Spring in February?

Shortly after I clicked “publish” on the last post I happened to see this out of the corner of my eye while I was driving by. All the trees and the bare granite summit on Mount Monadnock had a frosting of wet snow and it was beautiful. I quickly turned around and found a place to park alongside one of the busiest streets in Keene and got out with my camera. I noticed that drivers were becoming interested either in what I was doing or in what I might be pointing the camera at instead of the road. They were slowing down enough for traffic to start bunching up so I didn’t stay long. Having lived with the mountain for most of my life I can say that what you see here is just about as beautiful as it ever gets. Unfortunately though, most drivers seemed in a hurry to drive right by.

It was warm down in the lowlands that day I took the photo of Mount Monadnock and then it got even warmer, until we ended up with the second warmest first 12 days of February, second only to 2018. Plants responded, as this skunk cabbage shows. According to this blog February eighth in 2020 held the record for the earliest I had seen them until February seventh of this year broke that record. Overall I think this year is quite a lot warmer than 2020 because I didn’t see all the plants and flowers in 2020 that I’m seeing now.

This photo of the same plant was taken five days after the previous one and you can see how the spathe on the left has opened up, tearing itself a bit in the process. Inside the spathe is the spadix, which is what the small flowers grow on. Each day the spathe will open wider to allow early insects access the flower pollen. I saw two or three small insects flying on this day but I couldn’t tell what they were.

Willow catkins are just starting to show. I’m sure all the school teachers will be out cutting them soon to have in their classrooms as they do every year. It’s nice to think of all the younger children getting to see how the bright yellow flowers develop.

I admired a beautiful bud on another willow. It reminded me of a red painted fingernail.

I saw a teddy bear face on another willow. Actually this is a crown gall, which can be caused by bacteria in the soil or a fungus, depending on the host plant. Though this gall shows holes that look like they were made by insects I think they were actually made by a woodpecker. Most galls don’t harm the host plant but crown galls can damage a plant by restricting sap flow and weakening it. Rapid growth of plant cells results in a large, rock hard mass like that seen here. Several ornamental shrubs are susceptible to crown gall. If you find galls on one of yours just Google “Crown Gall on plant name.”

You won’t see many photos of crows on this blog, because they are very smart birds. Point anything at them and they’re gone. I happened to see these birds out in an old field and I wondered if I stayed in the car if they’d let me get a shot. It worked; I shot this through the passenger window while they wandered through the field, ignoring me. I’d bet that if I had gotten out of the car they would have been gone before I could even focus. The two birds in flight seen here were coming in for a landing rather than taking off. Interesting how their black eyes shine in the sunlight. I’ve never noticed that before.

A lady I met in the wetlands the other day told me she had seen and heard red winged blackbirds. They are a sure sign of spring and there are plenty of last year’s cattails waiting for nest building time. Not only do the females use the fluffy seeds to line their nests, they also find nice fat grubs in the plant’s stems. I won’t see them at this pond for a few day though, that’s ice behind them.

Though I haven’t seen any sap buckets yet sap was dripping here and there from the branches of this red maple and the bud scales had loosened and started to open on several of the buds. I expect sap buckets will appear before too long.

Mallards never bothered to go anywhere this year. I’ve seen them regularly since last fall. There are muskrats and beavers living in this stream and they eat the roots of the many cattails growing here. You can see some cattail leaves and stems that have been cut away from the roots floating behind the mallard. In this way they stay well fed and also keep a channel open through the cattails.

Blades of grass were melting their way through this ice. It’s amazing how much warmth anything dark colored generates on a sunny spring day. It’s all energy.

The ice was too thick for this oak leaf to radiate its way through, apparently.

An old willow tree’s branches had turned to gold. It’s the only tree I know of that does this each spring.

American hazelnut catkins are also turning from green to gold. As more sap flows into them they lengthen, become pliable and grow in girth before opening their bud scales and revealing the golden yellow male flowers underneath. The flowers are arranged in spirals around a central stalk, and that can easily be seen here. You can also see the bud scales, which overlap like tiny shingles, just starting to open if you look carefully at the upper left edge of that central catkin. All of these signs point directly to spring. Soon it will be time to look for the tiny female flowers.

The early bittercress plants are blooming. These plants are in the mustard family and are among the first to bloom in spring. They can be a real headache for gardeners. The plants shown here are a mix of hairy and wavy bittercress, I believe.

Bittercress flowers are so tiny this entire bouquet could fit behind a pea. Each flower has four petals and four (hairy) or six (wavy) stamens. The long narrow seedpods, like the one seen here in the background, can shoot seeds several feet, making sure they spread all over a garden. Seeds germinate in the fall, and that’s the best time to pull the small plants; before they flower and set more seeds. It’s always best to make sure that all beds go into winter clean of all but the plants that are supposed to be in them. It’s easier that way.

I saw that a few Cornelian cherry bud scales had opened enough to reveal all the flower buds inside. The tightly packed flower buds looked to be pulling apart and getting ready to open. There’s still room for a lot of cold air in the month of February so I hope they’ll wait. Most of the plants seen in this post are built for cold and they can take it but I think it would kill off Cornelian cherry blossoms. This small tree is in the dogwood family and I see brown, frost bitten dogwood blossoms almost every year. The bud seen here is about as big as a pea.

Magnolias have just one bud scale called a cap, and most of the time they fall off whole but sometimes they’ll do what this one is doing and fool you into thinking there are two scales instead of one. What surprised me about this bud is how it had another hairy bud scale inside the outer one. I can’t remember ever seeing this before.

There are large numbers of daffodils shooting up but I haven’t seen any buds yet. That’s probably a good thing.

Hyacinths are also up, and early. They don’t usually come along unto the crocuses begin to bloom and I haven’t seen a crocus yet.

This dandelion blossom looked as if it had just rolled out of bed and hadn’t had time to fully wake up. There’s also a lot of chickweed in this shot, I see. That will be the next to bloom, before long.

I was happy but not surprised to see the spring blooming witch hazels in full bloom. They’re beautiful and it was nice to see them again.

Though they are native to the United States they are not native this far north but even so I’ve seen them blossom their way through snow storms and very cold weather. Though the individual flowers are small there are so many of them they put on a good show. They also have a wonderful scent that is hard to describe. Maybe a little spicy but also clean and fresh. Some have described it as clean laundry just brought in off the line. They often bloom for weeks depending on the weather, so they would be a great addition to any spring garden.

Yesterday morning was cold and a couple inches of nuisance snow had fallen overnight but it doesn’t matter because spring is on the way. The plants in this post might be slowed down by a cold snap or two but they won’t be stopped. If you aren’t seeing flowers just yet chances are it won’t be long.

Spring is sooner recognized by plants than by men. ~Chinese Proverb

Thanks for coming by.

The Latest Storm

We’ve had another snowstorm since our last visit but unlike what we’ve had so far this year this one was heavy and wet. This kind of pasty snow sticks to everything, as can be seen in the above shot of Mount Caesar in Swanzey. It is the most beautiful of all the different types of snow in my opinion, so I thought you might like to see it. As always, just click on a photo to enlarge it and see more detail.

Nothing escapes it, and it is this kind of snow that William Sharp was speaking of when he said “There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance.” 

In this spot the water of the stream was the only thing that wasn’t clad in radiance. In such soft and gentle light it was so very beautiful.

What is truly amazing about this type of snow is how it doesn’t take very much of it to create this kind of beauty. I had maybe four inches in my yard but because it was so wet and heavy those four inches were more like two by the time I shoveled it. Snow this wet usually kind of collapses onto itself into a slushy glop. It’s like shoveling water.

This was a relatively “warm storm” which kept the falling snow from freezing solid until it got colder. If it gets colder immediately after the storm heavy, wet snow can freeze into something similar to concrete. The wise get out and move it quickly before that happens.

If the sun doesn’t come out to melt it this snow can cling to everything for several days, and that’s just what has happened; we’ve seen only cloudy, cool days since it fell. Cool cloudy days give us lasting winter beauty, but if we don’t clean it up before it freezes we’ll be walking on it until the sun shines. This time it looks like the sun isn’t going to do more than peek through the clouds occasionally until almost a full week after the storm. That means we’ve had plenty of time to enjoy it.

If it warms up enough to just barely melt it, this kind of snow quickly turns to ice.

These pieces of ice started out as snow. I thought the piece over on the lower right looked like a water bear, which is a microscopic eight legged creature also called a moss piglet. They, along with lichens, are thought to be close to immortal. If you’d like to learn more about them or just see what they look like, Google “Water bears.” Children will love to see them.

The ice showed that any melting happened quickly and then re-froze almost immediately. I had a lot of fun looking at the endless variety of shapes. Most of what I saw was full of bubbles.

This lobster-like ice on a black raspberry cane was reaching out to a leaf that was still green. Leaves on most brambles are very tough and some will often stay green all winter. Others will turn a beautiful deep purple.  

The ice on this cane looked like a sly eyed slug.

When I saw this I wondered where the idea for Santa’s red and white suit had come from.

I can’t even guess how this drop of ice on a bittersweet nightshade berry might have formed. The berries look like tiny Roma tomatoes when they aren’t mummified like this one was. Birds usually snap them right up but many had been left behind on this particular vine. I’ve given up trying to figure out why birds do certain things like eat all the crabapples from a tree and leave just one or two behind.

The ice on this branch reminded me of a seahorse. Though I didn’t pay attention when I was taking this photo I can see that this was a dead staghorn sumac branch. I can see that from the reddish color of the inner bark and the fact that only a dead tree will have peeling, curling bark.

If the sun doesn’t come out to melt all of the ice on tree branches the wind will take care of it. When you see marks like this in the snow you know that ice pellets have been raining down from the branches. When a good gust of wind comes along it can feel a bit like being in a hailstorm.

This road showed how much ice had fallen from the branches on this day. Once run over and crushed by cars it turns white as snow again. Though this kind of storm can be beautiful it can also wreak havoc by bringing branches and even whole trees down onto electric lines. Thankfully that didn’t happen here this time.

Yesterday afternoon the sun came out and the temperature shot up to 40 degrees, so what fell in this storm can’t last. All we’ll need is a full day of warm sunshine and it will almost all be gone. Also yesterday up on Gobbler’s knob, Punxsutawney Phil the weather predicting groundhog predicted an early spring. However, since Phil has only been right 39% of the time since 1886, I think I’ll wait just a bit before I put the shovel away.

I hope all of you are getting out when you can to enjoy the beauty of the season.

By walking in a snowy forest you can really forget about this world, and every time you forget about this world you leave this world, and every time you leave this world you gain a very special wisdom that does not exist in this world. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for coming by.

Ice and Snow

I had an idea that I’d do a post about puddle ice because thanks to Doreen, who commented on the last post, a mystery I’ve wondered about for most of my life has been solved. It concerns the wave like lines in puddle ice, and it turns out they have nothing to do with waves; they’re caused by the way the water drains out from under the ice. Capillary action causes the water to adhere to the ice above it and form thin bands. What look like wave lines from above show where the ice bands join, and if you break the ice and turn it over you can see how they are created. In essence, the band edges appear as ribs, thicker where a line appears on the surface. This can also happen with pond and lake ice. If you’d like a much better explanation than I’ve given here, here is the link that Doreen sent in. https://www.storyofsnow.com/blog1.php/why-do-frozen-ponds-and-puddles-have-lines

I should say that, as soon as I decided to do a post on puddle ice it snowed and covered all the puddles. And it hasn’t stopped; we’re seeing two or three storms a week. Some, as the above photo shows, are barely deep enough to cover a bird’s toes. But it only takes a dusting to cover the ice on a puddle, so I had to go back to older posts to find that first photo. All the way back 2013 if I remember correctly.

Other storms have dropped a few inches, but no more than 4 or 5. This photo of a spruce cone which was heated by the sun and melted its way down into the snow is a good illustration of our snow depth now. Once the sun gets a little stronger many things will melt their way into the snow. I’ve seen twigs, oak leaves, hemlock branches; basically anything dark colored melt into the snow as the sunshine heats them up.

I gave up on puddle ice and decided to show you other ice forms. A few years ago I visited this stream and found it full of beautiful lacy ice, but this time I found mostly colorful reflections.

I also saw an odd shaped ice bauble floating 3 or 4 inches above the stream.

This ice grew out from the shore but I’m not sure I know how to describe it, so it’s a good thing a picture is worth a thousand words.

This ice, made up of long needle like strands, also grew out from the stream bank. Ice can be fascinating because you never know exactly what shape you will find it in. The variety of shapes and forms seems to be endless.

I went to another stream and found what I call “curtain ice.”

This ice had beautiful clear, pointed crystals on it that looked much like quartz crystals.

Further upstream ice “flowers” had grown on the branches of a streamside shrub. Further up the stems smaller flowers showed how much the depth of the water had changed.

Small, still ponds had iced over but most water bodies with a strong current remained ice free except along their banks. I loved the colors in this ice.

There are many theories about how the spidery shapes seen in ice form but the one thing they all have in common is that they have to start with a hole in the ice. What makes the hole is not agreed upon; some say beavers and /or muskrats chew hole in the ice so they can breathe. I doubt that one. Another theory says that gasses from decaying vegetation on the bottom of the pond keep the ice from freezing in that particular spot. Having seen many vertical strings of bubbles frozen in ice, this theory seems a bit more plausible.

Anyhow, everyone agrees that it has to start with a hole in the ice. Everyone seems to agree that when it snows the weight of the snow causes the ice to sink, and when it sinks water is forced out of the hole. The water wets the snow and darkens it, causing the random spidery shapes. Then it gets cold enough to freeze it all up again, with most of the ice opaque and light colored except for the darker spidery forms.

I once worked for a man who wanted to have a skating party at the small pond on his property, but the surface of the ice was all bumpy and uneven. He hired two of us to flood the surface so it would re-freeze nice and level. We chopped a hole in the ice and with a rented gas powered pump, we pumped the water from the pond out onto the ice. The weight of the water on top of it caused the ice to sink and when it did a gusher came up out of the hole, flooding the ice with too much water to re-freeze before the skating party was to happen.

By the time we left we no longer cared about the skating party; we were freezing, soaked, and disgusted with ourselves for having fallen for such a foolish plan. But the episode makes the theory of the snow weighing down the ice enough to make water come up out of any holes in it a little more plausible to me.

On the coldest day we’ve had this winter (about 16 degrees F.) I went to the Ashuelot falls in Keene to see if there were any ice pancakes forming. Ice pancakes form from the foam that the falling water creates, and there was plenty of foam. Normally on a warmer day this foam would just dissipate and float downstream but in very cold weather it freezes quickly. If you see pancake ice you know it’s quite cold.

The current keeps the frozen foam from forming a into a single sheet by constantly spinning it in large groups that look like spiral galaxies. This also makes the loose foam come together and form circles. When the circles of foam bump into each other they form rims and start to look like pancakes. They can range in size from car tires to cantaloupes, and sometimes smaller. Most of these on this day were nearer cantaloupe size.

This example wasn’t completely round yet but if it stayed cold enough and kept moving it would be. You can see how it is made entirely of foam and how the surrounding loose foam joins the larger circles. I’ve read that pancake ice is very rare outside of the Arctic, even though I see them forming here at least once every winter. In the Arctic, the ice pancakes can stick or stack together and form ridges that pile on top of each other and reach up to 60 feet thick, but here on the Ashuelot they either melt or just float downstream. If you’d like to learn more about this ice form just Google “pancake ice.”

When I was leaving Ashuelot falls I looked upstream and saw what looked like a beaver lodge. How can that be? I wondered. I was here a short while ago and there was no sign of a beaver lodge, and I know they don’t build them that fast. When I got closer I saw that a tree had floated downstream and had gotten hung up on the relatively shallow bottom. What had looked like a beaver lodge was part of its root ball. It really is amazing how many trees fall into this river.

I went to another waterfall, this time at Swanzey lake in Swanzey, and found that the ice had sculpted itself into a strange shape so I took a couple of shots of it. When I looked at the photos later I saw that the camera settings certainly weren’t set for stop action, because the water in the waterfall looked like something I can’t even think of a word for. Silver hair? I don’t know, but I almost deleted this one. It makes me dizzy if I look at it too long.

One of my favorite things to see in the woods is a stream that sunlight has turned to gold. I took this photo last November and apparently forgot about it, but I’m putting it into this post in the hope that it might warm you up a bit after such a cold adventure. There is ice in it but it feels a little warmer than the others. A shawl and a cup of hot chocolate might be just about perfect right now.

He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter. ~John Burroughs

Thanks for stopping in.

Things I’ve Seen

Hello again everyone. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are having a Happy New Year. I thought I’d better do a post and show you the first real snow of the year, which fell on January 7th. I say it’s the first real snow because we’ve had a dusting and a nuisance storm of about half an inch, but this one was a plowable 4-5 inches. This old road is one of my favorite winter scenes so I had to get out and get a photo of it before the wind blew all the snow off the trees. I thought it was very beautiful with all the colors of the oak and beech leaves mingling with the white of the snow in the morning sunshine.

This shot of a dandelion in bloom was taken by cellphone just 7 days before that first snowy photo, on December 31st. The two photos illustrate the up and down, freeze and thaw cycle we seem to be stuck in at present. The snowy scenes didn’t last long thanks to 48 degree temps and pouring rain just 2 days after it fell. That’s the way the last two or three winters have gone. The dandelion is the only flower I’ve seen bloom in all 12 months of the year.

This just about says it all. If you can picture that little raindrop freezing at night and then thawing when the sun hits it in the morning, that seems to be the latest version of winter in New Hampshire. I read that the average winter temperature is now 3.5 degrees warmer than it was ten years ago. I’m not here to talk about right or wrong, good or bad, or this or that; I’m just reporting what is.

We had enough rain to make the river flood and when that happens thankfully much of the water ends up in unused fields like this one. I like to get out after the flood waters freeze because that’s when you can see and hear some amazing things.

When the ice begins to shatter some ice plates can be bigger than a car tire. When they’re supported by shrubs as they were here you can tell how deep the water was when it froze over. In this instance I guessed it had been about 18 inches deep. Standing here watching and hearing them break up in the warm sunshine was amazing.

The ground isn’t frozen yet so the water quickly drains away, leaving the ice high and dry. When the sun hits this ice that is left just floating in space the ice begins to shatter and when it does it sings, sometimes tinkling, sometimes crashing. Sometimes you hear loud snapping sounds made by ice cracking under pressure, and it can be startling.

That’s just what happened shortly after this killdeer landed beside me while I was standing and listening to the ice sing. All of the sudden there was a loud snap and crash when ice caved in and this bird flew straight up into the sky like it was a jet airplane. I had to laugh because I had jumped at the sound of the loud noise as well. This is not a great shot of this bird because I was surprised to see it just feet away and of course I didn’t have my camera turned on so there was a lot of fumbling going on.

Killdeer are in the plover family and aren’t seen that often, at least not by me. Its name comes from its “shrill, two-syllable call,” which someone apparently thought sounded like “kill deer.” Where people get these ideas from, I don’t know. Females lay their eggs directly on the ground, often in gravel. I’ve read that the eggs don’t get eaten by predators because they look like stones. If a predator gets too close to the nest the female will flutter on the ground pretending to have a broken wing, and lure the predator away. It’s a very clever bird.

Of course ice can be beautiful, so I always take a closer look. I love the wave like patterns that are often found frozen in ice but I’ve never been able to figure out how it happens. I’m sure wind must have a lot to do with it.

This was a large piece of ice on the shore of a small pond. I thought it was beautiful, almost like a sand dune in shape, and its color reminded me of puddle ice. Years ago I read that ice that is white like this has more oxygen in it; millions of tiny bubbles color it white. It is almost always very thin and it tinkles like the very thin glass of a fluorescent tube when it breaks.

Endlessly fascinating and beautiful, that’s what ice is to me.

I’ve seen this pond freeze over and then thaw again several times since mid-December. It always has interesting frozen bubbles on its surface.

I’ve seen a few examples of “winter fungi” including this one that I saw peeking out from under the bark on a log in a December. I haven’t bothered identifying it.

I’ve also seen lots of color so far in these colder months. This crowded parchment fungus was at its best on a rainy day and it glowed like a beacon so I could see it long before I reached it. You find this common fungus growing on limbs that have fallen from nearby trees. I always wonder how fungal spores get so high into the crown of a tree. Wind I suppose, or maybe they stick to the feet of birds.

Speaking of birds, I’m seeing lots of bluebirds this year. Years ago I saw my first bluebird sitting on a post and rail fence, and then I didn’t see another one for probably 30 years. That’s because I wasn’t looking in the right places. They like wide open spaces like old fields and wetlands, which is just where I saw this one. They’re a good reason to come out of the forest every now and then because they’re beautiful, and they’re also my favorite color. In warmer months they eat insects and in cold weather seeds and berries. This one heard me coming from a few yards away, just about when I saw him, and turned his head to see what I was up to. Often when I see something so beautiful I forget I have a camera, but on this day I had sense enough to get a shot. I love the curled markings on its feathers. They made me realize that I had never seen a bluebird’s back.

There are lots of dogwoods, many different viburnums, highbush cranberry, and other native fruit bearing shrubs here in the wetlands, so I’m sure that has something to do with the large bluebird population.

Bluebirds like to nest in hollow trees but I knew I wouldn’t find one in this hole, because it was in a fallen log.

Still, I had to take a closer look to see if anyone was home. I didn’t see anyone or hear any little feet rustling but I was happy just to see the beautiful wood grain, so it didn’t matter.

I saw this wooly bear caterpillar sauntering down a road on January 10th. These caterpillars produce their own antifreeze and can freeze solid in winter but once the temperatures rise into the 40s F in spring they thaw out and begin feeding on dandelion and other early spring greens. Eventually it will spin a cocoon and emerge as a beautiful tiger moth. From that point on it has only two weeks to live. Unfortunately this wasn’t spring; it was January and 48 degrees, so I wondered if it had been fooled into thinking it was spring. Since winter has been so warm so far, maybe it hasn’t yet felt the need to freeze.

I saw some nice staghorn clubmoss in a colony bigger than I’ve ever seen. Clubmosses are ancient spore bearing plants which have been here for millions of years. Fossil records show they once grew to the size of trees. I don’t see this one too often but they are obviously very happy in this spot.

I saw what I thought was a flattened pinecone on the road one day. While I took photos of it I convinced myself that it was a pinecone that had been run over so many times it had been cut in half. “This will be an interesting thing for the blog” I told myself, “I doubt many people have seen half a pinecone.” Then all of the sudden I realized what I was seeing was not a pinecone at all; it was simply the flattened tip of a pine branch. How could I have totally missed the reality of what I was seeing?

These are the moments in nature that are important, but most of them will go unnoticed. That is unfortunate because it is in these moments that all thought can drain from the mind, and for a second or two you can experience the silence and peace of pure emptiness. Something clicks like a key in a lock, and perhaps for the first time you see with absolute clarity. Others have said the same:

In his 1926 book The Gentle Art of Tramping Stephen Graham said it this way: As you sit on the hillside, or lie prone under the trees of the forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shingly beach of a mountain stream, the great door, that does not look like a door, opens.

Author Charlene Spretnak said it this way: There are sacred moments in life when we experience in rational and very direct ways that separation, the boundary between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and nature, is illusion.

Author Marty Rubin said this: People think in such grand terms-unconditional love, changing the world, doing the impossible. They fail to see the joy, the immense bliss, which lies in simple everyday acts.

Author Charles de Lint had this to say: Free your heart from your mind. Embrace wonder for one moment without the need to consider how that wonder came to be, without the need to justify if it be real or not.

Native American Black Elk from the Lakota tribe said this: And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell, and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of things in the spirit, and the shapes of all shapes as they must live together like one being.

They and many more over the course of countess centuries have all said the same thing in different ways, so I suppose the moral of this too long story is simply; pay close attention. When you get a glimpse of how an imagined life has fooled you into believing what is false, that is the time to see truth. You can’t make it happen and you can’t stop it from happening, but you can stay quiet and pay attention. Then, let whatever wants to happen, happen. As the old saying goes; when the student is ready the teacher will appear. My point is that the teacher doesn’t always have to be human. It can come in any form, anywhere, at any time.

I found a bush full of beautiful bluish seedpods that I hadn’t ever seen. Google lens told me it was a pearl bush and when I looked at a photo it was obvious where the name came from. The flowers remind me of mock orange but the white flower buds on leafless branches look like strings of pearls. I thought its seedpods were beautiful.

A little critter had zipped up the snow.

This blog has evolved over time I suppose, but the message is really still the same: walk slowly and look closely, and marvel at all the wonder and beauty in this paradise we find ourselves in. Anyone can do this, so why not try? Let nature gently lead you back to yourself and remind you that you don’t stop at your skin. You are so much more; beyond knowing, beyond description. Lose yourself in life’s sweet song and let life’s energy surge through you, just as it was doing in everything seen in these photos.

The splendor of Silence—of snow-jeweled hills and of ice. ~Ingram Crockett

Thanks for coming by.

NOTE: I’m not back full time yet. I will still be posting sporadically until sometime in March. Take care.

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone will have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And a Happy Hanukkah too!

May you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life. ~Apache Blessing

Thanks for stopping in.

Winter in the Wetlands

This post completes the circular story of the wetlands for this year. We’ve seen the beautiful trout lilies and other wildflowers of spring, the birds, insects and animals of summer, and the beautiful colors of fall. Now we see winter but before we know it, it will be time to show those spring trout lilies again. This is a beautiful place, with many unusual things that I haven’t seen anywhere else, so that means I’ll have to keep coming back. 

Wild raisin (Viburnum cassinoides) is a native viburnum that likes wet feet so it’s right at home here in the wetlands. In fact I’ve seen more of them here than I ever have anywhere else. They’re easy to spot at this time of year because of their dangling clusters of round blue black fruit. The fruit is edible and is said to be quite sweet, and Native Americans ate them fresh or dried.

If you aren’t sure if what you have are wild raisins, just look at the buds. The valvate buds have two long bud scales that look like a blue heron bill, but the scales don’t cover the center of the bud. There is another native viburnum called nannyberry (Viburnum lentago) that has very similar buds, but its scales cover the entire bud. It also has edible berries, but its berries are more oval or elongated than round and they ripen slightly later. The difference between the flavor of the berries I’ve read, is nannyberries have a prune / banana type flavor, while wild raisins taste more like actual raisins. In any event birds love them both so if you want to try them you might want to get after it.

Bright sunshine showed these blackberry leaves were still green.

If you aren’t sure if what you’re seeing is a raspberry or a blackberry, just feel the canes. Blackberry canes feel more square than round and mature canes will have a groove or two in them that will run the length of the cane. Just watch the thorns.

These blackberry leaves were finished with photosynthesizing so they no longer needed to be green. Blackberries and other brambles like swamp dewberry often have deep purple leaves at this time of year.  

American wintergreen is another plant that turns purple when it gets cold. Oil of wintergreen has been used medicinally for centuries and a soothing tea can be made from the leaves. The fragrance of the oil is unmistakable because it is used in toothpaste, mouthwash, pain relievers, breath mints and many other products but you should note: If you are allergic to aspirin you should not eat the berries, leaves or any teas or other preparations made from this plant because it contains compounds very similar to those found in aspirin.

I saw lots of berries on these plants and thought of my grandmother as I picked a few. When I was just a small boy, after we visited my mother’s grave we would go into the woods so she could teach me about the plants that grew there. Teaberry plants grew in abundance and she always called them checkerberries. Since she often had trouble getting up from a kneeling position before long it was up to me to find the berries and I usually found a lot of them. She loved them and taught me to love them as well but on this day these berries were kind of on the mealy side. I thought maybe they had been frozen and I didn’t care for their texture, but the flavor of Clarks teaberry gum was still the same.

There are lots of gray birches here. Though they aren’t quite as pretty as the bright white paper birches they do have white bark and they’re far more common. It is rare that a day goes by without birches in it.

Gray birches have the odd habit of having upright male catkins rather than ones that hang down like so many other trees. Before they flower in spring though, they will have changed position and will be hanging down. How they might benefit by standing upright, I don’t know. Plants don’t do things just for the fun of it though; every time they use energy, there is a good reason behind it. I’ve always thought that part of the fun of nature study was trying to figure out why they do what they do. If you watch them very closely, like each day in spring for trees, their secrets are often revealed. You don’t have to stand there watching them; often just a glance each day will show you something is different. You might see that those birch catkins that were standing up yesterday are now hanging down. I don’t know this as fact but I would guess in this case that the catkins would want to be pointing downward so water didn’t get in under the shingle like bud scales when they opened. If water reaches the flowers and freezes in a cold spring it can damage or even kill them. 

The female cone like gray birch strobiles are larger than the male catkins and they always hang down. A close look shows that each one bears many hundreds of seeds. The small seeds are shaped like triangles with tiny wings, and are blown about by the wind in late fall and winter. Unless that is, birds get to them first. Many songbirds love them. You can often find the snow under a gray birch littered with hundreds of tiny seeds after a storm and chickadees and other small birds will be feasting on them. If they aren’t eaten they can persist for years in the soil.

But I would guess that most birch seeds do get eaten and to make sure I knew how it was done this black capped chickadee landed right in front of me to show me. It was easy to see where the name “black capped” came from. These are beautifully colored little birds but they don’t sit still long so few of us ever get to see them up close. Quite often I’ll notice as I walk on trails they fly along beside me from bush to bush, always just out of sight of the camera.

Luckily this one wasn’t camera shy so we can get a good look. How it can find those tiny birch seeds in all that gravel and pine needles, I don’t know. They’ve got better eyes than I have, I do know that. Males and females look almost identical but you can tell them apart in spring by their song. The males have a beautiful “fee-bee” mating call that sounds both sad and sweet, and it just doesn’t seem like spring is here until I hear their call. They also have an “every day” call that sounds like “chick a dee-dee-dee,” and I would guess that’s how they came by that part of their name.

We’ve had some up and down weather lately. One day last week it was 48 degrees and as I came out of a store I noticed this cluster fly hanging out on the hood of my car, enjoying the warmth of the engine that was wafting up from the gap between the hood and fender. Google lens told me it was a cluster fly and I learned that their name comes from the way they cluster together on your window sills on sunny winter days. They get into attics and other warm spaces and spend the winter there, but unlike the common housefly they don’t lay eggs on food.

One day it was very warm and all the melting ice created a heavy mist. Since I had seen flies and even mosquitoes around I thought I’d go and see if the spiders had built any webs in the wetlands but no; apparently they all disappeared. I’ve read that orb weaver spiders die in winter but the egg sacs the females leave behind ensure a new generation in spring.

The ice was melting quickly and in a day or two there wouldn’t be any left except in places that saw no sunshine.

There is so much beauty in this world, sometimes it seems like these posts have now reduced themselves to nothing but beauty. But I’m here to report what I see in nature and beauty is what I see, because it’s everywhere I look. I find that my thoughts of whether or not something is beautiful are based more on how something makes me feel than how it looks, and the simplicity of a pickerel weed leaf tip sticking up out of frozen pond grabbed me and held me for a time. I love the colors and the minimalistic, abstract feel, and the way the leaf’s shadow looks like it has been colored in with a crayon. That’s due to tiny bubbles in the ice, I think. I must have taken twenty photos of this scene and this is the one I liked the most.

There is never ice everywhere here in the wetlands; even in the coldest winters there is always open water to be found and mallards are expert at finding it. I found the mallards seen here swimming in part of a pool that hadn’t frozen over completely. There was Mr. Mallard…..

…and there was Mrs. Mallard. I love the way they float along so serenely, and I loved the beautiful patterns in her feathers.

Actually on this day I saw far more of this than I did serene floating. These birds were hungry, and they were finding plenty to eat down there on the bottom.

There were lots of black eyed Susan seeds for other birds to eat. Goldfinches love them and there are lots of goldfinches here. Other birds that eat them are chickadees, cardinals, nuthatches, and sparrows, all of which can be found here in the wetlands.

All of the same birds also eat aster seeds. Years ago I started leaving garden plants standing for the winter so birds could eat the seeds and I usually have a yard full of birds. Most of the smaller birds hide in the big eastern white cedar out front and they fly into it when I open the door to leave. Bigger birds just fly up and perch on the many bare limbs of the maples, cherries and crab apples and watch what I’m doing. I don’t feed them but they know I won’t harm them so I’ve had generation after generation nesting here. One of the great pleasures I find in nature is in the spring when I can start opening the windows to hear their songs at dawn.

I saw lots of bird’s nests here but I chose to show this one because one side support had let go and it was tilted so we could easily see inside it. I thought back to last summer and what birds I had seen in this spot. There were lots of catbirds and a few blue jays here but I can’t say with certainty which of them would have made the nest. A baseball, which is about 3 inches in diameter, would have fit right into it. There are lots of grapevines here as well and this and other birds had used their peeling bark to build their nests, along with straw and whatever else they could find.

I always look at the grape tendrils because sometimes I see amazing things in them like horse heads or Hindu dancers, but on this day all I saw was a grape tendril. It seems like my imagination has decided to take some time off lately.

Miles off in the distance it looked like Mount Monadnock had received a dusting of snow. It usually snows on the mountain before we see any down here in the lowlands. It had rained here the day before, so I’d guess that it fell as snow up there. Once there is a buildup of snow on the mountain it will most likely stay snowy until May, depending on the weather. I’ve been up there when the snow was so deep I had to kind of swim / crawl through / over it. It’s a good thing I was young because it was exhausting. I felt tired right down to my bones.

I couldn’t stand around thinking of mountains for very long because there were some dark clouds moving in, and it was cold enough to snow. I snapped this one last shot of the clouds and stayed dry all the way to the car, but I woke the next morning to find that we’d had a dusting of snow overnight.

Beauty, joy, serenity, simplicity, and wonder; I found them all while making this post and I found them without really even trying. I know you’ll find them too, and much, much more as you travel through life.

Go to the winter woods: listen there; look, watch, and “the dead months” will give you a subtler secret than any you have yet found in the forest. ~ Fiona Macleod

Thanks for coming by.

Note: As I did last year at this time I’m taking a short break from regular blogging, so posts will be sporadic until they resume in March. I need to just be quiet for awhile so I’ll post the usual “Christmas card” post next week and then, unless something comes up I’ll be back in March. I expect something will come up before then though. Last year all of the sudden I was writing poetry. And don’t forget-you can always go to the archives up there on the right hand side and wander through them. There are 12 years worth of blog posts there.

Rail Trail Discoveries

I’d heard rumors about more rail trail improvements going on here and there, so I thought I’d go and see how they were coming along. This trail, for local people who’d like to follow it, runs between the Ashuelot River and Eaton Road in Swanzey. I had also heard that there were also some serious washouts along this trail during the heavy rains and flooding last summer, and I hoped that part of the rumor wasn’t true.

The first improvement I noticed was that the drainage channels had been cleaned out. This was good and bad, because though the water would flow better, the cleaning out had widened the ditch I had to cross over. I stood at the top of the hill you see on the right, wondering what the best way was for me to get to the other side. I thought about running and jumping but then I decided to just walk down the hill and step over the ditch. Unfortunately when I lifted my right foot to step over it my left foot slipped in the mud and I landed with a splash and both feet in the water.

As I stepped up out of the ditch I noticed this boulder in a hazelnut thicket. I thought it was odd that I had never seen it before since I come here to get photos of hazelnut flowers in spring. Even more puzzling was the round spot on it. I couldn’t tell if it had been painted on or if it was natural. Back in my rock and mineral hunting days I split open a honeydew melon size rock that had a large, perfectly round spot in its center that looked just like this, caused by iron deposits I believe. I saved that rock and still have it but this one was too big to carry.

Christmas ferns are flattening themselves against the earth for warmth as they do every year. They’ll stay green under the snow all winter and were named “Christmas” ferns by early settlers who brought them inside in winter. The long, cold, dark winters and several feet of snow must have been hard for them to bear. I would imagine that any green growing thing would have lifted their spirits.

Raspberry leaves lit up this day. Because of the blueish stems I believe this is a black raspberry.

Neat rows of small holes told me a sapsucker had visited this maple tree. Sapsuckers are in the woodpecker family. When sap is running many other birds, bats, insects, and animals sip the sap that runs from these holes, so they are an important part of the workings of the forest. This tree has problems with rot and looked to be ready to fall over, so I doubt much sap will weep from those holes. I usually see sapsucker holes on wild fruit trees. These may be the first I’ve seen on a maple.

The washouts proved to be reality rather than rumor, and this was a big one. What happened was, for the first time in 150 years the stone box culvert under the trail couldn’t handle all the water trying to flow through it at once and the force of the water washed soil away.

For those who have never seen one, this is a photo of a box culvert taken a few years ago. The railroad would put down a thick granite slab for a floor, then add two side walls and a roof, and then pile massive amounts of gravel and packed earth on top of the culvert to make a level bed. Length depended on the width of the railbed. They’re built to last; beyond sturdy, and I’ve never seen one fail. But the railroad engineers didn’t have a crystal ball and they had no way of knowing what type of storms there would be in a century and a half into the future. Today we don’t have to see very far into the future to know that we’re going to have to re-think a lot of our infrastructure. Culverts of any kind should be a priority because there is a lot more water trying to flow through them now and they can’t handle it.

If you see a stream that seems to come out of nowhere when you’re on a rail trail you can be sure there is a box culvert right under where you’re standing. The stream seen here is maybe 30 feet below the rail bed so you can imagine how much soil had to be brought in to raise and level it. Box culverts were built on site by stone masons using granite taken from nearby ledges or boulders and they were built according to how big the stream was. The one in the previous photo, which is the one this stream runs through, is about 2 feet square.

And there are a lot of box culverts along this section of trail.

Here was a huge washout that didn’t affect the trail because it was on the far side of a deep ravine. It was interesting because I could see how sandy soil had been deposited on top of a bed of gray clay. Clay deposits on the banks or beds of rivers are called alluvial deposits. Since the only way that clay could have gotten there was to be deposited by the river, it shows that the river channel was once quite far from where it is now. Time and pressure will eventually turn the clay into shale.

I’ve heard all kinds of opinions on how long it takes to build up an inch of topsoil (100-1000 Yrs.) and in the end I doubt anyone really knows for sure because the rate depends on many different factors. But for the sake of argument I’ll say 500 years. From where I stood it looked like there was about 4 feet of topsoil over the clay bed, so 48 inches X 500 years = 24,000 years since that clay last saw the light of day. Of course that is provided the area wasn’t disturbed by man. If someone trucked all that soil in at some point that changes the whole scenario but it’s safe to say it has been there a long time. Closer to where I lived along the Ashuelot there was an exposed clay deposit in the river bank. I used to dig the clay and make all kinds of things with it but of course I had no way to fire it so it all just crumbled away.

I saw the first good example of a maple dust lichen this year. Some lichens wait until cold weather to really show themselves but I don’t know if this is one of those. This lichen’s appeal is in its simplicity; just a pale greenish body with a white fringe around it; simple beauty. The white fringe is called the prothallus and seeing it is a great way to identify this lichen. Though named the maple dust lichen it grows on several species of tree.

Script lichens are visible year round as white spots on trees but only when it gets cold enough do their squiggly apothecia appear. They’re usually black against the body but these were on the gray side because I think they had just appeared. I’ve wondered for years why some lichens, ferns, mosses and even some fungi wait until winter to release their spores. There has to be some benefit in it but I’ve never been able to even guess what it is. Figuring that out would be a nice feather in a biology students cap, I would think.  

I tend to notice delicate fern moss more than others at this time of year because they always look bright orange. That’s due to color blindness, so I always have to ask my color finding software what color it really is. In this case it says yellow-green. From a distance I thought it was tree skirt moss, but it fooled me in that way too.

It’s easy to see how the shagbark hickory tree got its name. There are quite a few of them growing along this trail. These two were quite young; too young to drop nuts, I would guess.

And here was another trail washout, bigger than the first. I’m not sure who is responsible for repairing things like this but they have quite a job ahead of them.

It’s a long, long way down to the river from up here and that’s quite a pile of rubble and trees that washed away in the flooding when all the rain tried to get to the river. Every brook, stream and trickle eventually finds its way to the Ashuelot River in this part of the state, and the Ashuelot eventually empties into the Connecticut River which in turn empties into the Atlantic Ocean, so we’re sending a lot of soil to the sea.

Ocher Bracket Fungi grew on a log. Though these bracket fungi resemble turkey tails in shape and habit they don’t show the same color variations. The versicolor part of the scientific name of turkey tails means many colors, and these brackets had only various shades of a single color, which was a kind of yellowish brown.

As I always do when I follow this trail, I saw lots of partridge berries and I surprised myself by being able to get a shot of this pea size berry’s two dimples with my cell phone. The dimples are left by the plant’s two flowers, which share a single ovary. I find this little ground hugger’s leaves very pleasing; they always look like hammered metal.

The ovary found at the base of the flowers, as can be seen here. When the ovary becomes a berry, that berry grows around the base of the flowers, which leave dimples in it. This is an unusual arrangement; the only other plant I know of that does this is the fly honeysuckle, which is one of the first shrubs to bloom in spring.

This sign wasn’t a big surprise.

I had heard that some of the rail trail trestles were being re-decked and that’s what was going on here. This work is all done by volunteers, many from snowmobile clubs, so they deserve our thanks. (And our donations if we can afford them.)

It looks like they’re using 4X4 lumber to re-deck this trestle, so that should last a few years. It looked like they were about half done with the decking, but then they’ll also have to replace the guard rails along the sides, which keep people from falling into the river. Since they can probably only work at this on weekends now that it gets dark so early, I think it will be a while before I cross this trestle again. If I kept following this trail in this direction for a few more miles I’d walk right behind the house I grew up in in Keene.

Here were the old guardrails.

I wanted to get a shot of the river from the trestle but that wasn’t going to happen on this day so I had to settle for this shot. The way the river rises and falls so quickly these days makes it hard to know exactly what “normal” is anymore. Raging or placid, I can always count on is its beauty.

The mark of a successful man is one that has spent an entire day on the bank of a river without feeling guilty about it. ~Chinese philosopher

Thanks for stopping in.

Things I’ve Seen

I started these “things I’ve seen posts” years ago because I had lots of photos that just didn’t seem to fit in other posts. I think this is the first one I’ve done this year but these are all recent photos that also didn’t fit in, like this milkweed seed resting on a branch that I saw just the other day. It  was most likely taken by the wind not too long after I’d left. According to the University of Maine Native American used milkweed as medicine to treat a variety of ailments, made the stem fibers into yarn, and ate the plant as well, ingesting the young shoots, flowers, and young green fruits of milkweed. The shoots have been compared to asparagus and the unopened buds to broccoli.

Since the corn fields near here began to flood the farmer started planting wheat, so I thought these plants I found growing under the powerlines nearby were wheat escapees but Canada wild rye, native to the great plains, looks very similar after the leaves have died back. Wild rye seeds are edible and were used as food by Native Americans.

I also found some Canada lily seed pods under the powerlines. They had opened and were releasing seeds. They split into three sections when they open, and each section has two rounded lobes which the seeds fit into perfectly.

Looking at the seeds it’s easy to see how the rounded parts fit into the rounded lobes in each section of seed pod. The pointed part points toward the center of the pod and the flat seeds are stacked into each lobe, meaning that each seed pod carries many seeds. Canada lily bulbs are edible but they were a famine food, used by Native Americans only when other foods weren’t available. When roasted they are said to taste like an ear of unripe corn. The seeds remind me of American elm seeds.

I like to see the beautiful blue of juniper berries but they don’t last long because bluebirds and other birds eat them up as fast as they ripen. A waxy coating reflects the light in a way that makes the deep purple black berries appear to be a bright and beautiful blue. Though called a berry botanically speaking the fruit is actually a seed cone with fleshy, merged scales. The flavor of gin comes from the juniper plant’s unripe berry and the ripe berry is the only part of a conifer known to be used as a spice. Whole and / or ground fruit is used on game like venison, moose, and bear meat. The first recorded usage of juniper appears on an Egyptian papyrus from 1500 BC. Egyptians used juniper medicinally and Native Americans used the fruit as both food and medicine. Stomach disorders, infections and arthritis were among the ailments treated. Natives also made jewelry from the seeds inside the berries, which I keep telling myself I’ll look at but never do.

A dead Queen Anne’s lace flower head looked like a starburst in the bright sunlight.

I went to the river several times this past summer to see the beautiful iridescent colors of mussel shells. There was no question that they would be there because raccoons go there to fish and when they’re done eating the meat of the mussel they leave the shells behind. But this year every time I went to see them the shells were broken into pieces. Who or what was breaking them? They’ve never been broken in past years and I can’t imagine an animal doing it. I’ve noticed footprints in the sand now and then though, so I have an idea that it might be the work of a someone rather than a something. Too bad; if they stopped for a moment to see how the light brought out the beautiful colors of the shells maybe they’d see what they had been depriving themselves of by breaking them.

I found a great illustration of a branch collar. The dark part sticking up is obviously the dead branch but what is maybe no so obvious is the branch collar below it, which is shaped like a volcano. When pruning trees it is always best to cut the branch and leave the branch collar intact because this exposes less of the tree’s surface area to insects and fungal spores. It’s easy to see the difference between the diameter of the branch compared to the base of the branch collar.

I went out one cold night to get something out of the car and saw this half moon shining brightly so I went back in and got the camera, steadied it on a post and took this shot. It would have been better if I had used a tripod. I remember as a boy in 1969 I used my father’s binoculars to see if I could see the Lunar Orbiter circling the moon, but I never did see it. The thought of people actually up there walking on the moon was awe inspiring. Everything stopped as the people of earth (650 million) watched the lunar landing on television. We all came together as one people then, and it seemed such a great time to be alive.

Two mallards swam blue streaks across a golden pond. This photo is right from the camera just as it happened, without any re-touching. I’ve seen golden water and I’ve seen blue water, but I’ve never seen this. Of course it’s all about the light; it is the light that makes things beautiful. Ponds are starting to ice over, so mallards and geese will have a harder time finding open water soon.

Long, faceted spears of ice formed along the shore of another pond. They were barely noticeable unless the light fell on them in a certain way, so it took a few tries to get a shot of them.

There were a few ice baubles along the river shore on this day. It has to get quite cold for them to form. It seems to take at least a couple of nights in the 20s F. to get them started.

On another day many ice baubles were catching the bright sunlight beautifully and acting like prisms with colors both in them and shining out of them but try as I might, I couldn’t catch them in the camera. I was finally able to get the blue of the sky reflected in this one though. I wanted to try a cellphone camera but the rocks on shore were covered in ice and I would have had to kneel on them while I held the phone out over the water. It didn’t seem like a very good plan.

This was a strange, hand shaped ice bauble. The wind howls up and down the river at times so I can only guess that the wind was the sculptor. It must have been a very cold and windy night. The sun’s light was again beautifully colored by it but again, I couldn’t catch it so I’ll have to keep trying. Quite often you find that the camera can’t see what your eyes can.

Hoar frost covered much of the grass on the riverbank.

From what I’ve read, hoar frost is a type of feathery frost that forms by condensation of water vapor to ice at temperatures below freezing. The word ‘hoar’ comes from old English and refers to the old age appearance of the frost: the way the ice crystals form makes it look like white hair or a beard. One of the best places to find hoarfrost is on exposed plants near unfrozen lakes and streams. There are times when you can walk along a stream and see all the stream side shrubs covered with it.

Since it was cold enough I went to the outflow of Swanzey Lake. The small waterfall there always makes good splash ice at this time of year.

Though I’m not sure why, splash ice is usually more opaque than the ice baubles along the river that are made by waves washing over a twig or plant stem. It’s never as clear, but it is just as interesting. If I had to guess I’d say the whitish color is due to large concentrations of oxygen, much like white puddle ice is.

The ice that grew on a big boulder looked like what I imagine the barnacles on a ship’s hull would look like.

I had forgotten about the iron rich seep in this place. Seeps don’t flow; they just sit on the surface like a puddle. I know of some that have been where they are for many years, but none I’ve seen are as richly colored as this one. The water in a seep reaches the earth’s surface from an underground aquifer and apparently stays somewhat warm, because I’ve never seen a seep freeze over. In a way though I wish they would; I’d like to see red puddle ice.

Another small pond had mostly frozen over but the ice was thin. A goose landing on it would have probably broken through but geese swim in the river at this time of year, where it takes longer for ice to form.

A fragrant white waterlily leaf had been caught in the ice. In summer the surface this pond is covered by many hundreds of them. Pond and lake ice always looks perfectly smooth but it rarely is because the wind sculpts and forms it.

I don’t see sun dogs often but last Saturday afternoon I saw what looked almost like a vertical rainbow to the right of the sun. Sundogs happen when there are ice crystals in the atmosphere. The ice crystals act much like prisms and color the light, which is often red closest to the sun, yellow in the center and white at the farthest edge. I could see two sundogs, one on either side of the sun, and an arc or “bow” overhead, but I couldn’t get far enough away to get them all in one photo. The scene covered a huge area.

I found this photo of sundogs on Wikipedia. It was taken in Saskatoon, Canada by Carlos Enrique Díaz Fecha last year. If I had been far enough away I could have gotten a shot much like this one, but I could only get the sundog on the right side of the sun. As I drove under the arc I watched the one on the left, hoping for a good place to stop but I never did find one; I was just too close. Sundogs get their name from the way they follow or “dog” the sun. This isn’t new; Aristotle (384-322 BC) once noted that “two mock suns rose with the sun and followed it all through the day until sunset.” He said that “mock suns” are always to the side, never above or below, most commonly at sunrise or sunset, and more rarely in the middle of the day.

I zoomed in a little closer, thinking I’d see something different but I didn’t. Just color; an amplification and bending of the light. Though sundogs warn of coming storms it was nice to see them; an interesting and beautiful end to the day.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau

Thanks for coming by.

Big Changes in the Deep Cut

It has been nearly a year since I last visited the man-made canyon on the deep cut rail trail up in Westmoreland, because the last time I visited there had been a rockslide in the southern end of the man-made canyon and it had flooded the canyon badly. The northern canyon seen here remained mostly untouched.

I say mostly untouched because rock falls were also happening in the northern canyon. If you look closely up ahead on the right side you can see a caution sign, there so snowmobiles don’t crash into the rock fall in winter.

The largest stone seen here is about half the size of a Volkswagen beetle, and it surely would have crushed one if one had been there when it fell.

Above the rock fall is a scary scene, because huge stones have detached from the wall and are ready to fall. You can see marks from the old steam drills and the stone has come loose from the face of the canyon along the line of one of the drill marks. This is a dangerous situation that I will stay away from until that loose, car crushing stone has fallen.

The reason so many stones fall is because there is a lot of groundwater here. The water seeps into any crack in the stone and when it gets cold enough it freezes and expands, and ever so slowly the stones are pushed apart. Eventually they fall, but this never would have happened when the trains were running because the railroad would have regularly inspected the route.

Though some features, like that beautifully built retaining wall on the left, need little maintenance the drainage channels that run through here need regular cleaning of leaves, silt and branches or they dam themselves up and flood into the trail. This has happened in several spots along this section of trail. There is a lot of water here and if it doesn’t have a way to run off, it causes problems.

The reason I started regularly coming to this place is because I found plants here that I couldn’t find anywhere else, like the wild chervil seen in the photo above. Its leaves were still nice and green and I think that was because there hadn’t been a frost here yet. This place has its own weather and usually runs about 10 degrees cooler, but on this day it was warm and so humid the camera lens kept fogging up. I was also swatting mosquitoes in November, which was a first. Wild chervil isn’t the same as the cultivated chervil used to flavor soups so it should never be eaten. In many places it is called cow parsley and it closely resembles many plants like water hemlock that are extremely poisonous. It’s a good plant to admire and just leave alone.

I saw some late fall oyster mushrooms on a log. On this side they had just appeared and were whitish colored…

…and on the other side of the log they had some age and had darkened. These mushrooms almost always form in overlapping groups. They are sometimes said to be the last mushroom seen before winter but there are many others that fruit in late fall. Though I didn’t show them here the gills are yellow to yellow orange. When quite young they also have a yellowish color where the cap meets the stem and that is the “glow” seen in the previous photo.

There are lots of ferns here, including the evergreen wood ferns seen here. These ferns are true evergreens, holding on to their green fronds under the snow until spring.

If you’re interested in knowing what fern it is you happen to be seeing a good guide book is Identifying Ferns the Easy Way: A Pocket Guide to Common Ferns of the Northeast by Lynn Levine. When I bought it, it was $10.95, which is a low price for a guide as good as this one. One of the things she explains in detail is how to use a fern’s spore case locality on the leaf to identify it.

On another log there were some brown cup fungi growing on a log and they must have been tasty because something, probably a squirrel or chipmunk, had been nibbling at them.  According to Michael Kuo at Mushroom Expert. Com these are among the most difficult fungi to identify. I call them brown cup fungi because they are brown and cup shaped but they could be one of several different species.

I looked up to the rim of the canyon and there was a young beech so bright against the background trees it looked to be on fire. Though the walls of the canyon look barren at this time of year in summer they are lush and green, with masses of violets and other flowers growing anywhere they can get a foothold. It transforms itself into a beautiful Shangri-La.

One of the most unusual things I’ve found growing on these walls is algae. Even though what you see is colored carrot orange it is called green algae. Over about a dozen years it has grown to about twice the size it was when I first found it and has even started growing on the opposite wall of the canyon. I keep hoping I’ll see it producing spores but I haven’t yet.

I found lots of beech drops here. They grow near beech trees and are a parasite that fasten onto the roots of the tree using root like structures. They take all of their nutrients from the tree so they don’t need leaves, chlorophyll, or sunlight. Beech drops are annuals that die off in cold weather, but they can often be found growing in the same place each year.

Tiny pinkish purple flowers with a darker purplish or reddish stripe are the only things found on a beech drop’s leafless stems. On the lower part of the stem are flowers that never have to open because they self-fertilize. They are known as cleistogamous flowers. On the upper part of the stem are tubular flowers which open and are pollinated by insects. The flowers seen here never really opened, possibly because it is so late in the season. I usually find them blossoming in September.

I was surprised to find leaves on this young maple. I think it was an invasive Norway maple, which hold their leaves until most other maples have dropped theirs. Their fall color is yellow as well. The real test is to break a leaf stem. If it has white latex rather than clear sap it is a Norway maple.

These leaves had a good case of powdery mildew. Like tar spot, which is another leaf attacking disease, it is unsightly but it doesn’t harm the health of the tree.

Since I knew how wet the trail ahead was, and since I wasn’t going “thru,” I skirted the sign so I could see what had been done over the summer.

The answer was, not much. They had broken up the huge stone slab that had slipped off the hillside though, so that was a start. I had spoken to one of the people who were going to do the work so I know there are big plans for the place. I’m guessing they’re waiting for the ground to freeze so the heavy equipment doesn’t destroy what is left of the trail. In this photo you can see by the stone standing upright how thick the slab was. When it slipped it came to rest in the drainage channel, plugging it tight and flooding the trail.

There were three of these huge slabs of rock along this section of trail and now there are two. If the others let go and slide into the trail I hope I’m not here when it happens. This shot of one of the two slabs still left gives you an idea of how big they are. You could park a Volkswagen beetle on this one. In winter they are covered in sheets of ice about 6 inches think, and I always hoped the ice wouldn’t give way when I was here in the winter. That the stone would let go and slip never crossed my mind. It must have made quite a rumbling sound.

This view gives an idea of how thick the slabs are; I’d guess about 18 inches. The slab of rock that fell was about the same thickness as what is seen here but it was bigger, if I remember correctly.  It was also covered in ice when it fell. The green you see here and there in this shot are great scented liverworts. There was a lot of water between us so I couldn’t get any closer.

For the first time since I’ve been coming here I found great scented liverwort growing in soil beside the trail. I’ve always liked its reptilian appearance and its clean, fresh scent. I hope it continues to grow in this spot but it is a very fussy plant that will refuse to grow if the conditions aren’t right. It demands clean, unpolluted water, for instance.

Also for the first time, I saw a yellow jelly fungus growing on a leaf. Or it might have grown through holes in this beech leaf. I’ve never seen them grow on anything but wood. There is always something unusual to see, every time I come here.

I had to reach out and run my hand over this white tipped Hedwigia moss. It seems more animal than plant and it begs to be petted. When it looks like it does in this photo it is at its optimum; it has had plenty of water and is good and healthy, and is at the top of its game. When dry it looks completely different. The white tips are caused by young leaves that have no chlorophyl. They turn green as the age.

I’ve never shown you how I get into the canyon. This is the view just as you come out of the canyon, looking toward the road, so we’re leaving rather than arriving. The ice climbers who come here kindly built boardwalks to get over the washouts that get bigger each year. You really have to watch your step through here because after the heavy rains of last summer the washouts have become deep enough in places to break a leg if you fell into one. When I’m moving through here I walk slowly and keep my eyes on the ground at all times. Just off to the left of that nearest boardwalk there is a washed out hole that could swallow a car.

There are seeps in this area as well, and this one had an iridescent sheen on it. Seeps are groundwater that lies on the surface like a huge puddle, but they never freeze no matter how cold it gets.

Looking forward, it will be nice to have the trail restored to its former condition with working drainage channels so it is not so muddy here, but for the next few months this will be a good place to stay away from.

It’s amazing how quickly nature consumes human places after we turn our backs on them. Life is a hungry thing. ~Scott Westerfeld

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving Day. Thanks for stopping in.

Trees (And Friends)

This past week one interesting / beautiful tree led to another, so there are a lot of trees in this post; and not always for their leaf color. I was happy to find a young larch tree recently. This is the only evergreen that I know of in this area to lose all its needles in winter. Before the needles fall they turn color just like autunn leaves, and they’re beautiful. It’s rare in my experience to find a larch in the wild.

This is what most of our maples look like now. Except for an occasional holdout they are free of leaves and the landscape is opening up. At this time of year you can really see the lay of the land; what I’ve always called the bones of the forest.

One day in late spring / early summer another man and I watched a Baltimore oriole fly in and out of this red maple. Sure it was building a nest we looked and looked until we convinced ourselves that no, this bird couldn’t have built a nest, otherwise we’d surely see it. But it was there, so well hidden behind leaves that we couldn’t see it. Once the leaves fell, there it was.

Note all the flower buds on this tree, ready for spring. Once the ground thaws enough so the roots can begin taking up water in April, the buds will swell and then open; some of the year’s first blossoms. So can you see spring in November? Yes, everywhere.

This maple for some reason split into two trees right at the stump, but that’s not what I want you to see.

These are kissing trees, also known as wedded or married trees. When two trees of the same species, or in this case two leaders of one tree, grow close enough together to rub when the wind blows, the rubbing can wear away the outer bark. When the outer bark is gone and the inner bark, known as the cambium layer, of both trees comes together they can grow together as one as these have. You can see the “kiss” in the middle of the photo where a branch shadow crosses both trees at an angle. These two trees, or more accurately two leaders of the same tree, are forever “wedded.”

Something I’ve never seen before is married white pine trees. These were big trees and you can see how the way they grew meant that, once they got big enough, they would surely rub together.

And here is the kiss. Something I’ve never seen white pines do.

Above where the trees emraced they once again became two trees. These trees, both maples and pines, have grafted themselves together naturally by way of a process called inosculation. Did man learn grafting from seeing things like this? I would guess yes, and today grafting is done on everything from roses to fruit trees. In nature the process isn’t as rare as we might think.

Far more common and much easier to see is this kind of tree marriage, when one branch from a tree somehow becomes grafted to another. If you’ve ever seen a tree grow around and engulf a steel cable or wire fence, I suspect the same thing has happened here. A branch rubbed against another tree and finally grafted itself to that tree. Over time the tree grew enough in diameter to absorb or engulf the branch from the first tree. I’ve seen this happen on other trees as well.

This maple limb had an itch and when it reached back to scratch itself it froze there for all time. Or maybe I just made that up. Watching for married trees is just another fun thing to do in nature, especially when children are involved. There is no point, no meaning;  just seeing all of the  things nature is capable of.

The wind blew an oak leaf into the road I was walking on. The leaf looked as if it had been sculpted and polished. And the color was amazing.

Beyond its beauty this leaf shows why it takes oak leaves so long to break down once they fall. They have a waxy coating that prevents water loss, but this coating also prevents moisture absorbtion. When water falls on an oak leaf it runs off, taking any dirt or air pollution particles with it, and that’s why this leaf looks so clean. The amazing shine also comes from that wax coating, and it gives a good hint of why oak leaves are so slippery. If you climb a hill in an oak forest you’d better have something to hang onto, because it can be like walking on ice. I’ve come across hillsides so slippery I’ve had to sit and slide down, digging in my heels so I didn’t get going too fast. A waterfall I often visit called Forty foot falls in Surry tumbles down a hillside that is very slippery.

Here is another look at oak leaf color. They have as wide a color range as red maples but of course change a month or so later so they extend the season.

This is probably the strangest oak leaf color that I see. I believe it belongs to a swamp white oak. My color finding software sees plum, steel blue, rosy brown, and thistle; all; colors I’ve never seen on a red maple.

I was wearing my color blindness correcting glasses when I saw this amazing view for the first time. When I lifted the glasses up though the colors were muted, almost as if I were seeing them through dirty glass. I’d lower the glasses and the colors would pop, raise them and the colors would lose their vibrance. I did this several times and thought about how for all of my life I thought what I was seeing was normal and now here was proof that it wasn’t.

When I got home and looked at the photo it looked muted, more like it did when I didn’t have the glasses on than when I did, so by small increments I lightened it to try and match what I saw with the glasses on. I think it’s fairly accurate but I’m talking about color, not quality. This was taken with my camera at the full extent of its zoom capabilities from miles away, and though I used a monopod it’s far from sharp. I’ll call it impressionistic.

This beech tree caught the only ray of sunlight in the forest and it was beautiful. Whenever I see sunlight highlighting something I always pay attention and walk over to whatever it is. It’s as if a spotlight was aimed at it so I would pay attention to it. All I saw this time was beauty, and I stood and admired it.

Beech leaves are starting to turn brown and they’ll stay that color all winter long, rattling and whispering in the winter winds. Once the buds begin to lengthen and swell in spring it’ll be time to make room for new leaves, so all of this year’s leaves will finally fall off. It is thought that beech trees, and a few oak trees as well, hang onto their leaves in winter to discourage foraging moose and deer from eating their buds.

For the first time I saw beech leaves with black spots on them. When I looked up its possible cause I was a bit stunned by what I was reading. According to the New York State Department of Conservation it is called beech leaf disease (BLD) and affects and kills both native and ornamental beech tree species. It is associated with a nematode, Litylenchus crenatae mccannii. This disease has only been discovered in recent years and much about it, including the full cause and how it spreads, is still unknown. The photo they showed of an infected tree looked much like what you see above. Here is a link to their web page: https://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/120589.html

You should look closely again at the previous photo of infected beech leaves and compare it to this photo of tar spot on maple leaves. Tar spot has a very different cause and does not affect the health of the tree. As far as I know beech leaves do not get tar spot.

I’m seeing plenty of catkins on the hazelnuts. They’ll lengthen and turn gold before shedding their pollen in spring when the tiny female flowers open.

Last spring’s female flowers produced quite a good crop of hazelnuts. I like the way the bracts always have so much movement in them, even though they’re as stiff as a starched collar at this time of year.

If you ever happen to notice a tree losing its bark, take a look at it once each week or so. Doing so will mean you can watch how a fascinating process progresses. White pines like the one in the photo shed their bark in quite large plates so it isn’t wise to stand too near the tree. White pine bark can be surprisingly heavy. Smaller trees often lose their bark in long strips that curl and puddle at the base of the tree like a nest of snakes. There are many reasons a living tree can lose its bark but when a tree looks like the one in the above photo it has died, and dead trees have no need of bark. The wood of a dead tree dries out and shrinks over time but the bark doesn’t shrink at the same rate, so it eventually becomes detached and gravity does the rest.

Of course once a tree falls and touches the soil fungi and other organisms go to work, breaking it down so its nutrients can be returned to the forest. The bracket fungi working on this birch limb are cinnabar polypores, which in my experience are rare in this area. They are often deep red but I think these were aging and had lost some of their red coloring.

The moss in this photo is native big red stem moss, which grows faster than any other moss I’ve seen. It has taken over this Norway spruce forest floor in the time I’ve been doing this blog, but it might as well do so because this forest floor is too dark for anything other than a few fungi. The moss will overrun other mosses and engulf any branches that fall. This spot is a great example of how the trees above can affect the forest floor below. According to the U.S. Forest Service, “Schreber’s big red stem moss typically occurs as a dominant or codominant ground cover in stands dominated by white spruce (Picea glauca) or black spruce (P. mariana).” Big redstem moss forms a monoculture of thick, cushion like growth that would probably be great to sleep on when camping. At one time it was collected and used to block chinks in the walls of log homes in Scandinavia, and is still used for chinking log homes in Russia. It was also used for lining fruit and vegetable storage bins.

If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. ~Tecumseh, Shawnee

I hope everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving Day Thursday. Taking a walk in the woods is a great way to walk off all that food! Thanks for coming by.