My area requires a tiny amount of rock climbing to get to, so I didn’t visit it until the rain had started to clear away the snow that covered most of Burlington.
However, this was absolutely not a good idea, and the mixed slurry of half melted and refrozen water was probably more treacherous than the few inches of snowfall I’d been afraid of. The trails to get to my place were fine, if a bit muddy, but the Redstone Quarry itself has a bunch of exposed rock that still had patches of ice that made stepping uncertain. After 2 or 3 close calls, I realized that slipping and bashing my head on the rock was both a likely and unwelcome outcome of the trek to my spot, so I slowed my pace.
While the last time I’d visited my spot, there had been some leaves desperately clinging to life on the branch, this was no longer the case. The young Norway Maples had lost all but a few shriveled brown leaves, and the last leaves from the many Common and Glossy Buckthorns had fallen off. However, what was most surprising to me is that the ancient willow still had leaves somehow. They were very yellow, almost brown, but they were hanging on. I’m sure it must be non-native then, because so far, the last things to lose leaves (other than the evergreen Common Junipers and Eastern Red Cedars) have all been non-native.
I’ve come to realize that Redstone Quarry is not a very wild space. With the leaves gone, the illusion of nature is even less convincing, since you can stare directly at a road and series of houses that were not at all visible when I first chose the spot. But at least the wintertime means the neighborhood dogs bark less. I suppose animal activity did decrease since the last time I came here, but it feels silly to point it out because 99% of the animal activity was domesticated dogs. The other 1% of that was a squirrel I saw on one of my visits. Unfortunately, they were probably sheltering in their den because I didn’t see any sign of them at all.
It just feels difficult to talk about the phenology of the site when it all feels so artificial. I tried to not get any houses in my photos because that felt like a privacy violation, but then I realized I didn’t have any photos at all, so I went back and sketched the twisted limbs of various plants.
