Adventures in My Own Back Yard

Normally the post you’d see here would be an account of my summer travels.  Well, 2020 has been many things so far, but normal is not one of them.  Having watched multiple international trips be scuppered by the pandemic, I’ve been left, like the rest of the world, to explore the only thing close at hand: my back yard.

However, unlike many, I’m lucky enough to live in a rural area where my back yard consists of twenty-two acres of woods and meadows.  

Picking my way along the trails where my landlady’s grandchildren ride their ATV, I discovered a whole little world of green and living things.  Watching them come back to life after the winter has been one of my greatest joys in the past three months.

Sweet gums in early April

Sweet gums in early May

I don’t have any quirky history to share about this little patch of Upstate, and having been my own tour guide, I didn’t come back with any amusing but factually dubious anecdotes from my tour.  But for anybody who might enjoy a bit of green, I wanted to share a few pictures.

The grape trellis from which my landlady never gets any grapes. The deer, however, enjoy the grapes a great deal.

I discovered that the pond next to my house is actually part of a creek that runs all the way through the property.

The pond, which perhaps doesn't show to its best advantage when coated with pine pollen.

I managed to get right down to the stream by following a deer trail.

I discovered hidden meadows I never knew existed…

A field full of bluebells.

And a field full of cornflowers, which around here are charmingly called raggedy sailors.

 …and hundreds of tiny beautiful things.

 

Green blueberries!

Ferns just uncurling

Vines hanging from branches like strings on a harp.

And I even met a few of my neighbors.

A toad in a log

An orchard mason bee on a thistle

In a way, the pandemic has been a lesson to me.  I’ve lived on this property for eight years, and it took a global shut-down to get me to explore it.  Before this, I’d never ventured beyond the end of my driveway--though, in my defense, that was partly because I was afraid of getting shot by my landlady’s son-in-law because I can never remember when deer-hunting season is.  

 

A deer blind covered in flowering wisteria.

I’m sure I’ll be among the first to start booking trips again once the crisis is over, but I hope in the future, it won’t take a pandemic to remind me that there are things very worth seeing right outside my own front door.