Winter Walk-Off 2017, Spoiler Alert -- There are Snakes

Hard to believe it is that time again, time for the Winter Walk-Off, a blog meme sponsored by my friend Les at A Tidewater Gardener. The rules are the same as last year, and all previous years-- Powered under your own two feet, explore your area and photograph it. No photos of your own garden. Post your walk and link back to Les' blog. His post is here, so you can read the fine details. Participants have a chance to win one of two prizes. I can attest to the fact that the prizes are pretty nice. 

So on with our walk. Last year, well really a year ago Thanksgiving, we started walking. I mentioned my daily steps last year in my Walk-Off post.  Last year my daily goal was 11,000 steps a day. I increased my goal to 12,500 sometime this winter. A daily walk, regardless of the weather, is good for you. I am so glad we walk, though there are days where I am not as motivated as others. 

Our neighborhood street, heavy traffic

 As we walked today, I noticed how early all the trees are budding and some are blooming. This is the time of year where I like seeing the pears. The white blooms are pretty, but what a weedy, thorny, invasive, weak-wooded tree.

The Houstonia sp., Quaker Ladies or Little Bluets, are blooming now. We have a couple different varieties. H. caerulea and H. pusilla are the most common.

Such sweet little blooms

As I said, we walk, the 'we' being my husband and I with our dogs. This past October we got a new puppy, my husband is walking her in this photo. Liebling is a German Shepherd. She will be 6 months old on Thursday. To see more puppy pictures, check out my Flickr link on the sidebar.

Here she is with our older dog, Skyler. He is thirteen years old and still active. Today we walked to our neighborhood gazebo- a longer walk than what we have done since getting Liebling, about 4 miles round trip. 

More early bloomers are the vines native to our area, Carolina Jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens. It usually blooms a month or so later.  

Another tree blooming is the Winged Elm, Ulmus alata. Rather a scruffy tree, but with the 'winged' appendages it is quite sculptural.  

I hadn't planned on taking photos for this post today until I encountered this little guy--
The warm weather has the frogs singing and the snakes emerging. This is the first snake of the season for us. All photos for this post were taken with my cell phone!

Brown Snake

Kind of scary looking right? Not really. He is tiny. Brown Snakes are not large snakes but good to have in the garden. With all the voles we have in our garden, I welcome each and every snake! To read more about the Brown Snake, this website has some great information- Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. After our photo shoot I moved him off the road so he won't have a mishap with a passing car.

See, not that big!

Hope you enjoyed our little stroll. Go over to A Tidewater Gardener to see where Les walked and the others who are joining the Winter Walk-Off 2017.





©Copyright 2017 Janet. All rights reserved. Content created by Janet for The Queen of Seaford. words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.

Winter Walk-off 2013

For the last couple years Les has hosted a Winter Walk-off, where you have to get out of your garden and take your camera with you.   The rules are pretty simple, you have to travel on your own two feet and share what interests you along your walk.  After you post, you are to give Les a link to your post so he can share it.
My walks are always accompanied by Newton and Skyler....my four-legged buddies.  Last year I had Monroe as well but she has since passed away.  Hers was a good long life, she made it to 18.  You can see last year's post here, and the year before's post here.
On with our walk--- Newton is the black dog and Skyler is the Aussie, he hears the wind which can sound like a car coming.

For those who are new here, we live in the country, sort of.  The development isn't built out yet, which we love.  It feels like we have it to ourselves.    Our walk today is out the driveway and to the right.

Looking back toward my house.... there is one house that is a second home, so most of the time we are by ourselves in this direction.   Their house is at the turn, you can sort of see their driveway marker.  

My walks are constant observation of nature, no gardens or plantings can be seen for most of the walk.   At one point in the walk you can look through the woods to the lake.  There is a cove that we are looking across.   A few years ago you could see the next neighbor's house across the cove through the trees, but now there is too much growth.  Do you see the bird?  Bird watching is always part of my walks.

 
Ok, how about if I zoom in a bit?  Still kind of hard to see, it is a Red-tailed Hawk.

I noticed a strange growth on some of the stalks of some Goldenrod blooms.  I had to search for these to get a good photo again....some stretches of the road seem to run together.    Have you ever seen anything like this before?  My first thought was some kind of gall where the insect has entered the plant material and the plant builds up some growth around it as a defensive mechanism.  I had to pick one and bring it back home to see what I could find out.

I snapped it off and took it home to further investigate.  

I decided to cut it in half and see what I could find.

It is some kind of larvae, anyone know what it might be?  I am stumped. 

Back to the walk, lots of grasses and spent flower heads, sparkling in the sun.  

This time of year I really enjoy the pines that grow close to the road as they put off a wonderfully fresh scent of pine.  I think it is really refreshing and clean smelling.  This one especially is fragrant, maybe it is close to the road, whatever the reason, I look forward to walking past it.  

Along the edge of the road are lots of small Winged Elm, Ulmus alata.  You can read more about them here, one of my tree posts.  They are so sculptural.   Like all the corky appendages along the small trunk?

As we end our walk I am able to capture a good picture of Mr. Eastern Bluebird.  I have a lot of bird activity along the walks, love having the chance to get a good picture of one.

Be sure to head over to Les' blog and see other Winter Walk-off posts.  Spring is just around the corner!!!



©Copyright 2012 Janet. All rights reserved. Content created by Janet for The Queen of Seaford. words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.

Walking With The Queen and Friends

It's that time of year for the Winter Walk-off.   This walk is hosted by Les over at 'A Tidewater Gardener'.   Last year I participated with this post ' Walk Through the Neighborhood...'   Last year I came out of the driveway and turned right.  This year we turn left....The gravel in the top center of the picture is the top of my driveway.  I share this picture to show the dip in the land.  This will be referenced later in this post.   And now, we turn our back on the driveway and walk..

 The 'we' I keep referring to is of course the doggies.   The black and white and gray one is Skyler, our Aussie, the only purebred.  Newton, the black one, is part Aussie and Shepherd.

 Serving as our anchor (she stops and sniffs, re-sniffs, stops again, ready to turn back every few feet) on our twice a day walks is Monroe, our Chow/Shepherd mix.  She is a tough old gal.  This week marks her 18th birthday.   I never thought she would make it so long.  Our drive from Virginia to South Carolina was about 8 hours long...she paced the back seat, back and forth,  the entire trip.  That was 2010.   She doesn't like walking this way because of the slope of the road....hard for her old bones to make it uphill.

 I know Les said not to take pictures of our garden...this is my septic field.  I share this one only because I want you to see the slope of the land.   See the rocks along the road?  There is a low area on either side of the road...and a stream that runs under the road after a rain.  In the top photo the rocks are on the left side of the picture.   Some of the daffodils from last year are up and blooming...this will be my wildflower meadow in a month or so.

Coming next to the low spot we can see down into the woods....  I love how the sunlight dances through the trees, illuminating the forest floor.

 In the photo above you see my name,  this is where the wild blackberries are starting to leaf out.  Last year some of the weekend folks came by with a carload of kids and picked it clean!    See all the new growth?

 A big thicket of berry brambles.

 See how the brambles line the edge of the forest?  Makes it tough to get through to wander in the woods.

 Wanted to share another picture of this lovely little blue/violet flower.  Initial thoughts of it being a Bluet are agreed.

 A few of the neighbors have some nice natural rocks emerging from their property....these are at the top of two driveways.

 As I shared last year, I love the native grasses that turn a lovely shade of tan this time of year.

After I put the dogs in the house I thought I should continue the Winter Walk-off.   I traveled about 400 feet north... to the lake.  I then turned in the same direction that I walked with the dogs along the road.  The lake is still lower than what it will be in the summer.  The level started coming up January 31st.   During the winter the level is lowered for the health of the lake as well as allowing folks to do dock repair, and the turbine maintenance at the dam.   It comes up about a half a foot every two weeks.
Since no one lives on the 5 lots next to us in this direction, it feels like a nature preserve.  The shoreline is lined with Hibiscus moscheutos.  Love the seed heads that stay all winter.    The dock you see in the distance is in disrepair, on a lot that has no house.   The Herons like sitting on the roof and fishing for dinner from there.








Another plant I have come to learn a bit more about it the Hazel Alder Alnus serrulata.   The new female flowers are the red ones at the top of the photo, the male flowers are the catkins.  The spent female flowers look like little pine cones.

As the lake level is down, there are some really cool stumps--- I first thought this could be a neat piece of driftwood.  WRONG!  It is an old tree, still anchored quite firmly in the bed of the lake.

 At the corner of the cove by this driftwood is a large Vaccinium blueberry, not sure on the species.  The flower buds and leaf buds are ready to open soon.

I reached the cove, the end of my walk for today.  Remember at the top of the post where I showed you the low spots on each side of the road?  I said there was a stream that goes under the road when we have rain.  Well, this cove is where it empties into the lake.  Since we just had rain I decided not to walk further, it gets soggy underfoot.

Thanks for coming along with me on my walk(s) today.  Be sure to join Les in his challenge to post YOUR Winter Walk-off.


©Copyright 2012 Janet. All rights reserved. Content created by Janet for The Queen of Seaford. words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.

A Walk Through The Neighborhood (The Winter Walk Off Challenge)

A day or two ago Les challenged us to talk a walk through our neighborhood and take some photos of the last days of winter.  I love the long shadows that the morning sun casts on the front walk.  This was taken before the walk....the dogs like to get up early, I keep telling them  we are retired!

 In the back garden the new trellis that holds the Carolina Jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens.  This morning it held water droplets from the big storm that blew through last night.

 The rising sun plays with the trees in the woods along our side yard. 

As we began our walk  I wanted to make sure to get a good photo of the tiny green leaves emerging from the brambles along the road. 

 The sky was so blue after a wild storm last night that produced a tornado or two in the area.  We saw some trees down, one on a house in Abbeville.  I love the white bark of the Sycamore against the clear blue sky.

 You may have noticed I have been saying 'we'.  I take the dogs for a walk every day, all three of them. 

 These last few days I have had my friend Linda visiting from Seaford.  Yes, one of my loyal subjects.  She agreed to take Skyler's leash.  You can see the red in the maples starting to bud and the clean green of the stand of pines.

We have a lot of native grasses that are a beautiful shade of tan/russet/beige, standing tall through the winter.  I like these grasses.

Down in one of the swales there is a tree blooming that stands out against all the others.  Not sure what it is, YET.  Might be a pear or plum -- I will figure it out.

 The birds are building their nests, this one was really low, about 3 or 4 feet high in a small sapling.   Not sure whose nest it is... could be from last year.

The high winds from the thunderstorm blew some of the spent blooms from the Tulip Poplars into the street.

Once home from our walk we checked out some of the plants in the yard.  Jane is starting to bloom!!!  What a treat.  I love her buds.

Thanks for joining me and Linda on our morning walk with the doggies.  How is the winter winding down in your neck of the woods?? (Be sure to visit Les and participate in this challenge)

words and photos by Janet,The Queen of Seaford.