we saw…
Spanish lavender
hermit thrush
This (below) was the only undamaged dwarf trillium we could find, surrounded by other kinds of plants. We had torrential rains for a couple of days and I think they did a number on the tiny trilliums. But I’m grateful we got a chance to see this one. It is much smaller than all the other regular size trilliums we’ve been seeing this spring.
Virginia dwarf trillium
spreading Jacob’s ladder
white-throated sparrow
Only by living for many moons in one region, my peripheral senses tracking seasonal changes in the local plants while the scents of the soil steadily seep in through my pores — only over time can the intelligence of a place lay claim upon my person. Slowly, as the seasonal round repeats itself again and again, the lilt and melody of the local songbirds becomes an expectation within my ears, and so the mind I’ve carried within me settles into the wider mind that enfolds me. ~ David Abram (Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology)
yellow trillium
twisted trillium
pine warbler
sweet shrub aka Carolina allspice
great white trillium (?)
tufted titmouse
red chokeberry
squirrel going out on a limb to reach maple seeds what a mess he made discarding the “helicopters”
carpenter bee (thanks to Eliza for the identification)
As we were making our way back to the parking lot this giant bee (above) was hovering over the walkway, blocking our path. Well, if it was just going to stay there I might as well get a picture of it. I don’t know if these creatures are unique to this area but sometimes they hover outside our windows and crash into them repeatedly. It sounds like someone is throwing pebbles at the window.
So we’ve lived here for ten moons I think, not very many so far, but our senses are slowly getting familiar with the seasonal changes.
Another lovely midday stroll through the botanical garden, noticing many small things. This has definitely become our go-to place, visited as often as we used to visit our little city beach back in Connecticut. We find ourselves checking out some regular spots, like the little patch of sandhills pyxie-moss, which is filling in nicely.
sandhills pyxie-moss with pine cone left after a prescribed burn
bloodroot
limestone bittercress aka purple cress
If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)
golden ragwort
little sweet Betsy (a trillium)
patch of little sweet Betsy
bottlebrush buckeye
It is always safe to dream of spring. For it is sure to come; and if it be not just as we have pictured it, it will be infinitely sweeter. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery (The Story Girl)
Red-shouldered Hawk, #86
We heard a hawk calling and Tim finally spotted it. These were the best pictures I managed to get of it before it flew away. Turns out it was another life bird for me, even though I’ve seen them in captivity before I’m counting this one because it was in the wild.
Whether wheeling over a swamp forest or whistling plaintively from a riverine park, a Red-shouldered Hawk is typically a sign of tall woods and water. It’s one of our most distinctively marked common hawks, with barred reddish-peachy underparts and a strongly banded tail. In flight, translucent crescents near the wingtips help to identify the species at a distance. These forest hawks hunt prey ranging from mice to frogs and snakes. ~ All About Birds website
‘lemon drop’ swamp azalea buds (looking about the same as they did five weeks ago)
oakleaf hydrangea
tufted titmouse
After being delighted to finally get a photo of a titmouse closer to the earth and to my camera, another life bird suddenly came into the picture! What a sweet surprise and wonderful way to end this lovely spring walk.
White-breasted Nuthatch, #87
A common feeder bird with clean black, gray, and white markings, White-breasted Nuthatches are active, agile little birds with an appetite for insects and large, meaty seeds. They get their common name from their habit of jamming large nuts and acorns into tree bark, then whacking them with their sharp bill to “hatch” out the seed from the inside. White-breasted Nuthatches may be small but their voices are loud, and often their insistent nasal yammering will lead you right to them. ~ All About Birds website
On this Sunday morning my friend Susan and I set out to find dimple trout lilies at the botanical garden, only to find the gates would be closed until 1:00. No matter, we decided to saunter along the nearby nature trails for a couple of hours. And there turned out to be plenty of the tiny lilies in the woods. They are so tiny they barely poke through the leaves on the forest floor. They are native here in the Piedmont.
dimpled trout lily poking up through the fallen leaves
This post has way too many pictures but I couldn’t bring myself to cut out any more than I already did. The woods still looked like it was winter, unless one looked down and more closely at the leaf litter for tiny spring ephemerals.
Virginia spring beauty?
Meeting-of-the-Waters Creek
moss spores?
remembering to look up sometimes
a lone hemlock in the hardwood forest
eastern gray squirrel
tufted titmouse way up high
dimpled trout lily
rue-anemone
hepatica
little sweet Betsy (a trillium)
common blue violet
dandelion
The Dandelion’s pallid Tube Astonishes the Grass — And Winter instantly becomes An infinite Alas — The Tube uplifts a signal Bud And then a shouting Flower — The Proclamation of the Suns That sepulture is o’er — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1565)
When the botanical garden gates opened we went in and found more dimpled trout lilies and what looked like more kinds of trilliums coming up.
North Carolina Botanical Garden more dimpled trout lilies
hepatica
bloodroot
What a wonderful time we had enjoying springtime’s opening act in this part of the world! I’m sure there will be many more flowers coming soon.
Edgerton & Stengel Memorial Wildflower Garden 5.7.23 ~ Connecticut College Arboretum
One last walk with Janet in Connecticut… (There may be walks together in North Carolina in our future…) It was a lovely, sunny, spring day. So many blossoms!!!
golden ragwort
wild azalea
large-flowered bellwort (aka merrybells)
roseshell azalea
wild columbine (aka red columbine)
mayapple
bluets
eastern redbud
dwarf crested iris
Virginia bluebells
path into a rock garden
purple trillium
nodding trillium
yellow birch (aka swamp birch)
great white trillium
fern forest
Solomon’s seal
toadshade (aka toad trillium)
gray catbird singing for us
Caroline Black Garden 5.7.23 ~ Connecticut College Arboretum
After enjoying the wildflower garden we crossed the college campus and visited another garden, this one of ornamental trees and shrubs from around the world.
huge copper beech in the background
Janet noticed this bat lying motionless on a rock
blossoms reflected in water pool
unfurling
Janet looking into a garden “room”
You think winter will never end, and then, when you don’t expect it, when you have almost forgotten it, warmth comes and a different light. Under the bare trees the wildflowers bloom so thick you can’t walk without stepping on them. The pastures turn green and the leaves come. ~ Wendell Berry (Hannah Coulter: A Novel)
magnificent copper beech
stunning copper beech leaves
copper beech bark
looking up into the copper beach
eastern tiger swallowtail
dandelion seed caught on a flower stigma
I will miss my adventures with Janet, sharing with each other all the little details we notice along the way.
