alive

 It took me awhile but I finally found one.

It's already changed.

This is such a fascinating process. Caterpillar to butterfly. How does that happen? What does it mean to be alive?

shimmer

 

There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer on its own.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Page a day calendar on gratitude

Season of sunflowers

 

No man's land

 I know I've mentioned before that Allyn and I walk "around the block" here on most days. It's a little over four miles, mostly on dirt roads through forests and fields. Lost of time to observe and ruminate, maybe too much. You see most of the way around is bordered by low spots and ditches. These areas lie between the road and fields that have been cut in some fashion.

It has occurred to me that these areas are literally no man's lands, as opposed to the areas on either side. These areas receive no TLC for the most part and therefore are a world unto themselves. All manner of flora battle for survival  in these areas, aggressive and hardy plants like burdock, poison parsnip, and goldenrod. But there are beautiful species that are able to claw out an existence as well.

Evening Primrose

Jewelweed

Turtleheads

It is heartbreaking to see a field brush hogged these days. Just think of all the monarch caterpillars that are never going to turn into butterflies. This never happens with the monarchs that locate their eggs on milkweed in most roadside ditches. This might seem like the least consequential phenomenon to consider, but it turns out I am not the only one.

"The shrinkage in the flora is due to a combination of clean-farming, woodlot grazing and good roads...There are idle spots on every farm and every highway is bordered by an idle strip as long as it is; keep cow, plow and mower out of these idle spots, and the full native flora, plus dozens of interesting stowaways from foreign parts, could be part of the normal environment of every citizen."

July

A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold

cooler

 

I heard a sound this morning that I hadn't heard for months, the furnace went on about 6:00. Outside gauge read 45 degrees this morning, no wonder. Closing the windows at night now, the butter in the container on the kitchen counter has been very soft during recent heat spells. It has now hardened considerably in the past day or so. This last observation may not seem to dovetail with the usual variety here on this blog, but it demonstrates the transition from summer to fall as much as a flock of geese heading south for the winter. As a matter of fact, my all-time favorite observation is how salt clumps up in the salt shaker during the most humid days of summer

ragweed

 Ragweed is appearing, my eyes are itching. I wonder if there's a connection?

Oregano and Plantnet

 There's a plant that grows in Allyn's garden that I have found more and more regularly when brush hogging in the fall.

At one point we both knew what it was, some kind of an herb. I looked through the usual suspects, sage, rosemary, thyme, and couldn't find it on Google. A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from one of the readers of this blog on how to use technology to identify plants. To make a long story short, I ended up connecting with an app called Plantnet. I used it to identify this plant as oregano. Thanks Denise! Turns out that oregano can, indeed, be an invasive species. I know it is here on the other side of the creek.

Plantnet will be another arrow in my quiver in terms of identifying local flora for this blog. How's that sound Shawn?!

Yesterday

 Another beautiful weekend. Temperature 52 degrees this morning. Apples falling from trees. Pine cones maturing and being promptly consumed by squirrels.

Spent some of yesterday cleaning up the perimeter of fields here in preparation for brush hogging in the fall. Was able to consume some delicious wild blackberries in between cutting up some brush.

I actually saw a Vermont wildflower for the first time while I was out there, Horse Nettle. That's the first time that has happened in years.

Full disclosure, I've been scanning the milkweed for weeks now, looking for Monarch butterfly caterpillars. Saw one yesterday almost by accident.

I wanted to bring it home and put it in our jar, but we're going to be gone in about a week so I let it be. Maybe I'll be able to find it's chrysalis down the road.

 

The Perseids

 Apparently my son John and grandson Owen are my astronomical muses these days. They were the first ones to mention the comet a few weeks ago. Yesterday they mentioned that they had seen the Perseid meteor shower the other night. I had forgotten about it, and went out last night to take a look. It was past peak and I only saw one, but it was a doozy.

ibtimes

Being a day late and a dollar short notwithstanding, being outside on a starry night in August in Vermont is special. Fireflies and the sound of the crickets; shimmering stars and the Milky Way overhead. I remembered that this is usually the time for Stellafane in Springfield, Vermont. It's one of the oldest stargazing events in the country. It's been cancelled for this year, but I've been lucky enough to attend three or four times in the past.

Joe Pye Weed

 Wildflowers of August

 

Bouncing Bet

 

Butter and Eggs

 

 Joe Pye Weed 

One of my favorite wildflower names. The name sounds like it could come out of a novel by Mark Twain.

 

 

 

Hummingbird Moth

 Per the blackberry posting the other day, Allyn has extensive gardens here that she has developed and improved over the years. She spends about an hour a day in her gardens during the summer months. The other day she came in more excited than usual. She said she had seen the strangest looking insect. It was very big and very fast and looked like a cross between a hummingbird and a lobster. I didn't know what to say. I wondered if she had a patch of cannabis in her garden that she hadn't told me about.

On Saturday I went out to pick up the mail. There was something buzzing around in the dames rocket. It sounded like a pretty good sized string trimmer. It wasn't hard to spot. It looked like this:

meadow blog

Sure enough, it did look like a cross between a lobster and a hummingbird. It's called a Clear Winged Hummingbird Moth. It is a member of the Sphinx Moth family according to the Massachusetts Audubon Society. It is also unusual in that it is most active during the day, unlike most moths. Amazing.

flowers

People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.

Iris Murdoch

Page a day calendar on Gratitude

Plenty of rain from the remnants of the hurricane passed through last night. We really needed it as it's been very dry. I went out to mow the other day and just turned around and put the mower back in the garage. The lawn looked the same as it did when it was mowed a week ago. Shiny black crickets now hopping around outside.

August is also the season for corn. The corn stand has opened up in the usual place in West Rutland.

We've stopped in a few times to get some.

Eliza

This is way off topic, but my daughter, and her family all either work for or attend the same school in Brasilia. When Eliza (my granddaughter) was told that the slogan for the new school year was: Nothing

can stop what we can do together. Eliza's immediate response was: "Well, the coronavirus can."

 

Don't try to BS Eliza.

season of blackberries

It is August so it is the season of blackberries here on the other side of the creek. Wild blackberry patches are starting to display their seasonal offerings. We have a patch of blackberries in the yard that has a pretty interesting history. First of all, they are not wild, they are a cultivated variety and the difference is apparent upon close inspection. They were here when we bought the place some 40 years ago. Somebody started this patch sometime in the distant past. We don't know who or when.

The blackberry patch was an afterthought as we were busy raising a busy family here. We would pick blackberries there every August, but the area didn't receive any gardening attention. The area was untended when we moved here and it stayed that way for many years. It was overgrown with other plants and weeds, and it got to the point where the blackberries started to lose the battle to other more aggressive species.

At some point in the last few years, Ally decided that she wanted to bring the blackberries back. It may be because she brews an annual batch of blackberry brandy every year and that more blackberries were needed. She weeded out the area, no small undertaking, and let nature take its course. Year after year the number of berries has increased.

I went by the blackberry patch the other day on the way to the compost pile. The number of berries on vines and branches was shocking. There are hundreds of them.

Now there are more berries available than we could ever possibly use as far as I can see. Allyn might want to offer some to some of our neighbors. She made a blackberry buckle the other night which was delicious. It will be interesting to see what Allyn has in mind for the blackberry brandy operation this year.

Full moon, the "Sturgeon" moon is tonight.