green

Jeremiah, Is That You?

~ shoreacres ~ 82 Comments

 

One of my greatest frustrations over the years has been an inability to see big frogs in the ponds and sloughs I visit. I often hear them — their croaks, and their splashy retreats into water — but I never have seen more than the ripples they leave behind.

That ended last weekend at the Aransas Wildlife Refuge. Standing on a bridge that crosses a pond, I was idly scanning the water when I noticed a bit of bright green. Looking closer, I realized it wasn’t another clump of algae. It was a frog; even better, it was a frog who seemed willing to tolerate my presence.

After a few photos, I realized the frog wasn’t about to move, so I moved to a different vantage point on the bridge, where I was able to catch this wonderfully typical froggy expression.

Eventually, a noisy conflict between two bull alligators caused the frog to disappear into the reeds, but I had my photos. Only two days earlier, on March 3, I had expressed my hope to Steve Gingold, frog photographer extraordinare, that this year I finally would find a bullfrog. On March 5, I did just that.

Leaving the refuge, I was filled with the kind of joy that only a true Jeremiah could evoke. I’d gone for flowers, but found a bullfrog. It seemed a fair trade, and reason enough to break into the song that you know.

 

Comments always are welcome.

Christmas Wishes from the Wetlands

~ shoreacres ~ 57 Comments

So favored by Whooping Cranes it’s fruits sometimes are called ‘crane candy,’ the plant known as Carolina Wolfberry (Lycium carolinianum) also is known as Christmas Berry.  A member of the nightshade family, its rich purple flowers begin forming fruit in late fall — just in time to feed hungry cranes arriving from the north, and to fill wetlands and ditches with the vibrant red and green traditionally associated with Christmas.

When I found this unusually tall and well-formed plant, I couldn’t help but smile. It seemed joyful and festive: a perfect Christmas-berry ‘tree’ to mark the season. I hope it brings you a smile, too, just as I hope your own season is filled with peace and joy.

Comments always are welcome.

Autumn Snow

~ shoreacres ~ 67 Comments
Snow-on-the-Prairie

As summer begins to ease its grip on Texas, a lovely floral ‘snow’ suggests the coming of autumn. In the western two-thirds of the state, Snow-on-the-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata) covers much of the land. In the Eastern third (and north into Oklahoma), Snow-on-the-Prairie (E. bicolor) holds sway.

Snow-on-the-Prairie can grow to a height of three or four feet, and often forms dense colonies. Its long green and white bracts, open and airy, offer a pleasing counterpoint to surrounding grasses and forbs.

The plant’s long, slender bracts sometimes are mistaken for petals, but they’re actually  modified leaves. The flowers of Snow-on-the-Prairie are quite small, and exceptionally interesting.

Plants in the genus Euphorbia possess a unique structure called a cyathium (plural, cyathia) which contains both male and female flowers, as well as small structures known as bractioles, and nectar glands. Surrounding the flowers, bractioles, and glands, small bracts called cyathophylls — which superficially resemble the petals of a flower — provide additional color.

Here, the white cyathophylls of E. bicolor add to the plant’s ‘snowy’ appearance. Since the snow is only metaphorical, the sight is entirely pleasurable; it’s possible to admire this plant on the prairie without getting frostbite.

 

Comments always are welcome.

The Greening of a World

~ shoreacres ~ 54 Comments

 Our colorful spring wildflowers are beginning to emerge: bluebonnets; pink evening primrose; purple vetch; yellow star grass.

Mixed with winter’s leftover browns, blacks, and grays, the colors shine. Still, green is a color of spring as well, and the season of greens clearly appealed to English poet Philip Larkin. His fondness for ‘ordinary people doing ordinary things’ sometimes echoes in his nature poetry. His poem entitled “The Trees” presents an ordinary spring doing ordinary things, and the effect is extraordinary.

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In full grown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say.
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

 

Comments always are welcome. For a recording of Philip Larkin reading his poem, click here.
The photos were taken at the Santa Fe, Texas Buddhist temple on March 16.