Oh good, there you are:



Two of them crossed the path ahead of me this morning and disappeared into a little grove of sumacs.

These things will one day be elderberries ...




... and these will become raspberries:




This pretty thing is a Tree of Heaven, or Ailanthus altissima. It's the one that smells strongly of peanut butter (although some people find the smell much more disgusting than that). I admired it, I took its picture, I cut it down.



Going back to that aster-y thing I found a while ago: I've had a closer look and done a little research, and I now pronounce it common fleabane, Erigeron philadelphicus (which is in the aster family).



This page says the leaves of common fleabane clasp the stem, and I think you'll agree that's what we see here:

Let's see, what else is going on in the neighbourhood these days? The black locust trees are flowering:

The leaves look like this:

The cup plants are flourishing at Beechwood:

The leaves join the stem to form a little cup that holds water:

Stay tuned for updates as the impressive flowers develop later in the season.

Finally, here are the two hairy woodpeckers busy in the cottonwood tree. Unfortunately, I wasn't recording at the moment one turned and fed the other a little tidbit. Sweet!