I'm finding that my senses are stronger and more easily accessible whenever I'm outside now, even when involved with my two little ones. This is a change I experience every year during the Challenge, and it still feels revolutionary, like I am becoming a different person, a wildly alert animal-person.
I approached the pine from a different angle tonight and discovered a funny little tree, not three feet high, that appeared to be impersonating a beech. It held the long, thin, scaly brown buds of a beech in winter, only they were massive, at about four inches long, longer by far than any I've beech buds I've ever seen. As I examined it, it occurred to me to wonder whether I had *perhaps* let my beech identification rest on its laurels once the winter was over, and that I had never bothered to actually watch what those pretty little pointy buds turn into come springtime. Bingo.
This is the closest image I could find of the stage my beech is in now, from the Peterson Institute of Natural History website:
The more closed buds in this picture are more representative of what ours look like right now. I nudged one open to peek inside when I was still puzzling over the type of tree, and was astonished to see the fragile hair-covered, wrinkly, newborn puppy ears inside!
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