winter – In the Woods

eye contact

12.19.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
northern mockingbird

On a mid-December visit to the botanical garden with a friend there were a lot of birds, all of them strategically avoiding my camera behind twigs and branches, but keeping a good eye on us.

The botanical garden had posted on its Facebook page that a yellow garden spider (aka a zipper spider) egg sac suspended between two Okefenokee hooded pitcher plants had been spotted in the Carnivorous Plant Collection – and we found it.

one side *(above)* and the other side *(below)*

Inside are up to a thousand or more tiny, dormant eggs. Creating this warm silk sac was one of the last endeavors of their mother’s life – yellow garden spider adults usually don’t survive the first hard frost. If all goes well, the eggs will spend the winter safe in this sac, emerging as itsy bitsy spiderlings in spring. … This particular pitcher plant variety is native only to the Okefenokee Swamp in southeastern Georgia. (There’s also an introduced population in North Carolina.)
~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
(Facebook, December 17, 2025)

Quite impressive. Silk is very strong, but can be weakened by wetness and sunlight. Time will tell if this egg sac will make it though the winter. We’ve already had some morning temperatures in the teens.

the distant sister sun

“The Druids: Bringing in the Mistletoe”
by Edward Atkinson Hornel & George Henry

Now is the solstice of the year
Winter is the glad song that you hear
Seven maids move in seven time
Have the lads up ready in a line

Join together ‘neath the mistletoe,
By the holy oak whereon it grows
Seven druids dance in seven time
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming

Praise be to the distant sister sun,
Joyful as the silver planets run
Seven maids move in seven time
Sing the song the bells call, loudly chiming

Ring out these bells
Ring out, ring solstice bells
Ring solstice bells

~ Ian Anderson
♫ (Ring Out, Solstice Bells) ♫

to live with loss

The reality is you will grieve forever. You will not “get over” the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal, and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again, but you will never the same. Nor should you be same, nor would you want to.
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler
(On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss)

I have found these words to be true. It’s thirty-four years now since my mother died and I have healed and have learned how to live with that never-ending feeling of painful loss. After my father died twelve years ago, grief was much more familiar to me and I more quickly got used to feeling like an orphan. But now, to be a widow.

I miss my husband so much. How is this much pain even possible? The loss feels like it’s cutting even deeper than the loss of my parents because I intimately shared my life with this man for more than fifty years. My days are full of memory flashes, as if my brain wants to watch the video of our whole life together in bits and pieces. (I think in pictures.) So I pause whatever I am doing, recall the scene, cry a little, talk to him a little, and then try to remember what I was doing and carry on.

Sunday evening I took another very long two-hour walk with my friends. It was cold and the atmosphere felt like it was going to snow. It was magical. (It did snow the next day in some places nearby, but not at my place.) Very healing and I am so grateful for their love and support. We were still out there when the sun set. A good memory.

silent sunday

“Christmas Tree Felling” by Hans Andersen Brendekilde

sick days and snow days

2.26.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

February wasn’t very kind to us this year. It started out well enough with a couple of nice walks but then we were hit with a couple of weeks of viruses, and several days of snowy, icy cold weather. Worrying about my sister’s worsening health problems has added to the feeling of the rug being pulled out from under our feet. But yesterday the temperature reached 71°F and we made a brief afternoon visit to the botanical garden.

We were looking specifically for the tiny sandhills pyxie-moss that we saw last year but were disappointed to see only one little flower on the clump. Maybe February was a bit too harsh for this ‘rare minute creeping subshrub,’ too. But we were happy to see some of our old friends from last winter.

seedbox *(ludwigia alternifolia)*
aka square-pod water-primrose

Last year we had daffodils blooming in the woods behind our house on February 21. Not this year. I think the 3.5 inches of snow we got on the 19th, followed by days of cold temps, made them wait a week or so. But now they’re blooming! Today I’m dealing with malaise and the chills from my second shingles vaccination. But I hope to get back on track soon.

silent sunday

rocky water path

2.4.25 ~ Confluence Natural Area, Hillsborough, North Carolina

The first thing to catch my eye as we started down Rocky Water Path was a patch of Christmas ferns (above) growing down the edges of a gully, hanging like drapes. They usually grow up in a fountain-like shape.

And then there was a large group of boulders, not something we’re used to seeing in the woods in these parts. Our trail was leading us sharply downhill to the West Fork Eno River. But just before we reached the river we encountered a box of walking sticks.

Need a stick?
Take a stick.
Return the stick for
another to use.

The sign on the box (above) and the sign next to it (below) had us scratching our heads. Why would we need a stick? We already knew what path we were on, why a sign in the middle of it? Why was there a lost and found, also in the middle of nowhere?

We soon learned why we might need a stick! Turning around towards the river we saw a sign for another trail, pointing across the river. But how to get across? Checking the map we found our location and noted that we were at the “River Crossing.” Hmmm…

We sat down to rest on a conveniently placed bench and after some time figured out that there were some stones going in a straight line across the river. (below) Apparently that was the river crossing. The stones were far enough part that we would not have dared to cross, even with two sticks in hand! Maybe if we were 20 years younger, but it’s hard to remember what having that sort of confidence feels like…

From studying the map it looks like there is no other way to get to Poplar Bend Loop. But if you crossed back over from that trail and happened to forget how you got there, at least you would find the sign and know you had made it back to the Rocky Water Path and could choose to follow it in either direction. As for us, we passed by the crossing and continued on our way along Rocky Water Path. Niste:kmani:hątkóx, means Rocky Water Path in Yesnechi, the language of one of the Sioux tribes who first lived in this area.

holly tree growing over the river
(a bit of green to go with the Christmas fern seen earlier)

Rocky Water Path along West Fork Eno River

Fresh air is as good for the mind as for the body. Nature always seems trying to talk to us as if she had some great secret to tell. And so she has.
~ John Lubbock
(The Use of Life)

As we were leaving we disturbed a flock of robins foraging for food on the trail. One of them was standing his ground, keeping a close eye on us.

I’m not sure if we’ll come back to this wonderful nature preserve because the cell phone reception wasn’t good. (Tim’s walking app wouldn’t connect to the cell phone towers.) It was remote enough that we were concerned about calling for help in an emergency. But I imagine it must be quite beautiful here in the spring.

southern light, a hawk, groundhog shadows

2.2.25 ~ Bolin Forest, Groundhog Day
(no shadows at first)

On Groundhog Day last year we took our groundhogs, Basil & Oregano, to the botanical garden to check on their shadows, so this year we decided to take them out into the woods. Our friend Susan joined us for a nice long walk down by our neighborhood’s Bolin Creek.

The weather was chilly, cloudy, damp and gray. It had been raining recently so there was plenty of mud along the path, making for some dicey footing. Susan spotted a red-shouldered hawk who visited a couple of trees before settling on one where I could get a picture.

Only the beech trees and their marcescent leaves, looking like sand or wheat, bring light to such dark, wet woods, standing out vividly among the dark-gray oak and hickory trunks and the cyanine green of the cedars. A few of our beech trees are large and well spread out, but many more are saplings, six to twelve feet high, present and proud and serving as fine, multifaceted reflectors.
~ Bland Simpson
(Clover Garden: A Carolinian’s Piedmont Memoir)

A funny thing happened after a couple of joggers passed by us. Apparently it took them some time to realize what their eyes had just seen. (A grown man carrying two stuffed groundhogs.) They stopped running, looked back around and one called out to us, “Wait a minute! Is it Groundhog Day?” We all had a good laugh.

Tim, Oregano & Basil bird-watching together

Bolin Creek was gurgling away, pleasantly full of water and sounding so very soothing.

The sky was so gray, but then, as we started heading back home, the sun made an effort to break through, lighting up the beech leaves…

… and making the creek’s water sparkle in a few spots. So we had Oregano & Basil pose for a second Groundhog Day photo.

Looking at pictures of our groundhogs’ shadows back in Connecticut I happened to notice that they were a lot longer than the ones down here.

2.2.19 ~ Eastern Point Beach
Groton, Connecticut

AI Overview tells me that “shadows are generally longer in the winter, especially in locations further north, because during winter the Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun, causing the sun to appear lower in the sky and cast longer shadows; the further north you go, the more pronounced this effect will be.”
I find this so fascinating!

soon, when winter yields to spring

“When Icicles Hang by the Wall,
& Dick the Shepherd Blows His Nail”
by Edward Robert Hughes

Soon shall the winter’s foil be here;
Soon shall these icy ligatures unbind and melt — A little while,
And air, soil, wave, suffused shall be in softness, bloom and growth — a thousand forms shall rise
From these dead clods and chills as from low burial graves.
Thine eyes, ears — all thy best attributes — all that takes cognizance of natural beauty,
Shall wake and fill.
Thou shalt perceive the simple shows, the delicate miracles of earth,
Dandelions, clover, the emerald grass, the early scents and flowers,
The arbutus under foot, the willow’s yellow-green, the blossoming plum and cherry;
With these the robin, lark and thrush, singing their songs — the flitting bluebird;
For such the scenes the annual play brings on.
~ Walt Whitman
(Sands at Seventy)