A small seedling tree with a light gray trunk rises from mostly bare soil, with a tiny branch with reddish brown bark slanting off to the right. On the left of the trunk, a tiny light green bud is growing, and a tinier spot of red and light green shows where another bit of growth is emerging from near where the branch joins the trunk. Here and there around the small tree violets are blooming among deep green leaves.

Today’s photo shows a little sourwood tree (Oxydendrum arboreum) not giving up.

We bought this little thing late spring last year & it sat in its pot waiting to be planted all through summer.

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#2026photos #nativeplants #virginianativeplants #backyardforest

(It’s too late tonight to list all the plants pictured here, but I can do it tomorrow if anyone wants to know!

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#backyardforest

I could have planted something else there instead, but I wanted it to be a hazelnut because some of them have buds that are really coming along, & because I read something last year about plum/hazelnut thickets. (Need to read more on that.)

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A patch of moss is shown in close-up, with short, medium-dark, sort of olive-colored leaves and above them vivid round neon green bladders atop slender yellowy stalks. The moss is growing on wet ground amid bits of mulch and dried plant matter.

For today’s photo… moss. 😍 I don’t know much of anything about moss, but my photo app and Seek both identified this as common bladder-moss (Physcomitrium pyriforme). I’m awaiting confirmation on iNaturalist, but its appearance fits the name!

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…juuuuuuust beginning to look like something that could turn out to be leaves.

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The other day we hacked up an Aucuba that was in the middle of it that we didn’t want to keep. Next to that there’s a little serviceberry growing, and I want to transplant the other baby serviceberries there to make a little thicket.

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We already had pawpaw seedlings from the Dept. of Forestry, & chinquapin seeds too, but there’s no guarantee either will grow, so we thought it would be nice to have some that already got a start. Maybe more genetic diversity this way, too?

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The veins of a dry leaf remain where most of the connecting material has fallen away, though pieces of it are still there. The leaf’s remains are a pale clay color, and it rests in loose, medium brown soil.

For today’s photo, another ghost sighting! This one was I think a black cherry leaf (Prunus serotina). Found while clearing a new bed & regrettably covered up by accident when moving soil around. Oh well. It’ll do some good in there.

#2026photos #nativeplants #virginianativeplants #backyardforest

Rocks of various shapes in shades of white, pink, sand, and gray line part of an area of bare dirt in which a couple of shrubs grow, one with bare branches & one with dry leaves still hanging on it. Between them a black wire basket is upturned over some dry leaves, and more dry leaves are scattered on the ground. In the background, tall grass is flopped over in drifts.

A path of partly bare ground with some very short grass and violet leaves passes between and around two areas of bare dirt partially lined with light-colored rocks. Each contains a couple of small trees or shrubs, some surrounded by chicken wire or covered by an upturned black wire enclosure. In the background are areas of tall grass, a brush pile, a blue tarp, a white fence, and a shrub with bright yellow blooms.

Yesterday was frustrating, I had a bad headache all day & never managed to get started on anything. But today made up for it: I cleared this area of tall floppy grass & creeping charlie by hand, got some Allegheny chinquapin seeds (Castanea pumila) planted, edged, & set the rocks!

#backyardforest

It can’t really stay where it is I think, but we waited too long to move it & I think it’s too big now. But it’s so pretty, I keep hoping to find a solution. One thing I consider: is it true that it can’t stay there, or am I just being hampered by conventional thinking?

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#backyardforest

The skeletal tracery of a piece of bulbous plant matter, very pale grayish beige, with ribs slightly thicker than the rest of the remaining structure, and generally shaped like a kind of fat pepper, is seen resting on loose grayish-brown dirt.

For today’s photo, the ghost of a ground-cherry! Probably longleaf ground-cherry (Physalis longifolia). Lovely little things - they look like paper lanterns when they’re growing. Found while clearing a bit for a path in the #backyardforest.

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A brown stem with a whitish-gray cloudy coating on it in places points straight upward, topped with a pale, slender bud with slightly curved pieces on either side. In the background, out of focus, are tall grasses and piles of brush, a light brown lattice, and the side of a brick house.

I walked around the garden in a soft rain for a while today, looking for (native) green things, but most of our garden is still in waiting mode. So today’s picture is a bud on our blackhaw viburnum (Viburnum prunifolium).

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And at the very end I did get one of the cages staked down around a little black oak (Quercus velutina) that had come back after all its buds were nipped off last winter. So that shouldn’t happen again!

However I also got a tiny bit of metal in my finger for my troubles. 😠

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#backyardforest

Small bundles of tiny seedling trees are laid neatly in a row on partially snow-covered ground, with the roots pointing toward the viewer. The bundles are bound with green twine and/or plastic tags, which read from left to right (some of them upside down): Hazelnut; Am. Plum; [unreadable orange tag]; Persimmon; Black Gum; Oak, Black; Oak, Chestnut; Paw Paw; Oak, Chinkapin; White Oak; Gray Dogwood.

Today’s picture shows *almost* 60 trees!

When I unwrapped them to get a look at them & get them situated to wait for planting, I found that the bur oaks (Quercus macrocarpa) had accidentally been forgotten.

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A number of small seedling trees are bundled together with their roots wrapped in clear plastic and placed in a narrow brown cardboard box.

Today’s photo: it may not look like it, but this is 60 trees!

Tomorrow I hope to get them unwrapped, get a better look at them, & get them situated in a temporary home until we can get them in the ground. Today it’s just too windy and I don’t wanna!

#2026photos #backyardforest

Hope to end up with some of these one day! Once we make a better habitat for them…

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Eighteen small, dark brown, glossy nuts, resembling chestnuts or acorns without their caps, are gathered on a crumpled paper towel. Some have bits of white root already emerging.

Cheating a bit because it was dark before we got back from the conference & I’m tiiiiiired.

Today’s photo isn’t something in the yard but something that *will be* in the yard: some Allegheny chinquapins (Castanea pumila) we were given at the conference!

#2026photos #nativeplants #backyardforest

Then again, we have SO MANY baby trees to pick up on Monday, and a lot of chicken wire cages to make before then…

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#backyardforest

Two of our favorite native plant nurseries, @sevenbendsnursery.bsky.social & @watermarkwoods.bsky.social are on the list! Our local garden center also participates & we purchased our shagbark hickories (Carya ovata) there through this program two years ago. #backyardforest

Black Cherry is an early successional tree, among the 1st to appear when forests start to regrow. Many people think of it as weedy.

But it hosts over 450 species of caterpillar, & 33 bird species eat its fruit. (Plus a few more eat those caterpillars!)

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#backyardforest #gardeningforwildlife

It makes sense to protect them for a little while, so they can feed more critters when they get big.

And in this little tree’s case, so its leaves can again turn the most gorgeous deep red you’ve ever seen when next fall comes around.

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#backyardforest

A closeup of the trunk of a small tree, about 4-5 inches in diameter. It grows straight, with no branching at this point, its dark gray bark split more or less vertically by light brown cracks from the growth of the tree, and covered in lighter gray patches elongated horizontally. Two small holes appear in the trunk near the middle of the picture, perhaps an inch apart, with the one on the right slightly higher than the other. The inside of the holes appears reddish brown. In the background, out of focus, is a snowy scene.

For today’s photo, a mystery! (To me anyway, likely not to some of you fine scholars.)

Anyone know what made these holes in our little oak (Quercus sp., likely palustris [pin oak] but anyway something in the red oak group)?

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I now desperately want to put a very small vernal pool in our garden but I don’t think the city code will let me.

#gardeningforwildlife #backyardforest

The trunk and upward-sweeping bare branches of a tree are silhouetted dark gray against a blue evening sky, darkening toward the top of the photo, with wispy gray-white clouds. Between the top branches a partially visible moon glows.

Today’s photo is one of our two pecan trees (Carya illinoinensis), with a moon caught in its branches.

It took me years to identify these! I thought they were some sort of hickory (a close relative of pecan).

Pecan isn’t native to our county, or even our state.

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#backyardforest

Search The Database - Wildfoods 4 Wildlife

Hackberry feeds absolutely loads of animals, as you can see at this link, so we are glad to have them in our #backyardforest!

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#gardeningforwildlife

We’re not quite in the Northeast, but hope to support some of these with our #backyardforest as it grows!

We tend to associate #pollinators with fields of flowers, and flowers are great! But many, many, many pollinators rely on trees - to feed their larvae, & for leaves for winter shelter too!

I’m not sure which type of serviceberry they are - too small to tell yet - but bunches of them sprang up in the gravel behind our screened porch last year. Getting the rest of them moved somewhere more suitable is another of this year’s projects!

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When we moved this tree maybe 4 years ago from where it grew too close to our porch, it was about 4’ tall. Now I’d guess it’s 12’. I had a hard time finding an angle because I wanted only sky behind it - but I hope one day it’s even harder, as our #backyardforest grows in.

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The bare branches of a young tree curve upward silhouetted against a blue sky with wispy white and gray clouds. In the overall picture the branches appear dark, but on close inspection they are a soft brown-toned gray. A very few dried leaves cling to some of the branches. In the background, a church spire topped with a cross appears.

The thing about the sycamore (Platanus occidentalis) whose branches curve up to the sky in today’s picture is I keep worrying it might actually be instead a London plane (Platanus x acerifolia, a sycamore hybrid).

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#2026photos #nativeplants #virginianativeplants #backyardforest