Thursday, January 22, 2009

gifts from the winter forest

Our walk in the woods last weekend proved there was much more to the winter landscape than barren trees.
The thimble sized cones of the tsuga canadensis, our treasured but quickly disappearing eastern hemlock.

Wild Hydrangea, hydrangea arborescens, hanging onto its dried summer blooms against all odds, is the lowly native relative of the pom poms we all grow in our gardens.

Some temperatures on Lookout Mountain registered 0 degrees Fahrenheit!


These flakes of fungal growth are transforming this dead oak back into the forest floor.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Robert is the William Bartram of Lookout Mountain!

This is inspirational to me. I'm going to start paying attention to things around me...