It’s amazing to see how green the forests are here on Cape Cod in the middle of winter. The Bearberry leaves, which you can see in the first photograph, still provide much green ground cover. (Click blog link to see other photo.)
I just did a bit of research and found that Bearberries will lose their leaves but not until mid-winter or later. I’ll have to take a similar photograph in a month or so and compare them.
You can also see all the new undergrowth of pine trees on the sides of the trails. So far this winter, our forest hikes have been pretty colorful!
“Here grew willows and alders, their trunks twisted like giants’ sinews. Around them bark lichen bloomed blue-white in the darkness. It felt like a good place, where there was old magic.”
― Duncan Harper, Witch of the Fall
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/lichens