Highlights

DECEMBER 2019 - Evergreen

INFO ALERT - Evergreen

The Winter Solstice occurs December 21, Saturday, at 11:19 p.m. bringing us the shortest day of the year and Astronomical Winter ...brrr!!!

Winter woods and meadows in our neck of the woods are mostly bare and brown ...unless covered with snow. Even though winter is here, if you hike in the winter woods and pay attention to your surroundings, you will see an amazing amount of green. Coniferous, cone-bearing, trees such as our white pines, pitch pines, cedars and hemlocks stay summer green all winter and are common in area forests and on local land trust properties.

Along with the evergreen trees we also have evergreen shrubs, grasses, ferns and mosses. Keep watch for them when walking outdoors in your natural environment this winter. Below are some photos of a few of the evergreens living in the Southeastern Massachusetts Bioreserve. There are many more.

If you are not a winter hiker, spring is the next season in line. It is coming. This poem is for you:

"I heard a bird sing

In the dark of December

A magical thing

And sweet to remember.

We are nearer to spring

Than we were in September,

I heard a bird sing

In the dark of December.”

- Oliver Herford

Prince's Pine