Full circle

Fall,
summer

spring,
and winter.

Tulip poplars, in the grove down from Park Line Drive.

Red

Donna's favorite tree, my backyard, Sunday afternoon. (And she took this photo, too.)

Hint: if your really want to see the tree, enlarge the image by clicking on it, and check out the reflection in the window.

Gold

Maple leaf, Sunday afternoon, in the grove below Park Line Drive.

Donna and I were headed down into the Wissahickon to take photographs of the giant tulip poplars.

I love this time of year

Near Blue Stone Bridge, Sunday afternoon.

In the thick of it

Tulip poplars, in a deep grove off of Park Line Drive, Monday evening.

Back in April.

Back in January.

Companions

Spring house, giant sycamore, at Glen Fern (Livezey House).

The half of the big trees of the Wissahickon Hills are those that stand about the houses, or the sites of the houses, of the millers. All the houses are gone now save two, Glen Fern, the Livezey house; and the Monastery, built by the Gorgases and long lived in by the Kitchens. The Rittenhouse house, the home of the paper-makers, is still standing on Paper Mill Run, a tributary of the Wissahickon, and less than half a mile from the creek. Some of the mils on the creek, and their accompanying homes, were built as early as two hundred years ago. Some few of the trees that still stand are apparently as old as the houses they were left to shadow, or planted to shadow.
-- The Wissahickon Hills, Cornelius Weygandt, 1930

I don't know if this is one of the trees Professor Weygandt mentions in his book from 78 years ago, but isn't it nice to think so?

Not hummingbirds

Pine cones, Blue Bell Hill Meadow.

The hummingbirds are Back. I haven't seen them, but my next door neighbors, who started putting out feeders a few years ago after seeing the success I was having with mine, have. They were all excited when I got home tonight to tell me. I sat out on the front porch with them for a while and waited, watching. Then the noise and motion on Johnson Street became too much for me, and I retreated to the backyard.

I had a beer and read my book and looked up from time to time to see if anyone was hitting the feeders. No hummingbirds, but lots of cardinals and lots of sparrows were coming in. It was the first evening since last fall that I sat out back like this. The cardinals were singing, other birds were singing. Further off dogs were barking, car doors were slamming, voices of people coming and going -- I didn't mind, their noise making the seclusion of the backyard all the more precious.

No hummingbirds tonight, but that's okay. Good to know they're back. Good to sit in the backyard again. And good to realize that it is one of my favorite places to be.

Maple leaves

Young maple leaf, Blue Bell Hill Meadow, Saturday, April 19.

My first home on Naomi Street had a giant maple tree growing up through the middle of the back deck. (A hole had been cut out to accommodate it.) From the window in the back bedroom I could watch the buds swell in late March, and then over the course of a few days in mid April, open into leaves. I used to wonder when, exactly, does a bud stop being a bud and become a leaf?

But to ask that question was missing the point. "Bud" and "leaf" are nouns, and that tree at that time of the year was all verb.

The movement of spring is never more evident than right now, late April. Pass through the Wissahickon in the morning, and then take the same route home in the afternoon, and you will see growth in just those few hours. The weeds and flowers that line the trails will be taller against the measure of your leg or the height of your bicycle wheel. The leaves overhead will have thickened. The woods seem deeper. It's almost scary.

Pink

Pink blossoms, Blue Bell Hill Meadow, Saturday afternoon.

Last night I brought four cups of water to a boil on the stove, and then stirred in a cup of sugar. A ritual I haven't performed since last September. The hummingbirds will be back sometime in the next few days. I'll be ready.

That haze of green

Tulip poplars, near Rinker's Rock, Saturday afternoon. A sharp contrast from January.

JM + SF

If their relationship lasts as long as the scar they've put into the trunk of this beech they'll be doing well.

Not a dinosaur's foot

The roots of a gigantic beech, late Saturday morning, March 29, on the west side of the Wissahickon, near Summit Avenue.

Naomi Street, then and now

Naomi Street, separated by about a century. Are those the same trees? If so, it's rather humbling to think that they are still there, but not those people.

A poplar topic

We tend to call them tulip poplars around here, but they are also commonly known as yellow poplars or tulip trees. Reaching heights up to 120 feet, they are the tallest trees native to Pennsylvania, and they thrive in the Wissahickon.

The odd mixture of wild and urban that characterizes the park, gives us access not only to the great ramrod-straight trunks that crowd the slopes of the gorge, but from the higher bridges that span the Wissahickon and its tributaries, the vast spread of their upper branches. This time of year, cross the Walnut Lane or Henry Avenue Bridges, or in the case of this photo, the McCallum Street Bridge, which spans the Cresheim Creek, and you will find yourself amidst bare branches and twigs studded with the tree's strange fruit, reminiscent of the tulip shaped blossoms from which it gets its name.

Not a butterfly

Only a deflated Mylar balloon caught in the branches of a sycamore tree. Thursday afternoon, February 21, near where the bicycle path crosses Ridge Avenue.

Keeping the sycamores out

To the left, Germantown Avenue. To the left of that (and beyond the boundaries of this photo), Montgomery County and the grounds of Chestnut Hill College. To the right, Harper's Meadow, the northernmost reach of Philadelphia's Wissahickon Park.

They might be giants

Tulip poplars, Wednesday afternoon, January 30.

Wind chimes

Wednesday afternoon, around four, somewhere on the path between Rinker's Rock and Kitchens Lane Bridge.

Young beech trees keep their leaves far into winter. Walk down into the park from Park Line Drive and you are soon deep into a grove of tulip poplars. Interspersed among their great trunks are the lithe bodies of young beeches vying for their bit of sun on the crowded slopes. They lend copper to overwhelming gray, and when the wind picks up, as it is doing on this afternoon, a constant scratchy rustling against the whooshing of greater branches overhead.

Remembering old friends

Kitchens Lane Bridge, a little after noon on January 26. There used to be an ancient tulip poplar that leaned out over the water next to the bench from where this photograph was taken. The tree was huge, and on bright summer days, it delivered a lot of shade. But if you know anything about tulip poplars, you know that they are famous for being ramrod straight, and not leaning out over creeks. It came down into the water seven or eight years ago. I swear, you can still feel the space where it used to be.