NATURE GALLERY

Ox-Eye Daisys

Who is not familiar with the common white daisy. It populates our fields and road sides each summer. What would summer be without them. They and their cousins make each summer a pleasant time. And oh how the bees do love them.

Yellow Lady's Slippers

These golden gems grow in favored little spots throughout our woods each late spring. But there numbers decline each year as people will not stop trying to transplant them in their gardens. They are too fragile and require special soil in order to survive. Leave them where they are and they will populate.

Wilson Snipe

How many are familiar with this elusive plumb little fellow of our streams and marshes. I wonder how many ghost stories have been started by hearing his wobbling wing song as he flies about on warm spring evenings.

Red Fox Kitts

Ahh, being in the right spot at the right time with camera in hand. But alas wise mother moved them to a safer place that very night. I only hope they grew up to be beautiful bushy tailed, healthy, cunning foxes.

Dutchman's Breeches

Ohh how I wait each year for spring to arrive and I can once again ramble amongst the likes of these little beauties on warm sun lit hill sides in our Vermont woods. The ground will be litterly carpeted in yellow from their nodding little heads.

Round Leafed
Yellow Violet

One has to get down on hands and knees to get a good look at one of these beauties each spring. And if your not careful walking a trail, you could step right on one before you would notice it there at your feet.

Pine Sap

This elusive little hider and his cousin the Indian pipe have eluded me for many years out there among the pines. Then when I did at last come upon him, I must have past by that same spot a hundred times over the years, but not while he was there. He is an elusive elf of the forest.

Yellow Trout Lily
{Adder Tongue}

Another awaited beauty of spring along side our Vermont back roads. The blotted leaves appear first and therefore the name Adder Tongue, after the spotted Adder or Common Milk Snake, which some fearing farmer must have mistaken the leaf for.

Star Flower

These little guys pop up in mid spring in deep deciduous woods of Maple, Beech, and Ash. Although they are quite common, finding one with the double flowers was pure luck, and the least bit of breeze sets their little heads to nodding.

Sweet White Violet

This delicate little violet is another gem of spring. Unlike the Canada Violet and the Spring Beauty that carpet the forest floors, the two smaller white violets like to hide away under favorite spruces and balsams and make you hunt for them.

Spring Beauties

These are Mother Earth’s fresh new spring carpet that she lays out under the budding Maples and Beeches each year. I’ve watched outer-staters literally plow them under so they could plunk themselves down. Ohh, how I cried!

Wild Carrot
Queen Anne's Lace

Another Vermont weed of summer along side our roads. There are actually people out there who think that way. Oh the poor souls, what they’ve missed. The bees don’t think their weeds.

Showy Pink Lady's Slipper

Don’t ask me to show you where these grow each year. It’s a closely guarded secret that will go to my grave with me. And then my ghostly spirit will come back on warm moon-lit mid-summer nights, and I and the forest nymphs will dance amongst their blossoms.

Moccasin Flower

Another forest rarity. I literally had to beg a logging operator to move his log trail to one side to save this little nymph. Good thing I photographed her right off. The next year she never came back. I miss her and have searched for her presence ever since.

Showy Orchis

These groups of little hooded beauties grow along side back roads. That is, if you can keep the road crews from cutting back the banks. Luckily this group grows on a discarded old road that they haven’t touched in years.

Red Columbine

Mother Nature's summer red paint. These little red bell shaped flowers hanging down from their stalks paint little streaks in amongst the green underbrush along our back roads. The other common name for them is Honey Suckle. They can also come in shades of pink to blue.

Blue Jay

My noisy little buddy of the forest. How many times has he alerted me of the presence of another soul about to come around the corner before it does. My companion on winter trips into the swamp on snow shoes, and the boss at the feeder every winter.

Hairy Woodpecker

Another woods companion all year long. They talk back and forth amongst themselves by tapping on trees as well as getting their dinner. The males even have tapping contest in the spring for territorial rights. he who makes the loudest noise wins.

Red Breasted Nuthatch

My little nutty buddy. I love to watch these little guys and their cousin the White Breasted, creeping round and round a tree, all the time up side down.
If I ever tried that trick I’d surely fall down on my head.
They also have a very sweet song while they're doing it.

Jack In The Pulpit

I go each spring to favorite little spots in the woods where I know I’ll find old Jack just coming up through the leaf mold with his big padded leafs wrapped around himself, as if to keep warm on cold spring days. Then I keep an eye on him as he unfolds his pulpit and preaches all summer, till in fall he turns into a large ball of bright red berries.

Wild Bleeding Hearts

How many years did I search the spring woods for these exquisite little cousins of the Dutchman’s Breeches and Squirrel Corn who run rampant each spring. But now that I know where they live I go there each spring and renew my acquaintance.

Hepaticas

Last on this page but first every spring to pop up through the leaf mold and snow fields still left on steep rocky slopes that are hard to get to. How beautiful their white to lavender flowers are as they node in the wind on their delicate woolly stems. It’s an annual pilgrimage for me to fight my way to their doorstep and say hello and pay my respects.