A Bloomin’ Catch-Up

  So much to do in the spring before it gets hot, and living seems to have taken precedence over blogging lately.  Here’s a little catch-up.

  We have had company, the garden is flourishing with tomato plants, herbs and kale, and I have begun a course of physical therapy which, with travel to and from, takes most of three mornings a week.  Before that started we hurried to get in a couple more adventures.   

  

 Here is a glimpse of our backyard. It’s been a fabulous spring for flowers and three sides of our yard are completely lined with azaleas.  

  

We have several colors, ranging from this intense purple to red to the most delicate pink.  

  But we haven’t only been enjoying the flowers at home.  There are so many to see everywhere!

  Much more dramatic than ours are the wild azaleas from a woodland hike on the Santee National Wildlife Refuge.  Unlike the Asian cultivars, the native shrubs’ flower cluster is huge, bigger than my two hands together. They grow in the understudy of the tall trees on scrawny bushes and are so delicate and dramatic when you happen upon one.  

On any drive in the countryside right now, as soon as you get a few miles from the coast you see these seas of red,

  ... acres and acres of unplowed cotton fields covered with blankets of red sorrel.  It’s a pretty sight but sorrel is a noxious weed that invades soil depleted of nitrogen by the heavy cotton crops.

  Another dramatic native spring flower was blooming right behind our campsite one day, the red buckeye.  Its nickname is the Firecracker Plant.
















    On another walk, I spotted this well-pecked woodpecker tree.  As you can see, the holes go right down to the ground at the base, which confused me as to what woodpecker had been so busy here.  

By the shape of the holes, I thought it should be this guy, a pileated woodpecker.

But pileated woodpeckers are 18 or 19 inches tall!  How could he 

make those holes all the way down to the base of the tree?  

  Well, I checked with my favorite birding blogger, David Gascoigne, Travels With Birds

and he assured me it was indeed the work of a pileated woodpecker. 

 (If you want to enjoy some gorgeous photos of birds, click above on the link for his blog.  It’s awesome!)

  I’m still wondering how a pileated could peck those lowest holes, though.  

So much beauty out there in the world when everything is new in the spring.  I hope you have a chance to get out there and smell the flowers and feast your eyes on some nature today.