Early pollen for the bees

Pussy willow loves wetlands. Which means we have a lot of it in Minnesota. It is almost always the first and surest sign of real spring here in the North–no more blizzards, no more sub-zero temps. It is also an incredibly important early protein source for honey bees. We have two hives of honey bees, and I saw the girls zipping around outside the hive a few days ago…which means they are hungry and on the hunt for food. Thank goodness for pussy willow pollen.

pussy willow with pollen (Salix discolor)

A little burr after the chill

While the recent snow melt revealed all sorts of over-wintered treasures, there are no acorns like this one just lying about in the woods. A tasty treat like this would have been greedily eaten by squirrels months ago. I plucked this specimen from my box of nature flotsam and jetsam that I haul to my STILL workshops for people to rummage through and make flat-lay compositions.

Bur oaks are kind of white oak, and among the most massive oaks in North America. Its acorns are the largest of any North American oaks. The bur oaks are the slowest growing oaks (~12 inches per year), which makes me feel very fortunate to have several of them on our property which I can steward and protect.

dried bur oak leaf with acorn (Quercus macrocarpa)

p.s. both bur oak and burr oak are acceptable spellings

local ferments

These crab apples are very likely fermented by now. They have been on the tree since last autumn. Very soon the cedar waxwings will show up in quantity and feast on these seasonal delicacies. It is said that the birds actually get tipsy, and will sometimes even fall over from drunkeness. I have never seen it myself, although I have seen the trees loaded with migrating flocks of waxwings. Perhaps this year will be the year!

crabapples over-wintered on the tree (Malus)

Jumping Ahead

I am getting ahead of myself a bit with these leaf bursts. I brought some red-osier dogwood stems in to the house to photograph the deepening red stems that occur this time of year. And without thinking much about it, I put the stems in a vase on the fireplace hearth after I was done photographing them. Two days later I woke up to this! While it is delightful to see, and a harbinger of things to come, we are not yet at new-leaf-bud-burst here in the North. But it was too pretty not to share.

red osier dogwood stems in late March (Cornus sericea)

One Day Later

Yesterday’s silver maple blossoms one day later. Spectacular.

silver maple (Acer saccharinum)