October/November 2019 

by Linda Martinson Blue Ridge Naturalist

Our place over the river and through the woods is Richland Ridge, a 500 acre development in Transylvania County, with about 70% of the property under conservation easement. From the road, nothing about Richland Ridge looks special or different. But as with many seemingly ordinary places in western North Carolina, the 120+ acres along the river at the entrance to Richland Ridge is special because it contains many unique and diverse natural communities and because, fortunately, this land has not been totally obscured by human activity.

by Linda Martinson
Blue Ridge Naturalist

I have spent the past several weeks wandering the wild shores of Baroque music, especially Bach’s. It is humbling; I am proficient at playing only some of his intermediate piano pieces. Music is the youngest of arts and, even though Bach lived only about three hundred years ago (from 1685-1750), he was one of the earliest of the great musicians. His incomparable genius and talent are obvious and astonishing even if you are only scratching the surface of his most accessible music.

by Linda Martinson Blue Ridge Naturalist

Every year in May, the big magnolia tree behind our house in the woods surprises us almost overnight with several stately blossoms glowing like candles against large dark green leaves. Our tree is a Fraser Magnolia (Magnolia fraseri), sometimes called a mountain magnolia, and it is native to the Southern Appalachians where it is fairly common. The flowers are large, fragrant, and showy, and the leaves are also big (12 inches or more in length), tough, and dark green. They are deciduous trees, and the leaves turn yellow and drop in the fall, when they also glow in the sun. The tree is named for John Fraser (1750-1811), who was a Scottish botanist—one of the many botanical explorers who combed the New World for interesting plants and trees to send back to Europe.