Mighty Mites of the Catskills and Other Little Critters! (What’s alive in the forest floor?)

Face to face with the spider Callobius

This last week’s snowfall made a post about spring garden flowers seem somewhat unseasonal. During the warm spell preceding the snow fall, however, I sampled some leaf litter from my backyard, and I found some interesting critters doing their thing to help break down the fallen leaves from last summer.…

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Maples Like You’ve Never Seen Them!

Clusters of female flowers

Maples are not considered by most folks to be a flowering tree. Most people won’t even notice them until the fallen flowers collect on the windshields of their vehicles.   Close up, maples flowers are recognizable as flowers. Red maple and sugar maple are the two most common species here…

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