A Hike in the Woods

I am staying at my grandmother’s house right across from the home I grew up in for a couple of weeks. I have not been back in my hometown area in the Spring since leaving for college. When working in greenhouses,  I had no free time during the busy Spring season to get away. Today I went for my first hike and expedition into the woods where I used to explore when I was a kid. Here are some photos from today’s hike.

I began near the old sugar house…. Much of the area is in a cow pasture, and I found that I am not as good at getting through barbed wire fences as I was as a kid. I remember spending time with my grandfather in this building when I was quite little while he kept an eye on the boiling sap that became Maple syrup. It is now sinking into the hillside and is not in very good shape.

Not too far up the hill from the sugar house, was this big tree that died and fell over.

Here is the pond where my sisters, brothers and I would spend summer days fishing. There are a pair of Canada geese swimming there now.  The cows used to be kept in this pasture, and would go up the hill behind the pond to another flat area of the pasture. We used to hike up there often to bring the cows down for milking…. it looks much steeper than I want to hike up now….

After I checked out the pond, I began my exploration of the woods. I used to love to see what flowers and plants were coming up as the weather warmed up. The first I ran across today were a few of these tiny little white flowers.

We called this little gem Spring Beauty. The flowers are tiny white to pale pink with magenta to plum purple stripes.  One needs to keep a keen eye out to find the little plants and flowers.

Here is the main “trail” I took…. It was a roadway where the sap was carried from the trees to the sugar house. It is not very easy to walk it now because of all the fallen trees, branches, and other obstacles. I ended up following a few deer trails off the old roadway to find the plants I was really looking for.  I felt like a mountain goat at times…. I was looking for Trilliums and Jack-in-the Pulpits that I used to love to watch growing and even moved a few to a natural garden near our house.

The woods were almost carpeted with the leaves from the Dog Tooth Violets.  The yellow flowers were not in all areas, though.  Here is one just opening.

The first of the real treasures I was looking for. Hiding in the piles of leaves was this Jack-in-the-Pulpit plant that was just beginning to show itself. It was hard to spot these, as most were not as far along than this one is.

This one is a bit different in color from the first. Not far from this one, I found a nice cluster of this color as well as the lighter colored ones. A few more up this far and lots more just peeking. A nice find….

Just as I was beginning to wonder if I would find any Trilliums, I made this discovery! I first found only leaves with no blooms, then found many groups of the red flowered ones. They covered quite a good sized area. I had remembered more white flowered ones than red, but today I found mostly red.

Here is a good closeup shot of one of the red flowers.

The lonely clump of white Trillium I found. I don’t know if there are more, but so far I found many more red ones. I will probably go on a bit farther another day and may find the  big group of white flowers. I do remember the colors growing in different areas in the past.

Another plant growing out from the bed of leaves next to a mossy old rotten log.

Once I followed the deer path out to the road, I could get a good view of the creek as it travels around the bend with the cherry trees blooming on the bank.

After returning from my hike, I enjoyed a slide show of these photos and many more I took, and I realized that the new direction my quilting began heading in is not only inspired by the area of PA that I live in, but has been influenced by my wanderings when I was  young in the woods and fields where I grew up, too.

Does anything in this quilt look familiar??  I guess I have been influenced by rocks, mud, dead trees and flowers through my whole life.