Nature Post!

[rubyelf]

Enjoyed my day off today... I have no idea what randomness caused me to have a Sunday off, because I ALWAYS work Friday-Saturday-Sunday-Monday, but I did. I took a nice long walk this morning, until it got unreasonably hot, and then came back here, studied, took (not very successfully) my biostats quiz, studied, took a nap, studied... and now my

Comments

[heavydrtysoul]

Beautiful photos!

[rubyelf]

I'm glad you enjoyed them!

[con_grazia]

I had a really sad day today and this post makes me happy. It almost feels like, when I'm reading it, that I'm a child in bed and a loved one is reading me a story. I'm cozy under the covers and as I listen I look at the pictures and imagine this wonderful place come to life. I hear the birds sing and feel the sun on my skin. Thank you for bringing your world to me at the end of a tough day. :)

[rubyelf]

Thank you for sharing it with me!

[bluegerl]

Your first paragraph is FULL OF POETRY

[rubyelf]

I had to put an edit in the post because I forgot that those are not technically horse chestnuts... they are actually hickory nuts, but horse chestnuts around here are called buckeyes and those are called horse chestnuts. Problem with common names!

Yes, the old ent is a maple... the biggest one I've ever seen. They do not usually get this big anymore because in transitional forests (where they have been disturbed) they are out-competed for light by faster-growing trees.

[moth2fic]

That introductory paragraph reads like a passage from your novel. Lovely writing!

Your horse chestnuts are not our horse chestnuts - just saying.

I love the web photos and that one of the leaves in sunlight.

The jewelweed flowers remind me of Himalayan balsam which is becoming a pest here - but the jewelweed are smaller and a prettier colour. The balsam are very solidly pink and are trying to take over the world. No idea if they're related or just convergent evolution.

We call that climbing clematis old man's beard and it's draped all along the motorway verges - for all the world like huge spiderwebs that nobody can reach to remove.

Thanks for the 'walk' as usual!

[rubyelf]

I've heard "old man's beard" as another common name for climbing clematis. It is very disorderly.

Those horse chestnuts aren't really horse chestnuts, like I was telling Looloo. They are hickory nuts but the things that should be called horse chestnuts are called buckeyes.

[moth2fic]

I suppose the way the names change and don't change is also a kind of convergent/divergent evolution!

[annabelle50]

Very nice post. I learned something as always :) I saw horse chestnuts like that recently but didn't know what they were. They look more like fruit at that point, and they seemed too large to be a nut. But the green part is just a covering for the hard chestnut inside. Makes sense now!

[rubyelf]

I had to put a correction in the post because I used the common name for them instead of the scientific one, and around here what are commonly called horse chestnuts (like the ones in the picture) are actually hickory nuts, but proper horse chestnuts are usually called buckeyes.

[annabelle50]

Oh, yes, I googled hickory nuts and it looks exactly like the ones I saw.