Sunrise at Spring Park

I went to Spring Park in Green Cove Springs this morning for the sunrise to see the partial solar eclipse. We have too many trees in our neighborhood for a good eastern horizon. What a beautiful morning!

The outlet of the spring into the St. Johns Rive in Green Cove Springs.

Looking back toward the spring: the white pool house is on the right and in the background the arched walkway surrounds the Green Cove Springs City Hall.

The wonderful light just before sunrise reflects from the water's surface.

There were a number other other people in the park taking in this special sunrise, but we were not alone--there were a lot of birds.

An osprey atop a bald cypress.

A great white heron in the rushes.

Before the sun rose into view.

As the sun rose up into the cloud bank, you can see the shadow of the moon at the bottom left in this partial eclipse.

The rising sun in the narrow shadow of a lone cabbage palm.

After the sun rose from the cloud bank we could see the shadow of the moon, but the sun blew out the photos.  So the above photo is the best shot of the partial eclipse.

The best view of the eclipse was in western Africa, but this was a wonderful morning.

Back to gardening next time. The plants are happy with the 2.75 inches of rain that we received yesterday along with a cold front. Cold is a relative term here in northern Florida--it was in the low 50s here this morning.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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You can never have too many leaves!

I enjoyed sharing some thoughts about creating a native woodland garden with a class this morning;  this was one of the "slides" that was part of my presentation, showing leaf collections from years past.

I love the leaf depot image -- bagged leaves on the old coal road, ready for spreading!

 

Here was today's haul, probably just the first of many for this fall  - my gardening companion can't pass up the bagged leaves in our neighborhood ready for pickup.  Fall has come later this year than usual, in an odd way -- with glorious fall color now in the first weekend of November, with leaves falling on a delayed schedule.

They have already been spread down the slope in the ravine forest!

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Bee habitats

I've been thinking about doing some interpretive work around native bees and other pollinators.

I was reminded of this wonderful "bee habitat" exhibit that I saw last year in the University of Osnabruck Botanical Garden just over a year ago.  I was a post-doc there (three decades ago) and it was a joy to see how the garden (just beginning then) had developed.

Bee habitat at Universitat Osnabruck Botanical Garden

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Biltmore walled garden (2)

I've loved seeing how the Biltmore Estate has expanded and experimented with their horticulture over the last few years.  Hooray!

It's always been a great place to enjoy the expansive grounds, the wonderful landscape, and preserved viewscapes of the surrounding mountains, thanks to the stewardship of George Vanderbilt, and his descendants.

Here were two views of the same interesting border in the Walled Garden, taken on an overcast day  -- lovely!

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A sedum wall planting

A lovely display outside the Biltmore Garden Shop -- I love sedums and it's always great to see how they can be used.

Although, they can get around -- they can get established very easily in mulch from fragments -- I just scooped up some last weekend in that category.  Hmm.

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Biltmore walled garden

I never would have thought I'd be blown away by mums, but Biltmore's horticultural staff created an over-the-top design for their walled garden fall display.

This photo doesn't really do justice to the extraordinary colors and textures that they've created, and the color patterns, too. (Click to get a larger view).

Close-up, the contrasting combinations of color in the mums were brilliant, in addition to using violas as a low accent.

I'd never visited in the fall before, I guess, but I'm glad we were able to drop by last weekend.

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Vase with dried flowers

I had refreshed this arrangement recently -- it looked so pleasing in this light, I couldn't pass on a photo.  (The flash version washed out the color, so this is the hand-held, non-flash, blurry one!)

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