NR 1010+1020 Phenology – cate bilbe

Winter is here in Centennial Woods! If I thought the woods looked dead last time I was here, I was wrong. Still beautiful though!

Any lingering leaves have left and everything has gone grey. There is a bit of green left along the stream but that’s about all the color that is left. The ground is still littered with leaves that are starting to decompose and wither away.

There was never many signs of animals that I observed in my phenology spot. The only thing I can say is that parts of the creek have started to freeze over so that would have an effect on any organisms in and around the water.

Here is a photo that I thought was gorgeous. It has been so interesting to be able to return to this same spot and be able to see how the woods have changed. I love this spot with its place to sit on the bridge over the stream just on the edge of the heavily wooded area. It’s been cool to look back on photos from a couple months and see just how much it has changed. I have really liked watching the stream slow down and prep for winter and begin to freeze over. It’s a great reminder of how things will ebb and flow but will neutralize again one day. See you next year Centennial!

Over Thanksgiving break, I traveled home to New Orleans, Louisiana. It was great to get a break from the beginnings of the Vermont winter and to be able to go home and wear short sleeves. As a very urban community, New Orleans doesn’t have many unmanicured green spaces, but there are a few if you know where to go. Nestled in City Park between roads, golf courses, and sports fields lies the Couterie Forest. It is one of the only preserved natural places in the city. It rests north of downtown New Orleans in Lakeview and contains a whole system of bayous.

My new spot sat between the walking path and a segment of the bayou. It was a little spot to sit surrounded by trees on two sides and water on another. I sat there for about fifteen minutes and watched the water for an alligator, but I didn’t spot one.

Below was my view as I sat! As you can see, in comparison to my spot in Burlington, my new spot is still very green and alive. My dog Charley came along to keep me company!

Surprisingly, my new phenology spot reminded me a lot of my spot in Centennial Woods in Burlington. There were many maple trees at my new spot in New Orleans, just like in Centennial. There were obvious differences, like the bayous, the big palmetto trees, and the coloring. Unlike Vermont, which is already deep into stick season, Louisiana is still green and full of leaves. We never lose all of our leaves, but eventually the forest will look pretty grey. One of my favorite parts of New Orleans and the Couterie Woods is the palmetto trees. You can see them in the above photo: they look like ferns and are set like big fans. Relatively speaking though, my spot in New Orleans and my spot in Burlington look vaguely similar because they are both very understory heavy and full of bushes and vines.

The Couterie Forest and the park it sits in both mean a lot to me for a lot of different reasons, one of which being that a friend of mine passed away in this park, so the Couterie Forest always makes me think of them. I thought long and hard about what gift to leave here. I ended up just taking a pretty leaf off the ground and set it in the bayou and watched it float away, and took a few minutes to sit with the grief and the love and the acknowledgement of all that this land holds.