There is a tremendous amount of muscadine growing on the mountain here. I looked up and saw this on Tuesday while walking the dogs.

This is actually a dead oak growing right next to the road. Its crown is a clump of muscadine vines.

The wikipedia article says that muscadine grows “wild in well-drained bottom lands that are not subject to extended drought or water logging.” But they seem to be doing quite well up here in the highlands. A few years ago I cut my way along our rear property line so I could find our interior property corner. A short straight section of the boundary had been staked at some time, so I used it to set my course through the woods. I had to cut a number of thin but tall trees to get a clear view up the property line. The trees are very thick there, so even in the best of circumstances it would be hard to get them to fall, but many times the crowns of the trees were intertwined with muscadine vines so the trees actually couldn’t fall.

I have tasted only a few of our native grapes. They are small, deep purple grapes with a strong flavor but very little flesh. The skins are very thick and tart.

The muscadines seem not to have produced much of a crop this year. I have been seeing unripe green grapes on the road and very few, if any, ripe or even ripening ones on the vines or on the road. Although, according to Wikipedia, some muscadines are green when ripe, as I mentioned, our muscadines are dark purple when they are ripe. The plants look fine, but they just seem not to be producing ripe grapes.

We have quite a lot of sumac shrubs around the mountain. There are several fairly large shrubs behind the house. They must be a bee’s dream, because every summer when the sumac blooms the bees swarm around them. I walk by one every time I take the dogs around the house. This is what it looked like a few days ago.

It seemed to have at least one of every kind of bee.

Our sumac produces creamy white flowers. There are some down on Huffaker Road that produce deep red flowers. One of our neighbors thinks sumac is poisonous, but this variety is not. The Wikiepedia article says that varieties with white drupes (fruit) are poisonous. I routinely pull small shoots out of the ground with my bare hands and have never had the kind of skin reaction that its relative poison ivy causes. According to that article, “true” Rhus species have red fruit. I don’t recall actually seeing red drupes on our sumac, but Leah assures me that’s what color they are. I’ll have to pay more attention later this year.

The major drawback of sumac in my view is that it spreads vigorously along its root system. If you cut one large sumac, its children continue to develop for years from the root system. That makes it hard to control. The Wikipedia article suggests goats as a control method. I doubt we’ll resort to that.

I just noticed our first blooms of the year.

These little crocuses are our earliest bloomers. They are so small they are easy to miss. These are under a dogwood next to our driveway. More surprising to me was the appearance of daffodils sprouting in the island next to the driveway.

They aren’t blooming yet, but you can see where the blooms are going to appear.

Does this mean we’re going to have spring this year?