The place that I chose for my phenology site is Salmon Hole on the Winooski river. I chose it because it looked like a beautiful interesting spot, and I don’t get to spend as much time at the river as I like, so I thought that choosing this would be a wonderful way to get out more. I also love the fact that this river goes past my home in Montpelier, and is fed by the North Branch of the Winooski which is one of my favorite rivers to explore, and so it literally connects me to where I come from.
To get there one has to go past Trinity, almost all the way to Winooski before doubling back on to Riverside Dr. From there there’s very clear signage to get to the river.
I loved looking at the different trees/vegetation this week. This area is very different from most of the ones I know, so I’m going to have to learn what the vegetation is called, but I noticed a lot of tall and small grasses, lichen, flowers, and a bunch of other shorter leafy greens. I did notice a lot of familiar trees though, like silver maple and cottonwood, which makes sense because we are next to a river. I also noticed common buckthorn, American beech, basswood, northern red oak, Norway maple, boxelder, and paper birch. I also nearly stumbled into some poison ivy as well.