Roads of Community Living Series #8 Schilhammer Rd

Yup, we are still walking the dirt roads of Jericho, Vermont, and tagging a few photos along the way for our Roads of Community Living Series. My shoes and shoelaces reflect the April weather, a little bit of yellow/green, a little bit of black, and lots of brown as we walk Schilhammer Road in April 2020.

Nevertheless, the sun is warm, from time to time someone or something sticks their head out to say hello to us (from six feet, of course - four in this case).







Mount Mansfield still looks like a snow cone.



However, coltsfoot leads the way for flowers and they mimic the sun with their yellow and orange colors along with their determination to push through the graveled roadside.

Bells are ringing in spring. We may not fully see spring yet, but we can hear her voice in the birds, frogs, chipmunks, and feel her warm breeze today.

The blue skies seem to be reflecting all around us. 

The blues of winter, are now old hat.

The path to spring and rejuvenated life

is just ahead of us. 

We welcome her with open arms

and open hearts.

Goodbye old man winter, take your time in returning.

               Off come the snowshoes, out come the bikes and convertibles.

Stone age SUV?

Paint the barn red to draw in a good ole roasting hot summer.

No longer do we need to puzzle over whether we will run out of firewood before warm weather arrives.





Temperatures are rocketing upwards.
For that, we are darn pleased.




Perhaps it is time for me to change at least one of my shoelaces to a blue or red, or orange or even bright yellow!

Here are some earlier winter photos on Schilhammer Road.

Jericho Vermont Images of Community

EMAILED COMMENTS

Great shot of a Comma butterfly. I was surprised how fresh it looked rather than the

usual more worn appearance of the first adults to fly in the spring (those that have wintered over as adults). 

The wooly bear is the cat. of the Isabella M. Interesting that the caterpillar is by far better known than the adult of that species. Almost no one, other than a lep person,  seems to know what the "bear" turns into, except possibly that it is a moth. This always begs the most interesting question of just what is the relationship between moths and butterflies. For every species of butterfly, there are at least 10 species of moths and that is a low estimate.  

There were at least two species (in fact genera) of flower flies on your coltsfoot. I couldn't enlarge them quite enough to be able to say more about them. There actually may have been a total of three species amongst all the Diptera you photographed. Also, seems to be one "true" bug- hemipteran. Coltsfoot is truly a harbinger of spring and several species of insects wait for its flowering with great anticipation, often the coltsfoot is the only source of sustenance for many species in the very early spring flowering season, absent the Salix species which of course attract another whole guild of insects, even though we tend to think of willows as wind-pollinated.  

D.M.