Tag: North Carolina

Get the buckets!

Weather map

One of my favorite weather pages is Mike’s Weather Page.  I stumbled on it several years ago when I was trying to find information on the “hurricane spaghetti models.”   Those are what they call the different projections that agencies put together when a hurricane develops.  They can be wildly divergent and often do look like spaghetti.

But Mike has a lot more than hurricane tracks.  He has an amazing number of weather maps posted from various agencies, like the one above which is from NOAA.  This is the “Next Five Day Rain Forecast” map and I have only included the east coast of the U.S.  Look closely and you’ll see a bright yellow section in the western hills of North Carolina with the notation 17.3.  Well, that’s 17.3 inches and is right over my house!!!  Well, not exactly, of course, but close enough.

I’m on high ground and not worried but there are many people in the Carolinas that could face some real hardships in the next few days.  And who knows where Joaquin will actually end up because the Spaghetti Models are still, pardon the expression, all over the map. ❦Spaghetti models

 

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Image #307 – Blue Velvet Fungi

Blue Velvet Fungi
Blue Velvet Fungi

Still in the Carolina mountains but the days are slipping away. Summer officially ends tomorrow. The leaves are starting to change color and litter my yard.  Soon I will join the birds in heading south.

My pictures this season, like my posts, have been sketchy at best. Today’s offering is a photo that was taken a month ago and sat in the camera, patiently waiting. It is Blue Velvet Fungi that I unearthed while moving some branches. It was in full bloom, an absolutely delicious shade of blue that this photo barely captures.  The next shot gives you a close-up.

Blue Velvet Fungi - Closeup
Blue Velvet Fungi – Closeup

Amazing nature…it doesn’t care about pictures, blog posts, newsletters, speeches or meetings.  It simply does what it does best…astound. ❧

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Image #306 – Color of the Day – Banana Caterpillar

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A Banana Caterpillar

My friend Joe Bruneau likes to post “Today’s Color” on his Facebook account.  Today’s color is banana and I thought that was interesting since I found this almost banana-colored caterpillar on my deck rail this morning.  I think this is his face but for all I know he could be mooning all of us.  😀    ❦

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Images 302-304 Blue and Orange Mushrooms

Have I mentioned that I live in a rain forest?  Most people think of rain forests as tropical, mainly in places like Brazil and Africa.  But the Nantahala Forest, where my home is located in Franklin, NC, is close to being a temperate rain forest (more than 55 inches of precipitation annually and a mean temperature of 39º to 54º F).  It is very damp at times and this is one of them.  You can almost wring the moisture from the air and I have found myself tapping the hygrometer dial on my weather station, convinced it must be stuck on 100%.  It isn’t.

But for this mushroom loving gal this is THE place to be. The ‘shrooms are popping up everywhere, in a rainbow of colors and shapes. I have taken to walking early in the a.m. to see what emerged overnight.  And while many may be termed mundane as far as mushrooms go, others are spectacular.

Take this blue mushroom.  It is, I think, an Anise-scented Clitocybe but, honestly, it is so hard to know when the field guide gives you this: “dingy green to bluish-green,  sometimes blue or nearly white”.  Well, that’s a lot of latitude.

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The shape seems right. I never thought to check its scent and by the time I had read the field guide and returned to check its scent it was gone. The field guide did mention it was edible and we have many fat squirrels and chipmunks around here.

Here is a photograph of its underside. The gills were spectacular in the morning light.

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And if blue mushrooms are too dull for you check out these beauties.

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They are no taller than a dime and they must not taste very good because they have been very long lasting. They are, I believe, Orange Mycena (Mycena leaiana). Once again our friends at Wikipedia provide some fascinating details.

Mycena leaiana, commonly known as the orange mycena or Lea’s mycena, is a North American species of saprobic fungi in the genus Mycena, family Tricholomataceae. Characterized by their bright orange caps and stalks and reddish-orange gill edges, they usually grow in dense clusters on deciduous logs. The pigment responsible for the orange color in this species has antibiotic properties.

That last sentence caught my eye. Another site I visited while learning about rainforests taught me that 1 in 4 ingredients in our medicines are derived from rainforest plants.  We really need to stop destroying them. According to one site, an area of a rainforest the size of a football field is being destroyed each second.  ❧

 

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Image #300 – In Its Prime

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An Amanita?

Everything has a prime…that time in the life cycle when all things “click.”  For humans the “prime” is elusive. Counter-intuitively, it seems there can be multiple “primes” when a life cycle spans more than six decades.  But for the mushroom on my hillside in North Carolina time is short and I believe I captured a Prime moment.

I snapped this picture yesterday. The ‘shroom almost yelled out to me.  It was poised, center-stage, in a brilliantly lit patch of decay.  By the time I fetched my camera the key-light had moved on but the mushroom was still an incredibly powerful presence.  Strong and vibrant, reaching for the sky.  It is, I think, some form of Amanita. When I returned today it seemed shriveled.  It had flattened out and something had nibbled on it.  My forest friends eat hearty in the summer, with all manner of mushrooms available along with berries and new buds.  Most mornings I awake to find deer munching on the apples from my trees. I don’t mind. There are plenty of apples and the only inconvenience is that the deer take all the low-hanging fruit so I must work harder to get the fruit that is left.  Working harder makes me realize I have passed my prime…at least my 6th decade prime…or so I think today.

I have been here for a week and have an almost visceral feeling of decompression. This small patch of land on Fawn Hill is a haven, a place to relax and enjoy just the being of life…however long that may be. ❧

 

 

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Images #288-289 – Lady Slippers

When I was a child growing up in Massachusetts, thereSAMSUNG CSC seemed no shortage of Lady Slippers; that delicate wild orchid that is at once beautifully dainty and profoundly evocative. They are of the subfamily Cypripedioideae and grace most of the continents.  According to Wikipedia:

The subfamily Cypripedioideae is monophyletic and consists of five genera. The Cypripedium genus is found across much of North America, as well as in parts of Europe and Asia. The state flower of Minnesota is the showy lady’s slipper (Cypripedium reginae). The pink lady’s slipper is also the official provincial flower of the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island.

My sister and I recall them differently. She recalls them being in the woods behind her friend’s house and I recall them being in the woods behind our house, the distinction being that we moved to a big house that had acres of woods behind it just before my sister went off to boarding school. I remember ripping them from the ground and bringing them home to my mother. She rarely scolded us but she did suggest, in that way she had, that I simply leave them be.  After we moved to Florida, when I was 12-years old I rarely saw a Lady Slipper again. I had heard (incorrectly) that they were endangered.  So, you can imagine my delight when I discovered two(!) Lady Slippers on the hillside at Fawn Hill in North Carolina.

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Lady Slipper (Cypripedium acaule) on the hillside at Fawn Hill.

This will be our third summer at Fawn Hill and every year brings more surprises.  In a few days we are having some trees removed, weed trees mainly, opportunists that have grabbed at a chance to thrive, ironically in the absence of care.  As we clear away more and more of this over-growth we uncover a plan. The woman who first owned this land and lived here for more than a decade was a gardener and she installed some beautiful plantings.  Daffodils and tulips have popped up, peonies seem abundant, and azalea bushes are emerging from what tried, very hard, to become forest.  What will surprise us when the weed trees are gone and more light reaches the bank of land behind the house?  Stay tuned.  ✦

A Lady Slipper prepares to bloom.
A Lady Slipper prepares to bloom.

 

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Image #270 – Fawn Hill’s Wildflowers

Side Hill Flower

 

This is my second summer at Fawn Hill. It’s an abbreviated one because of my Western travels last Spring and the Florida election this Fall. I will head back to Florida on September 5 and begin campaigning for Amendment 2, the medical marijuana initiative.

But even with an abbreviated stay of  about 12 weeks it has been a lovely time. The house has moved beyond the phase of everything seeming critical.  There are still plenty of fixer-upper things to do but last year’s sense of urgency is gone. More importantly, the hard work of last year has begun to pay.  The front side hill is a perfect example.  When we first arrived it was terribly overgrown with brambles and no small amount of poison ivy. It required most of last summer to eradicate both of those scourges.  But having cleaned out the mess I was then confronted with what to do with the space.  There were still plenty of things to do and so I let it slide.  When I arrived back in June of this year the wildflowers had begun to take over and I decided to let things go. It was the wait-and-see approach and it has been fun.

The center of the collage is an overall picture of what I currently have, a swatch of wildflowers. The always reliable Queen Anne’s Lace is a dominant player but there are others.  In the upper right is a close-up of what I now know is Punctureweed.  I have lots of it and have learned it is a scourge to grass eating creatures such as cows.  But the bees absolutely adore it and can’t seem to move fast enough to get every last bloom. Below that is a Butterfly Pea, a sweet little thing. The red Coreopsis, I confess, was bought and planted by me. I hope it lives long and prospers. I love the color. The last is Purple Milkwort and, as you can see, the bees like it also.

Next year I will help the area with some wildflower seed and perhaps some Cosmos seeds.  The area is so steep it is impossible to maintain anything too demanding. Wildflowers only demand the space to grow.  ❧

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