Winter Wanderings - December

Winter time in Maine is beautiful! Big, fluffy flakes swirling around in the blue-gray sky make the evergreen-covered mountain look like it's inside a snowglobe. But winter time in Maine is also cold. Very cold. And it's hard to get outside to enjoy the dim sunlight and explore our surroundings. So that's where Winter Wanderings came in!

Where did we go and what did we see during the first couple of weeks of winter?

Well, we went to the arboretum on a blustery, sunny day.

A "Secret Garden" walk under the pine
boughs.

We call these sticky seeds "puckers" and they come from
"pucker bushes", but I don't know what they're REALLY
called. LOL

Another winter flowering seed shrub.

Pitch pine cone and tassel

Pitch Pine cone

Sugar Maple, Balsam Fir and White Pine
climbing a hay bale in the field.

Perhaps next time White Pine will listen
to his Mom and where a WINTER
jacket on our walk! ((wink))

And then we explored the glacial erratic trail at the Settlement Quarry on the island. (Oh, "glacial erratic" is an area where rocks and other natural things are left behind by melting glaciers MANY THOUSANDS OF YEARS ago that are not native to that area.) It was a sunny, warmish day before the snow covered us.

The Glacial Erratic Trail

Exposed roots and granite along the trail

A close-up of different mosses

The final stretch before the quarry - up a hill and between the
evergreens.

Another wanderer created this out of small granite stones.

The Atlantic Ocean view from the
Settlement Quarry.

A granite slab showing the drilled dynamite
holes that split it from a larger piece.

White Pine and Balsam Fir climbing the granite rocks.

Balsam Fir building his Inuksuit. To learn
more about Inuksuit's visit this link.

White Pine's granite rock Inuksuit

I caught some droplets on a fir tree, melting in the sun.

Wonder where our winter wanderings will be next week? (How's that for lots of W's? LOL)