Every Day is Arbor Day

“Bee Porn” – Hamnett Place Community Garden – Wilkinsburg, PA – A frisky honeybee getting down on a Plum blossom… Bow-chicka-wow-wow… I get frustrated with the idea of Arbor Day… Earth day as well… I mean really… Just one day each… Our only home and the objects on it that sustain life… And just one day…

“Cherry Blossom” – Hamnett Place Community Garden – Wilkinsburg, PA – Trees provide us with fresh air and food… They are critical to our existence… If not for the trees… The Earth would be nothing but dessert…

 

“Serviceberry” – Hamnett Place Community Garden – Wilkinsburg, PA – Serviceberry is among my favorite trees… Top 50 at least… The June Berry as it is often locally called is an important early Summer food source for many birds and animals… The name “Serviceberry” is a reference to its use in funerals during colonial times… Serviceberry blooms around the same time the ground thaws enough to bury a body in the spring… Now you know!

“Plum Blossom” – Hamnett Place Community Garden – Wilkinsburg, PA – One of the most common questions I am asked is how to tell when something is right… Pear being one of the more common subjects… A Pear is considered perfectly ripe when a fingernail pushed into the stem end easily creates a dent… You don’t want to pierce the skin… But it should easily indent… Learnt that from an older woman at the grocery store…

“Lycopodium obscurum” – Keystone State Park – Westmoreland County – For my little post-arbor day celebration… I bring you a rarity… The “Ground Pine”… But it is actually a species of clubmoss… Relatively rare now… It was once almost eliminated due to its value in the Christmas industry… It can now be found growing in small clonal colonies across the Northeast United States…

“Immature Lycopodium” – Keystone State Park – Westmoreland County, PA – A single years growth… Each umbrella like layer is like the rings of a tree… a years growth…

“Mature Lycopodium – Forest Under Forest” – Keystone State Park – Westmoreland County, PA – A fully grown Lycopodium obscurum… The cone looking thing on top is actually a strobili… Or spore bearing structure… Surprisingly… This plant is closer in relation to a fern than a conifer…

 

plant petunias and question everything – chriscondello

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