©voyager, all rights reserved
APRIL is the cruellest month,
— T.S. Eliot
Jack’s Walk
Affinity
Art, Fun, & Nonsense.
©voyager, all rights reserved
— T.S. Eliot
The spring arrival of cherry blossom season is cause for celebration across Japan. There are published charts that track the progress of the blossoms from south to north and every region has festivals to bring people outside to enjoy the splendid views. I’ll never get to Japan to see the spectacle in person, but thanks to the internet I can still see the splendid views and live a bit vicariously. I’ve gathered a few of my favourite photos of cherry blossoms in Japan for you to see as well. Enjoy. [Read more…]
It’s finally spring! Well, at least it is in Germany and Avalus is sharing a wonderful blossoming tree with us today.
Today at noon, it was really warm (18°C in the sun!) and so I had a stroll over campus, discovering many things. And a fruit tree in bloom, with lots of bees doing beesness!
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Is that tree looking fuzzy or are my glasses dirty? ©voyager, all rights reserved
That tree is looking fuzzy with teeny, tiny baby buds ©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s a wonderful day in my corner of the world. There’s a bit of a north wind keeping things cold, but the sun finally decided to visit and it gifted us with a brilliant blue sky. I can hear birds twittering and the air is filled with that earthy smell of spring. It’s a day full of treats for the senses and I am loving the feel of sunshine on my face. Jack is also in excellent spirits and has a bit of extra bounce in his step. I might be a bit bouncy myself. We had a lovely walk all around the neighbourhood and we sang our silly songs and talked about rabbits and the trees.
Melt, dammit! ©voyager, all rights reserved
Sorry to be late posting our walk today, but I spent the afternoon at my dentist’s office waiting for him to squeeze me in. It seems I’ve developed an abscess in a lower tooth that’s going to require a root canal, but first I’ll need to take a course of antibiotics. Ugh. The day itself was a bit grim as well with gloomy, overcast skies and a bitterly cold north wind. It even started to snow a few times, but thankfully only a few brief flakes that didn’t last. I feel like it’s Groundhog Day and winter is stuck on repeat. Again, Ugh.
©voyager, all rights reserved
Nature is full of art. This small bunch of desiccated leaves fascinated me today. I thought it looked a bit like a coat of arms, complete with a lion’s head and spear. Jack postulated that it was the Royal Seal of the Faerie Kingdom, but Jack has an active imagination so who knows. What do you see?
The First Day of Spring ©voyager, all rights reserved
Happy First Day of Spring, everyone. Yesterday was a bit of a melting day around here and early this morning the pond at the park was almost completely open water. By the end of the day I expect any remaining ice will be gone. Best of All? It might be a bit hard to see, but the willow trees are starting to look fuzzy with early buds. The willows are the first trees at the park to get leaves and I could jump up and down with excitement that I can actually see some promise of green. It was quite overcast when Jack and I were out, but the sun is shining now and it’s warm enough to even feel like a fine spring day. I hope all of you are having a fine first of spring day, too.
VanSittart Park ©voyager, all rights reserved
It was a damp, cold zero degrees when Jack and I were out this morning, but now it’s climbed to +4 º and melting is finally happening again. Hooray! It looks like Spring has finally decided to make a reappearance and this time it might actually stay. If the forecast is to be believed it’s supposed to stay above zero all week and might actually climb all the way up to +9º. Be still my heart. I cannot wait to see the end of snow and ice this year. It feels like winter’s been dragging on forever and I am bone tired of it. Melt, melt, melt, I say.
Desert trees need tricks up their sleeves to survive the hot, arid conditions and the Bottle Trees of Namibia and Angola (Pachypodium lealii) manage this with bulbous trunks that retain water.
Those trunks don’t just contain water, though. They have another trick up their sleeves to help them keep their water.
It’s also full of poison. This is not the kind of thing you want to find in your water bottles, but it does help the Bottle Tree actually keep its water. Which was their plan all along. That’s why it’s a Bottle Tree and not just a bottle. The poison is so effective that hunters in the region used to smear the sap on their arrows, just to add that extra ‘oomph’. And yet no-one calls it a Poison Dart Tree!
It all works rather well for the Bottle Tree, and they can grow to some 8 metres (26 ft) in height. Although sometimes they only reach about 1 metre (3 ft) tall. If you want to survive in a desert, you need to be willing to give a little. Or a lot. Like 7 metres (23 ft) of your potential height.
The trees are also covered in long, sharp prickles because poison alone might not keep their precious water supply safe.
However tall a Bottle Tree grows, it’ll be almost entirely branchless until the very top. The leaves grow on slender branches and are jealously defended from herbivores by sharp spines. Around May to November the leaves will all drop off as the Bottle Tree diverts all its effort into growing surprisingly extravagant flowers.
Those thorns are magnificent and you’ve got to love a tree that’s so determined and deadly.
From Real Monstrosities, which is a pretty interesting site full of weird and wonderful things.
It’s maple sugar season ©voyager, all rights reserved
Bubba and I thought we’d check out our wee forest today and we were pleased to see that maple syrup season is in full swing. There’s a farm adjacent to our woods that’s full of sugar maples and they process the syrup the old-fashioned way, with pails to collect the sap and an old-fashioned sugar shack where they boil it down over a wood fire. The ratio is 14 litres of sap gives you 1 litre of syrup. Jack has spent a lot of time checking out the farm and those maple trees and I’d warrant a guess that he’s peed on many, maybe even most, of the trees that are tapped. That’s why we call this farm’s maple syrup “Jack Juice.”
Tap, tap, tap ©voyager, all rights reserved
Mmm…©voyager, all rights reserved
The world is full of interesting trees. This for example is the Jabuticaba Tree, or the Brazilian Grape Tree, from South America and those growths on its trunk are fruits. The tree is mainly found in southern Brazil in the Sao Paulo and Minus Gerais regions, but also grows in areas of Paraguay and Argentina.
The fruit itself is a small and round, about 3 to 4 cm in diameter, with one to four large seeds, a thick, deep purple colored skin and a sweet, white or rosy pink gelatinous flesh. Naturally the tree may flower and fruit only once or twice a year, but when continuously irrigated it flowers frequently, and fresh fruit can be available year round in tropical regions. During Jabuticaba season in Minas Gerais, thousands of street vendors sell fresh Jabuticaba in small net bags, and the sidewalks and streets are stained the same deep purple by discarded Jabuticaba skins.
Jabuticaba is largely eaten fresh, but because the fruit starts to ferment just 3-4 days after harvest, they are often used to make jams, tarts, strong wines, and liqueurs. Due to the extremely short shelf-life, fresh Jabuticaba fruit is very rare in markets outside of areas of cultivation. The fruit also has many medicinal uses. Traditionally, an astringent decoction of the sun-dried skins has been used as a treatment for hemoptysis, asthma, diarrhoea, and gargled for chronic inflammation of the tonsils. It also has several potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory anti-cancer compounds.
The full story is at Amusingplanet.com.
A fine Knot, ©voyager, all rights reserved
It’s still winter. Still cold. There’s still lots of snow and ice, but it’s all gotten old now and gone gray.
And the skies have been cloudy for days.
Nest box, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Well, it’s still the deep of winter around here and the forecast isn’t very hopeful. We’re due for snow tomorrow, rain on Sunday and temps swinging up and down for the next week. Until spring finally decides to appear Jack and I are stuck with snow and ice, but the river path is well trodden, not too slippery and a fairly gentle walk. On the south side of the river we discovered nesting boxes hanging on many of the trees and this one poor nest stuck on a stump. I hope it’s waiting to be hung higher because it looks like a downright poor location for a bird family to occupy. Seems to me that cats and snakes and most other bird hunters could just climb right in. I’ll keep my eye on it and once the snow is gone I’ll bring a hammer and nail (and ladder – I’m short) and hang it higher myself. You know what they say in real estate…location, location, location.
