Crying Birch and Mayapples

A single drop of water touches my arm, then another.  I look up for a bird but only see the bare branches of the old birch.  Then I look down and see that the ground is wet where I’m standing.

I remember experiencing this last year in the woods.  When I wrote about it someone told me that some trees drip sap.

I watched the drops fall from the birch branch and held out my hand to catch them.  They came within seconds of each other in a two-foot area and tasted like warm water.

I read that when it’s suddenly very hot sometimes a birch tree will suck up a lot of water from the ground.  If there are no leaves on the tree to take the water in, it will then leak out.   It makes sense that this is what is happen with the birch, it’s been unusually hot for the past two days.

The heat is also pushing up the perennials in my gardens.

I’m slowly raking them out.  Today it was my shade garden where the Mayapples are up in varying stages. They are such unusual plants.  They have the shape of mushrooms when they first appear, then the leaves become umbrellas protecting the white flowers and yellow fruit.