Back to the Bogs…
I have been waking up EARLY the last few days courtesy of a wood thrush that has taken up residence outside of our window. He’s marked the start of the songbird migration, which began around the first of the month for the wood warblers and other emphatic vocalizers. Spring is in full swing.
Wedding Day
It’s nice to be back after a fantastic wedding week with friends and family in New Jersey. It’s amazing how fast the season has progressed during the week away. The forests are dense, and the wildflowers in the woodlands are fading. My attention therefore has been on bogs, which offer a very narrow window of peak shooting in the spring. With rain and wind in the forecast for the weekend, I ran over to Ponemah Bog last night with some friends.
On the way over, we stopped at Bob Janules’ place, and he led us to one of the most exquisite woodland flowers, the Fringed Polygala. What a treat to catch this tiny beauty in full bloom.
Fringed Polygala
At the bog, we found things already beginning to pass, but plenty of flowers still in bloom. The incoming storm choked off sunset, but this place is rarely about the sky, but the beauty along the floating path. Blueberry bushes, dense with flowers, rhodora in patches, and cotton grass mixed throughout create a natural experience that is quite unique.
Wide View of Ponemah Bog
Rhodora and Cotton Grass
Late Light on Rhodora
I hope to still catch these scenes with a morning fog sometime soon, but the window may shut this year before I can. Perhaps Sunday morning, perhaps a dream for another year…
This weekend, given the rain, I’m going to try to get out to some streams, and still hope to catch some woodland wildflowers. Posts should be much more regular in the coming weeks as we transition now to summer, and meadow flowers!
