Spring Plant Life

After a long hard winter many of us have been looking for signs of spring wherever we can find it. One of the things that may not have been noticed in yesterday's post was green grass sprouting up, right near the snake I talked about. It was actually an exciting thing that I mostly overlooked.

One of the first things I saw when I got on the trail in this new park was green grass and a bed of wildflowers on both sides of the trail. This is important because it was the first time this year that I've seen either of these. Everywhere else I've been so far has been completely brown and gray.

I took a few closeup pictures of the grass just to prove to myself that it was actually there. It only just began to grow, so it's still very small. You can still see a lot of old leaves from last fall, but the grass will soon cover them all up until they're gone.

It's a wonderful sight to see the first grass of spring. I've been getting a little frustrated, because I expected this to happen already in some of the other nature preserves. No matter how much I whined at the forest to hurry up, it still didn't happen though. Seriously, I know when it starts, the green will show up very fast.

As I said, I was expecting the grass. What i didn't expect was to see flowers sprouting up. These little blue flowers were growing wherever the sun shined through the trees. I really have no idea what kind of flowers they are, and believe me, I searched all over the internet to try and find out. Maybe one of you flower experts know.

I guess it doesn't really matter as long as we can all enjoy the nice blue of these little flowers. I didn't try to touch any, because I don't carry any field guides with me. Touching an unknown plant might be a very bad thing. Who knows? Sometimes that pretty flower you'd want to pick might turn out to be poisonous.

Well, I passed by the area with the green grass and the flowers. I was getting deeper into the woods now, and I saw a wooden structure of some kind up ahead. The first thing that came to my mind was railroad tracks. It was a strange thought, and I don't know why it came to me.

I had no idea what else it could be though. I saw a wooden platform across the path, and wooden railings to either side. The trees blocked the rest. There shouldn't be railroad tracks out here, so what else could it be? Whatever it was, it looked interesting. I continued to move forward.

Yes, I did find out what it was, and I'll reveal it to you tomorrow.

My Double Encounter

I promised yesterday that I would begin to show you some of the wildlife, and a few other things, I found at the new nature preserve I just visited. Since I was assuming that I wouldn't find any life out there, I was really surprised at one of the very first things I saw.

Just before I was about to go around a corner on the trail, I saw something move very slightly in the distance in front of me. When I focused my eyes to the shape in the woods, I was startled to discover that it was a lone deer! Deer were one of the last things I expected to see out here, but I should have known better.

There is something I've been wondering. Why do deer think that a little tree can hide them? I don't know why I ask that, because it does seem to work. As I began to slowly look around, I discovered that, as usual, there was actually a whole herd of them, each one hidden behind their own little trees.

As I continued to watch the deer, I noticed the sound of rustling leaves right behind me. It was the sound of the movement of an animal. I didn't want to look away from the deer, but whatever was moving back there was very close to me. I had to tear my eyes away from the deer, and turn around to look.

What did I find back there behind me? As you can see in the picture, it was this pretty good sized garter snake. The camera actually saw the snake better than I did. I just happened to get lucky and photograph most of the snake.

When I turned around to look, the snake moved again. All I saw was the movement of the leaves over the top of this sneaky little beast. I knew right away that there was a snake there. I had to concentrate to see it at all. I thought it was in a slightly different place than where I found it.

I would swear that there might have been more than one of them. I first thought I saw one about six inches above this one. It was very hard to see in these leaves. The camera picked it up rather well. This snake was less than two feet away from me. Too close for me!

This is only a relatively harmless garter snake, but any snake can bite. This one was also over two feet long, which can be a little scary for anyone who is as close to a snake as I was. Even so, I took a closer shot so anyone could see the pattern a little better.

This section in the last picture is the only part I really saw with my eyes anyway. I never saw the head until I got home and looked at the picture. I'm surprised it didn't slither away. Maybe it thought it was hidden well enough. Or maybe it wanted a white rat for lunch! Just joking, I hope.

I must have been a little nervous around it, because I only got two photos of this little garter snake before I moved away. Later on the trail, I saw the same rustling of the leaves more than three other times. This nature preserve is literally crawling with snakes!