Getting Close to Spring

        "Spring" is approaching. It will arrive at 12:15 p.m. tomorrow in our area. As I remember from many, many years ago at school the arrival of spring means equal hours of  day and night and the sun rises exactly in the east and sets exactly in the west. 

        Guess what? It's not exactly true due to the tilt of the earth. Equal hours happen at different times at different latitudes.  Where we live, at 43 degrees 13 minutes north, the equal hours happened already on March 17. The sun rose and set at east and west within less than a degree of difference yesterday the 18th and today, the 19th. Tomorrow, the official time when spring arrives, we will have 12 hour and just over 9 minutes of day time and the sun will rise 1 degrees north of east and set 1 degree north of west. So it goes.

        This first photo is from Sunday, March 18 at the minute the sun is supposed to rise i.e. the top rim of the sun is just above the horizon. Of course there is no way I can see that with trees and clouds in the way.

        So, this is 13 minutes later on the same morning when I first saw the sun rising above the trees. According to my compass it was at least 3 degrees south of east so I don't know if the compass was off or my information from the internet was off or if it moved south of east very quickly.

        Just for the record, below is one of the earlier spring flowers for this spring. It was found in a protected courtyard at the Royal Botanical Gardens and was planted there as a cultivated flower. I have seen them as naturalized flowers in a few locations over the years and was puzzled for several years as they are not in the wild flower guides.

Winter Aconite

Aconit d'hiver

(Eranthus hyemalis)

[er-AN-thus   hy-EH-may-liss]

Common Mullein

Common Mullein

Grande molène

(Verbascum thapsus)

First blooms found this year - July 4, 2017

Photo Taken - August 21, 2017

Spotted Lady's Thumb

Spotted Lady's Thumb

(aka Lady's Thumb)

Renouée persicaire

(Persicaria maculosa)

(aka Polygonum persicaria)

First blooms found this year - June 22, 2017

Photos Taken - August 20, 2017

Photo of the entire plant.

Photo of sheath with short fringes.

Photo of flower and some seeds.

Still Here

July is almost gone and there is little in this blog that shows that I am alive. So it goes. We were on a "Discovery Tour" if Iceland during the last few days of May and the first few in June and I have been playing catch up ever since. I do not seem to be very good at the game.

I did not think, until I was home, that I should have been writing when I was in Iceland. That being said, we were so busy that we did not even have time to download the cameras every day and we certainly have not had time to sort through all the photos since then.
I would like to make a book of some of the photos, just in case the internet and/or the computer breaks down but I have not got beyond thinking about the first day's photos so who knows if it will ever happen.

My web page re flowers and flower walks is calling me so I need to make up some maps for a couple of new locations and it has to be done yesterday or before so I guess I better stop writing here.

Sigh!

Northern Water Plantain

Northern Water Plantain

aka Larger Water Plantain

Alisma commun

(Alisma triviale)

First blooms found this year - July 5, 2017

Photos Taken - July 13, 2017

Two species of Water Plantain

are in our area.

This one is the more rare of the two.