foliage season

The fall foliage season here in Vermont animates life not only for the many visitors, but also for those of us who experience it every year. I know I wrote about the leaves the other day, but there's still much that can be said.

Every year about this time of year, the Pleiades appear in the night sky in the east. You can count on it. Not so with the foliage season. Some years the leaves are spectacular, some years the colors are muted. Actually we have had a long string of beautiful autumns, and like so much of this process, no one really knows why some years are good, and some years are not. 

The general rule of thumb is that the peak of the season occurs around Columbus Day, about the middle of October. The last couple of years, however, the peak has happened later in October. You might think that global warming might play a part in that. This year, however, it seems that the color is already approaching peak, a couple of weeks early. It's been a very dry summer, and we had a spate of really cold days and nights about a week ago. Maybe those things are having an effect. It's really a special moment when the leaves start to unwrap themselves. You really don't know what you're going to get until it actually happens, sort of like opening up your presents on Christmas Day. It already looks like it's going to be another great year.

Yesterday Allyn and I took our usual walk around the block. Taking a walk this time of year elicits feeling of joy and gratitude. People come from thousands of miles away in order to see what is literally right out our back door.

Starting out, we noticed how the lane was covered with a carpet of leaves.

 

Turning right towards the crossroads, we ran into some sumac. This very humble and ubiquitous bush actually has some of the brightest reds of all the varieties of bushes and trees.

It was a windy morning, and you could hear the raspy sound of dry leaves as they scuttled across the pavement. Leaves are not only carpeting Kahle Road, but also the bottom of the Ira Creek.

As the leaves lighten, they contrast beautifully with the darkness of the branches.

The bright ones seem to generate their own light. Bright leaves with the dark green background of pines, makes for a wonderful scene.

We are supposed to have a number of rainy days, and that will knock many of the leaves off the trees. The beauty that we have been experiencing has been a wonderful respite from what has been a very difficult year for all of us.
 

 

 

acorns

Acorns falling out of oak trees on the morning walk. Foxes gamboling in the road next to the shed for the town plow. The chipmunks that live under the house are feasting on the remnants of parsley from Allyn's garden.

plot of ground

 The wildflower season is not over but it is certainly winding down. One of the surprising things I learned about wildflowers is how many species can grow in the same plot of ground.

This photo is from April and shows some crocuses shooting up, and I've included it here because it shows the ground under a mailbox of some neighbors who moved here recently. The lady of the house seems to be a gardener, and I have been amazed at how many types of flowers have appeared here under this mailbox post over the course of the summer, somewhere between four and six species. It's just amazing to me how many plants can be viable  in virtually the same area. I know I've used this analogy before, but it's kind of like a departure and arrival gate at an airport. The waiting area can be full of people one moment, empty the next, and then full of a different group of fliers shortly after that.

When you think about it, it makes sense that plants would operate this way. If all wildflowers bloomed at the same time, there simply wouldn't be room for all of them. Also, they all need to be pollinated, and it makes sense for both plants and pollinators that the growing season be spread out the way it is.

Some times I think I must have too much spare time on my hands to come up with stuff like this.

Season of leaves

 The other day I found myself up on a ladder, scraping some trim for painting before the snow flies. It was actually a nice place to be. It was a beautiful fall day, wind from the south. Two hawks, riding the thermals over the hill in the back. Even the sound of the wind blowing through the turning leaves sounded different, drier that it had back in the summer, just a few weeks ago.

While I was looking up, scanning for raptors, I saw a small yellow leaf, high up in the sky over our house. How it could get so high I really don't understand. Sometimes leaves seem self propelled, just like the birds and the dragonflies.

The following first appeared in this blog on 11/18/11.

Clear and cold. Two weeks ago on Sunday, I got home from the Zen Center in the afternoon. Allyn was a couple of hours behind me, returning from visiting her mother in Ohio. I wanted to finish cleaning up the mess from the various wood piles I had created in the back yard before she returned. I hauled bark and chips from the back to the burn pile we have in a field nearby. As I was returning from the burn pile, I saw two oak leaves high in the sky down by the bridge. They must have been 100 feet in the air. I couldn't feel any breeze, it must have been above the tree line. But they came toward me, slowly fluttering in the air. They would start to head down, but would catch a thermal again, and rise up to the original level. One finally headed to earth along the road, but the other kept coming, fluttering, falling, rising, dancing on the wind. 

I had watched as I was hauling the wheelbarrow back, but the leaf had been in the air a long time, a number of minutes at least; longer than any leaf I had ever seen before. I finally put down the wheelbarrow, and gave the leaf my full attention. It kept coming, floating above the road, over the back yard and the house, over the front yard, and finally over my head heading east. It parted ways with the zephyr along the fence line, and slowly fell to the earth, landing in Allyn's flower garden near the old apple tree. As my eyes finally parted from the oak leaf, I looked up and saw the waxing moon, like mother of pearl, rising over the Green Mountains.

Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day...we become seekers.

The Snow Leopard

Peter Matthiessen 

 

 

animal activity

 Chipmunks and squirrels very busy this time of year. A few days ago I was mowing, and I noticed something for the first time. There was a large mushroom in my path that apparently had been partially eaten by an animal. For some reason it had never occurred to me that mushrooms might be a food source for animals. They are consumed by quite a few creatures including squirrels and deer.

It seems that every summer that is unusually dry, we experience an infestation of bees that live under our lawn. This year has been no exception. We tried to burn them out, no luck. The other day we saw that some animal had laid waste to one of the nests. It had even pulled some of the combs out of the nest.

 

These bees are very aggressive. It's hard to imagine an animal being able to withstand their bites. Apparently bears, raccoons, and skunks exhibit this kind of behavior. Their fur is so thick that the bees don't bother them. The skunks actually feast on bees. I'm betting it was a skunk.

September

It's dark now when heading to do the weekly shopping during senior hour at the local supermarket. Pumpkins and apple cider on sale at roadside stands. I watch the birds pretty closely and I don't remember seeing a blue jay all summer. Now they're everywhere. All About Birds says that they hide during the summer and come out again after their broods have fledged. I guess they also do some migrating to different areas this time of year, and join up with flocks for that journey. Trees are starting to turn. This first starts to happen in the wetter places.

 

Down the River

 I have been reading the book Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey. He writes about a trip with a friend down the Colorado River through the Glen Canyon. It reminds me of the trip I took with my son, John down the Allagash River just about this time of year a few years ago. The trip of a lifetime.

"We are indeed enjoying a very intimate relation with the river: only a layer of fabric between our bodies and the water. I let my arm dangle over the side and trail my hand in the flow. Something dreamlike and remembered, that sensation called deja vu--when was I here before? A moment groping back through the maze, following the thread of a unique emotion, and then I discover the beginning. I am fulfilling at last a dream of childhood and one as powerful as the erotic dreams of adolescence--floating down the river. Mark Twain, Major Powell, every man that has ever put forth on flowing water knows what I mean."

 "At four or five miles per hour--much too fast--we glide on through the golden light, the heat, the crystalline quiet. At times almost beneath us, the river stirs with sudden odd uproars as the silty bed below alters in its conformations. Then comfortably readjusted, the river flows on and the only noise, aside from that of scattered birds, is the ripple of the water, the gurgling eddies off the sandpits, the sound of Newcomb puffing on his old pipe."

frost

 It's gotten much colder. Temperatures bottomed out around 23 degrees the last three nights. Frost in the mornings. After the first frost, Allyn said, "There go the tomatoes." That about sums it up.

The crickets and grasshoppers which were almost deafening just a few days ago have been abruptly silenced. The sunflowers seem to most immediately and graphically manifest the change in the weather.

stubble

 The warm season has been filled with growing flora in pastures, forests, and fields. Things are changing and summer turns to fall. Corn fields are being turned into silage. 

 Trucks on the roads carrying winter rations to storage. The silage spills out the top like bright green confetti.

Leaves on the maple trees are just starting to turn.

The only real upside to this transition is that as fields are reduced to stubble, and trees lose their leaves and fall to the earth, vistas open up. Forests are not hidden by the summertime mantle of greenery, and faraway mountains appear again along roadsides hitherto bordered by fields of corn.

apples

 33 degrees yesterday morning. That was close. Turning the heat on in the car in the morning. Closing windows at night. Maples trees turning a lighter shade of green as chlorophyll exits tree leaves and heads for the roots.

We have a number of apple trees on our property. Almost all of them are of the non-cultivated variety. Apple seeds came from somewhere and eventually turned into trees. I enjoy having them here as they help feed wild animals in the fall and winter. Two of these trees are in our yard and are about 30 yards apart. One of them is full of apples and the other only has a few. This is not always the case. Some years they both produce apples more or less equally. So how it can be that there is such disparity this year is hard for me to understand. The only apple tree that was probably actually planted by a human being is the one producing a lot of apples this year. They don't look like store bought apples, but they taste pretty good.

Allyn has been gathering them this year and making applesauce.

Hawk call

 We have had hawks living on our land for many years. First there was Stringfellow Hawk who used to come and sit on the fence in the back yard. He was like part of the family.

I have often noticed a pair of hawks living in a different part of our property here, in a more remote area, surrounded by forest. I saw them the other day when I was back there clearing some brush. Like the bobcats and foxes, it's nice to know they're back there.

The other day both Allyn and I heard a very shrill, two note cry coming from the back. We had never heard that before. When I went to look, there was a hawk sitting in a nearby tree. Then he flew very low to another part of our property, making the same shrill call. This went on for a couple of days. I thought that maybe the hawk had lost its partner or lost a youngster.

I have been communicating with a friend here about political matters. She is an experienced birder. I asked her about this, and she said it might be a mother bird trying to teach a young bird how to hunt. When I was at Mt. Philo on Friday, I asked the nice lady with a telescope there about it as well. She said it sounded like begging behavior from a young hawk to its mother like, "Hey this hunting is too hard, and I'm hungry. Feed me!" I think both of these are possibilities but I lean toward the second explanation.

migration

 Pupa graduated to butterfly on Saturday, matriculated on Sunday.

Last time I saw him he was heading west under the treeline. Good luck and safe travels!

The wind was blowing out of the north on Friday so I headed up to Mt. Philo with my binoculars to try my hand observing the raptor migration. When I got to the top of Mt. Philo, there was nobody there. It looked like it had been a long drive for nothing. But a man who looked like he might be the caretaker there saw my binoculars, and asked if I was there for the raptor migration, and when I said yes he pointed me to another location on the north side of the mountain (it's really not a mountain, it's a hill) where the action was.

When I got there, there were 3-4 people with binoculars. 

It started out slow, but as the day warmed, the raptors started to appear; hawks, eagles, kestrels, osprey. Some were low in the sky, and some were very high. Bearing witness to these birds on the move is a very compelling experience. The closest I can come to explaining it is that this urge for migrating is a very powerful instinct in this world of ours that is mostly a mystery to human beings. It's there and we can see it but we really can't feel it, it's a mystery. I saw about 50 raptors  that day with about 30 hawks in a single formation of sorts being the highlight.

As is often the case, the people who were there with me were real birders. They knew a lot, so I learned a lot. For Vermonters, the peak of the season should be occurring next weekend or so. Most of the activity occurs when the wind is out of the north, but not the northwest. The birds are heading southwest to Texas and beyond so they don't move when the wind is out of the west. The most activity occurs during the heat of the day, between 10 and 2. Cloud cover is good as it provides a background to help with the seeing. Some of the raptors will try to pick off migrating dragonflies that might be in the skies heading south at the same time. And there is a resident population that stays all year long. More on that tomorrow.

Thank you PlantNet

 codlins and cream

she who must flickr

snakeroot

jerusalem artichoke

 

hemp nettle

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Eliza!

 On Tuesday I mentioned swings and how these days I'm more of a pusher than a swinger. My pushing activities began again in earnest about five years ago when my granddaughter Eliza became old enough to fly. She loves the swings, just like her mother did many years ago. I even came up with a song to accompany our times on the swings. It was adapted from the song, Singing in the Rain.

I'm swinging on the swing, just swinging on the swing.

Such a glorious feeling I'm happy again.

I'm flying so high.

So high in the sky.

I'm swinging, just swinging on the swing.

When Erin and her family would come to visit in the summer, we would always head out to a playground and make our way to the swings. At some point Eliza would say, "Papa, sing our song!" and I would belt out a few rounds. It is wonderful when you share a special song with your granddaughter.

Recently I have been relegated to the sidelines again when it comes to Eliza's swinging activities. She doesn't need to be pushed anymore, she can swing all by herself just like a zillion and one other things she can now accomplish all on her own. Today is Eliza's birthday. She turns seven years old. It hardly seems possible. Happy Birthday, Eliza! I love you.

 

 

 

 

 

seasons

 Season of asters

Season of corn

Season of basil and parsley

If it's the season of basil, it's also the season of pesto. I made my first batch ever the other day. It was great!

Suspended

 Labor Day was yesterday, the last day of summer. It's been a long time since I've been on a swing, but my grandkids use them all the time. At this point in my life I'm more of a pusher than a swinger. You go forward and back and up and down. As you approach the top of the arc, the speed gradually slows down, and then at the top you actually stop moving for a second before heading down again. That's what it feels like right now, it feels like the world is suspended at the top of the arc before heading back down again. We've had a succession of sunny days, yesterday was in the 80's, but we've also had some cool nights. It's not summer, but it's not really fall yet either. Suspended.

buzzing

 Murmur of blackbirds in a maple tree on the Milky Way Farm. Patter of raindrops. Bees buzzing amid garden flowers.

Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it's possible the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all scientific descriptions. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

The First Morning

Desert Solitaire

Edward Abbey                                                                                                                                                                 

flowers to seeds

 Flowers and blossoms of spring turn into fruit, nuts and seeds of fall.

Here are some seeds forming from a jack in the pulpit plant in one of Allyn's gardens which begs the question, what do the seeds form from? I've never seen any jack in the pulpit blossoms?

Wikipedia says, "Flowers are contained in a spadex that is covered by a hood." I didn't know that. I guess it's kind of like skunk cabbage.

Illinois Natural History Survey
 

 

monarchs and goldfinches

 One of the things I've noticed after doing this, whatever it is, for going on 14 years is trends. When you have an eye out for changes in the natural world virtually every day, you start to notice when things seem to be going away, and also when phenomena appear to be increasing.

Yesterday on our walk around the loop, I saw three monarchs. That is worth mentioning only in because that is more than normal. Usually I see less than that. Before, during and after finding the caterpillar that is now a chrysalis in the jar on the island, I only saw one other. I examined at least 100 milkweed plants during my search. After finding said caterpillar, I emailed friends who are readers of this blog and butterfly crazy like I am to indicate that I had finally found one. I never heard back from any of them that they had found one as well. Talking with Doug yesterday about the monarch situation, and his anecdotal sense was that there are, indeed, fewer of them around than in years past.

 The goldfinch situation is the opposite. Both Allyn and I have seen more this summer than ever before. I Googled goldfinches and climate change, and learned that goldfinches like cooler weather, and actually their preferred habitat may be moving north from places like New Jersey and Pennsylvania. I also learned that goldfinches raise their families later in the summer relative to other birds, even as late as August. That might explain some of the activity relative to goldfinches that we have been seeing lately.

 

gathering

 42 degrees yesterday morning. Mowed the lawn yesterday wearing a windbreaker. Mushrooms appearing on the lawn, a sign of cooler weather.

Dragonflies gathering in the back field. They migrate like birds and this is the first part of that process.