January 09, 2014

Warm and wet...

I took a stroll around the meadow yesterday...
reaphook in hand...
intending to "rescue" young trees that had been overwhelmed by the vegetation...
bindweed and goosegrass mainly.


As I worked, I noticed that some of the willows had catkins...
most obvious were the Purple Willow variety "Cohu Blue"...
in fact it was the first I spotted...
they are very silvery when young.

Other Purple willow like "Green Dicks" had fewer showing...
but they were there none-the-less.

I parked the hook in the top of a post and started to look for signs of "Spring"...
a false Spring, brought on by these temperatures...
and sure enough, there were buds, here and there, that were breaking.

Other willows with easily observed catkins were the grey or Goat willows....
or Pussy Willow to most people...
the only catkins one should see at the present are on Hazel and Alder!

To me, this is worrying...
yes, it has happened before...
very many times...
but I need to be working with dormant trees...
and these are not dormant!

And, on the way back to collect the reaphook...
I spotted a Peacock butterfly that had been woken from hibernation..
with NO flowers to replenish its supplies, it is using up winter fuel!!

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