Everything is Made out of Magic (or, Earth Garden XII: Nature Park in Early Spring)

“Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us.
In this garden — in all the places.”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

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So many surprises, so much magic, attending an April walk in the woods.

I went hoping for some salamander or frogs’ eggs in the vernal pools. But the pools are still pretty iced-over. The ice seems to be sitting on the bottom of the pools, with water on top. No eggs in any of them. No frogs heard, no amphibians seen. But the pools are ethereal, otherworldly, like Yellowstone geothermal caldrons.

vernal pool through trees

vernal pool

vernal pool, close

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I went expecting mostly clear trails and instead found them still half-covered with icy snow, as was the pond.

snowy trail

ice on pond

icywoodedtrailwiderAudubonTrails12April2015

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I didn’t expect insects but found them nonetheless (click for larger view).

Cladara atroliturata (scribbler moth) on leaves

Cladara atroliturata (scribbler moth) in motion

Osmia (mason) bees with mites, mating on bee box

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I didn’t expect, indeed never considered, a geocached treasure trove, and yet, there it was, now that the snow that covered it has melted. (It remains in situ.)

pretty obvious (now that snow has melted) geochache

geochache container

geochache

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And this green rock, embedded in the white one, like a grasshopper on snow: How magical is that?

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I’m always on the lookout for reminders of others who have been here before me.

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I saw some unusual forms and shapes.

Beech tree (Fagus grandifolia) with Beech Bark Disease

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This tableau reminded me of a tropical paradise, with the club moss transformed into a palm tree and the bright green of the moss on the stone the glassy green ocean. The leaves have become sand.

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Some signs of spring weren’t surprising but enchant nonetheless, like yellowing alder catkins and marsh marigold starting to emerge.

alder with catkins

alder catkins

emerging Caltha palustris (marsh marigold)

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I like to revisit the familiar … the familiars … the runes of the ever-enchanted forest, fields, pond: The apple trees, the meadow, the blueberry bushes, the birdwatch loop, the cattails.