A visual chronicle of suburban NJ
My best guess is that this is a wild radish; however, from the photos I’ve seen, wild radishes have widely-spaced petals that splay all over the place. These petals look too neat.
While it might not be a radish, it’s almost certainly something in the Brassicaceae family. Brassicaceae are also known as Cruciferae, which means “cross-shaped,” which refers to the four-petaled flowers.
What do you think?
I am visiting my parents this weekend, so for Mother’s Day, I had my mother choose from a few flower photos I’d taken. She liked this shot of a tiny blue flower. (Happy Mother’s Day!)
And then we couldn’t identify it. Her first idea was a forget-me-not, but forget-me-nots have five petals, and this has six.
A Google Image search pulled up a few other photos of this wildflower, usually with a caption like “I found a little purple flower, isn’t it pretty” or something equally useless.
Some searches later, I’m pretty sure it’s a blue-eyed grass! Blue-eyed grass is actually a rhizome related to irises, not a real grass. But it’s still a nifty little wildflower!
That seems like a funny name for a flower, though. Maybe the little stripey things on the petals look like the striations on an eyeball-iris, so they themselves look like blue eyes? And/or the resemblance to an eye-iris was a subtle pun on the flower’s relation to a flower-iris? Who knows?
It’s time for those unconquerable dandelions to spread their seeds into your yard!
I am totally ripping off a better shot that I saw last week, but it was still fun to try my own version. 
I’ve given you too many flowers in one week! I’m sorry. And this is a blurry photo, to boot. But grape hyacinths are pretty, right? Right? Work with me here.
The mayapples are in bloom!
I didn’t realize until I got home that mayapples (a.k.a. American mandrakes, or umbrella plants) are supposed to have SIX petals, not four with a space at the top. Whoops.
I forgot to actually take a photo of a mayapple plant (whoops again), so here’s one from Wikipedia, if you’re wondering what the heck a mayapple looks like:
Photo credit Valis55
I’ve seen them comprise a fairly thick ground cover, under the right growth conditions.
This skeletal remnant has been lying near/in a trail on the Watchung Reservation for at least a few months, since the last time I came through this way.
The ribs and tibia make it something bigger than a rabbit, but the molars are reasonably small. The spot is also surrounded by gray fur. A dog, maybe, hit by a car on the nearby Glenside Avenue and rolled over here to die? I sure hope not. 
I’m not sure why I’m more upset at the idea of a dog dying here than, say, a badger dying here.
This woman was searching for her dog (Percy) at Short Hills Park.
I really hope she found him.
I went to the Frelinghuysen Arboretum in Morristown this past weekend. I was expecting the arboretum to look like this, with cleanly manicured grounds and labels for all the plants and so forth. But no! Most of the site looks like a county park, with hiking trails and rivers and skunk cabbage and everything. It was an unexpected surprise!
…Incidentally, the website of the grounds is Arboretum Friends (Dot Org), which has nothing whatsoever to do with Happy Tree Friends.
I thought this can had a very nice graphic element to it. And then I realized it’d be a perfect opportunity to practice split toning, which is where you tint the shadows of your image one color, and tint the highlights a different color.
…actually, no, I take that back, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE EMOTION. This image just GRIPS you, doesn’t it? Don’t lie, I know you’re crying. With emotion.
If it’s sea glass when the sea does the polishing, it must be river glass when it’s smoothed by a river, right?
