interrupted by green

on saturday alex, andrew, christina, amelia and i went on a short hike up and around freeport's hedgehog mountain—a mountain which is is hardly a mountain at all; in reality it is only a wee forested hill capped with a gigantic rock. from the rock's raised vantage point you can see the real mountains miles to the west, and also that other false mountain up the road named bradbury. the first half of hedgehog mountain's name makes a justifiable claim, however—a hedgehog population does, in fact, exist (although we didn't see any) in the freeport woods.

(it must be nice to be the person to name a place on a map. the people who originally came up with the names of hedgehog and bradbury mountains obviously had some fun with the naming process—a healthy sense of humor was at work here. otherwise why not simply call it the hedgehog woods? who can say.)

the day looked more like a sketch of fall than spring—the predominant color being a used, dried-out tea bag brown—and the bone dry conditions that have prevailed 'round these parts (the fire danger has been extremely high) turned the little streams and brooks in the hedgehog woods into mud holes which the three dogs immediately stumbled upon with the single-minded objective of testing the pure muddiness of them all—an exhaustive examination of the murky muck utilizing the dogs' highly specialized equipment of paws and tongues and noses. we humans stayed on the path and clomped over the little wooden trip-trap-billy-goats-gruff-style bridges.

tree buds were barely visible. as far as i could see in every direction along the trail there were no signs of color, no signs of a green spring anywhere in the wide open expanse below the mountain's summit (it feels silly typing mountain and summit), just a monochromatic dunnish brown crosshatched every so often by segments of broken stonewalls.

that is, until christina, the only seemingly aware-of-their-surroundings person in the group, made a discovery and said look, what's all that green over there?

green? really? here? where?

sure enough, there was a good sized splotch of green challenging the predominantly sepia canvas. we left the trail and walked over the drab, leaf-strewn landscape to discover a huge carpet of six-inch-ish daylily shoots. that was it—nothing but day lilies. hundreds and hundreds of day lilies.

in a couple months—if not sooner—when the day lilies in our zone start to bloom, i'll head back over to hedgehog and see what colors have been added to the artwork-in-progress along the forest floor.

~ the top photo is of two terra cotta pots filled with tall grass which were on my sunny, south-facing kitchen windowsill. i have an absolutely crazy craving for an indoor presence of bright green living shoots in winter.