Wild Orchids

We have something special from Nightjar today.

Remember this (https://freethoughtblogs.com/affinity/2019/01/16/surrounded-by-rocks-an-exploration-series-chapter-5/) when I said that visiting that limestone hill during Spring would be more interesting because of all the wild orchids? Well, this month I did just that and managed to find 4 species of wild orchids! The Bee and Yellow Bee orchids I found mostly on my way up, while the Pyramidal and Mirror orchids were everywhere at the roadside verges around the hill. I was thrilled to find so many Mirror orchids this year, they are among my favourite wild flowers just because of how glossy and shiny they are. Mirror orchids are pollinated exclusively by a single species of solitary wasp and I love how far their mimicry goes, eyes and everything!

Bee Orchid – Ophrys apifera 1 ©Nightjar, all rights reserved

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack-in-the-pulpits are one of my favourite spring flowers and they won’t be around for much longer so I’m sharing while I still can. This has been an excellent year for them in our wee forest. They’re literally all over and many of them have grown to be a foot tall or more. Obviously, they like this year’s wet and dreary type of spring much more than I do.

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

False Solomon’s Seal, ©voyager, all rights reserved

The day started out rainy, but by noon the sun was shining in an azure blue sky and the day was warm and inviting. Jack and I took ourselves off to the woods and we had a lovely, slow stroll whilst chatting about this and that and listening to the birds sing. We marveled at how quickly things change at this time of year. The white trilliums are still blooming, but the red ones have vanished and so have the happy white flowers of bloodroot. Other things are growing madly. The mayapples have become umbrellas and they’re full of buds. The false Solomon’s Seal is in bud, too, and leaves of many kinds are sprouting up along the entire forest floor. Jack took extra care to sprinkle pee where it was needed the most and by the time we’d gone all the way around his tank was empty and he was doing the air-pee. All in all a brilliant day.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I have been avoiding the park for the past few days because the city was hosting a fair to celebrate the May 2-4 long weekend and Jack doesn’t like fairs. He’s too short to see much except a sea of legs and he doesn’t like the blaring noise of the carnival rides or the sudden screams they elicit. The worst part, though, is all the smells of food that no-one offers  him.

The carnival was still packing up when we were there this morning so we wandered through what remained of the midway and Jack had a good chance to safely explore the what of it all. After that we went to visit the tulips and strolled around the duck pond. The lingering smells of fried food made our route a bit circuitous because Jack had to visit every garbage can along the way, but the sun was warm and the birds were singing and I didn’t mind at all.

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

The Canopy Cometh ©voyager, all rights reserved

The canopy of the forest is filling in quickly and soon all the light that’s been fueling the growth of spring flowers will turn to shade or bits of dappled sunlight. The trilliums are still blooming madly, though, and we even found a few red trilliums still hanging on. The Jack-in-the-pulpits have sprouted up all over and I can’t recall a year that there have been so many of them. They’re everywhere and some of them are huge. It seemed to take forever for spring to arrive this year, but the woodland flowers are obviously very happy with the conditions.

Open for Business. ©voyager, all rights reserved

A red trillium is a rare sight once the white trilliums bloom. ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack-in-the-pulpits ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack’s Walk

White Trillium with a virus-like mycoplasma infection causing green stripes. Eventually (it takes a long time) the flower will turn all green and ultimately stop blooming. ©voyager, all rights reserved

I should be on my way home from Michigan today and then live again tomorrow. I didn’t want to leave you without spring flowers, though, so here are a few shots I took in our wee forest on Sunday.

[Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

I took Jack to the woods yesterday and we were greeted by masses of brilliant white trilliums covering the forest floor. It’s an incredible sight and so short-lived that I count myself very lucky to have found them at their peak. It was tempting to wander into the forest to take photos, but I stuck to the path so as not to trample any of the other tender young plants. There are Jack-in-the-pulpits popping up all over the place (just look at the area in front of Jack’s back feet) and everywhere you look there are tender, young shoots of false Solomon’s Seal unfurling and trout lilies blooming and beautiful green life coming back to the forest. I tried to take this photo without Jack. We stood here for several minutes and every time I aimed my camera at the trilliums Jack walked into the shot. He was careful not to trample the flowers, but he was determined to be in the picture. I could have put him on leash, but that didn’t feel right so here are 7 brilliant white trilliums and 1 brilliant brown dog.

Jack’s Walk

A trio of beauties, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Pink! ©voyager, all rights reserved

It is a dreary, rainy day here and tomorrow is scheduled to be the same. Overall, this has been a much wetter spring than we’re used to and at this point I think the growing things would rather have sunshine. I would, too. Jack and I did manage to get to the park before the heavy rain started and we saw our first goslings of the year, but mamas and papas were closely on guard so we kept our distance. It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though. We did find these beautiful trees in blossom and they lit up my day. I’m not sure what they are. They look like cherry blossoms, but I couldn’t find anything to identify them. They were planted a few years ago and this is the first time I’ve seen flowers. To be honest, I’ve mostly ignored them until now. The light in the photos is grim, but I haven’t got the energy to play around and try to fix it. Even in bad light, though, they’re beautiful. I like the way the willows in the background accent the pink. I suppose this is what the parks department had in mind when they were planted and they just needed time to grow up a bit.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s leaf day! Around our house that means that the baby leaves are finally big enough to camouflage the highschool up the street. There’s nothing wrong with the highschool, they keep it well maintained, but I prefer to look at leaves. The city where I live plants a lot of trees free of charge. Technically they sit on city land (which is about 5 meters in from the center of the street), but they become the property and responsibility of the homeowner. About 20 years ago they planted red maples down my street and I happened to be home when they got to my house. It was near 5 pm and it had obviously been along day for the lads. There were only 2 trees left in their trailer and they were about to plant one of them in my side yard when I decided to ask if I could have them both. One fellow looked at the trees, looked at my yard, looked back at the trees again and shrugged. “Sure, why not” he said as he grabbed his shovel and started to dig. For once, I was in the right spot at the right time and was bold enough to open my mouth and ask for what I wanted. And it worked. Those 2 trees are now big and strong and shade my house all day long. Lucky me.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s been an absolutely glorious day here, full of sunshine and flowers and bees. The tulips around our neighbourhood are opening up in a riot of colour and down the street hyacinths are in full deep purple bloom. We’ve had a day and a half of sunshine and it seems that’s exactly what was needed to kick spring into gear. Yesterday morning the trees were only just a bit fuzzy, but this afternoon there are actual leaves popping out all over. It isn’t quite leaf day yet, but I think it might be tomorrow. Everything is growing so quickly. Overnight my hydrangeas sprouted leaves and I swear my grass has put on 2 or 3 inches of growth since yesterday morning. It’s like someone waved a magic wand and said ‘go, hurry.’ So imagine my surprise to arrive at the park this afternoon and find all of the tulips there still tightly closed.  Oh well, it obviously isn’t their day yet.

It’s my day! ©voyager, all rights reserved

Natural Dyes

Since a few years ago, when I read a very intriguing article, Eastertime has become a time for experimentation – for experimenting with natural dyes! For the eggs, obviously.

Now, tradition has it that you use onion skins – gives a nice warm reddish-brown tone, and if you stick little leaves and shoots and spring flowers around the surface of the egg and wrap it in some extra onion skin and gauze (or old pantyhose), you can get some wonderful imprinting and marbling on your egg, in tones of yellow and green.

My original break with tradition occurred about 5 years ago, when I read about red cabbage – apparently, using boiled red cabbage produces a lovely shade of blue, plus you can also do the usual addition of shoots-and-flowers, and also get marbling effects.

It works.

Also with snowdrops and an onionskin direct on the shell. One of this year’s efforts – and boy is it difficult to get some good focus on eggs! © rq, all rights reserved.

That blue tone at the bottom? If you use red cabbage correctly, it gets even more vivid.

However! In subsequent years I have read about other plant-based materials that can be used as dyes: beets (for raspberry red), turmeric (for deep yellow), blueberries (for dark blue/black), etc. This year I decided to experiment a little again, since I have transferred my knowledge of red cabbage to the immediate family, and it’s time to try something new (the blue colour is no longer original once everyone is doing it).

Meet this year’s subjects:

From left to right: curry and chamomile; red cabbage; beets; hibiscus tea; onion skin. © rq, all rights reserved.

To review the results:

  1. I expected more from the turmeric, but this just proves you can’t trust online blog posts raving about the wonderful shades of golden-yellow, even if you follow their instructions word for word;
  2. Red cabbage is both a stable value and also quite versatile with the patterning, adding an onion skin for colour will not ruin the dye;
  3. Beets are fakers – I tried beets a few years ago with similar results but was willing to give them a second chance, but alas, if this is raspberry red, then someone needs to review their colour wheel;
  4. Hibiscus tea is a keeper and shall be repeated because it has a wonderful deep shade of blue-black and also holds up well with patterning for some very interesting colouring;
  5. Onion skins is old reliable onion skins and to ensure at least a few good-looking eggs should be used every year.

A few close-ups:

Hibiscus tea with dandelion and a few other new leaves. © rq, all rights reserved.

Curry and chamomile, plus some directly applied onion skin, which is what provides the brilliant colour; probably will not repeat this shade in future. © rq, all rights reserved.

Raspbery red, tplrplrplr. The applied botanicals is what saves this one. © rq, all rights reserved.

Paired red cabbage with onion skin again – this colour pairing, along with hibiscus with onion skin, are my favourites for the contrasts it provides. © rq, all rights reserved.

Onion skins with new leaves of goutweed and dandelion blossom. Classic. © rq, all rights reserved.

The family portrait: a nice spectrum of naturally produced colours. © rq, all rights reserved.

So there you have it – low effort and high quality coloured eggs from ordinary things you can find in your kitchen (or get for cheap). If I don’t forget, I might do a tutorial post for next year, because the whole process is ridiculously easy.

(Choir Juventus  cover, original here.)