Local Scenery

Quite often when I go here and there searching for plants that are new to me I see interesting and beautiful landscape scenes. I always take pictures but they don’t always make it onto the blog for whatever reason, so I decided to show some of them in this post.

 

I’ve shown shots of a meadow that I visit a couple of times recently on this blog, but this is a different one that I found just the other day. Even though it’s a different meadow, it is still dominated by several species of goldenrod and purple loosestrife.  I can’t help taking a photo every time I see something like this because the color combination is very appealing.

People who have been reading this blog for a while know that one of my favorite places to hunt for plants is along river banks.  The river that is easiest for me to get to is the Ashuelot, which runs north to south from Pittsburg to Hinsdale New Hampshire for 64 miles. This photo shows boulders out of the water in this section, which means that the water level is about as low as it’s been all year.

 

I also follow streams and this one seemed especially photogenic. Sitting beside a stream out in the middle of nowhere is just about the most serene and enjoyable way to pass the time that I can think of.

 

Recently an old friend came to visit from California where he now lives and we decided to hike a trail called High Blue in Walpole, New Hampshire. At 1,588 feet it isn’t very high but it is always very blue. When I sent my friend a copy of this photo he thought it looked a lot bluer than it did in person. I’ve noticed this too and, even though I’ve taken this photo of Stratton Mountain in Vermont with 3 different cameras, the view is always as blue as you see here.  I’ve even looked at photos online that are also just as blue and I can’t figure out what causes it, other than the atmosphere itself.

This is another view looking across the Connecticut River valley to the surrounding Vermont hills from High Blue trail in Walpole. I like the various shades of blue and how they fade into one to another. I think I’ve seen this same thing in photos from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I’m anxious to see what it looks like when the trees change color, and wonder if it will still be as blue.

 Last spring before it had leaves I visited this lone tree and thought it looked a bit like an elm. Now that I see it fully clothed it looks more like an oak or a maple.  When you live in what is essentially a 4.8 million acre forest any tree that stands alone is a real eye catcher.

I’ve been watching a construction company gnawing away at this hill for over a year now. I’m sure they know more about what they’re doing than I do, but I think I’d be careful about getting under the large over hanging area on the right. It’s hard to imagine what the view will be when the hill is gone.

I was disappointed about not seeing the meteor showers and grabbed a few shots of the half-moon instead. I think the craters show better on a photo of a half-moon than they do on one of the full moon.

A few posts ago I showed a photo of the church in Marlow, New Hampshire, a small town north of here. This view is of the nearby odd fellows hall in the same town. It’s a shame that the power company put their poles and wires in front of all of these buildings. You can see similar photos online where the photographer has taken great pains to “paint out” the wires and poles. I thought about doing the same but then if a tourist saw this post and came here to see the real thing, they might be disappointed to find the wires in the way.

 

This view of Mount Monadnock from Perkin’s Pond in Troy, New Hampshire is well known and so cherished by local artists, photographers and residents that the power company didn’t dare block it with poles and wires. Last fall they, at what must have been considerable expense, brought in machinery that pulled the wires under the pond somehow. I saw the machinery but never saw it in action, so I’m not sure how it worked. I imagine it was similar to the process used for installing in-ground irrigation systems, but on a much larger scale.

Another well-known view of the mountain is found on a private road that follows the shoreline of Stone pond in Marlborough, New Hampshire. The road used to be part of a large private estate and the building in the photo was once a private chapel. The Saint Francis Episcopal chapel, built in 1926, is open to the public for weddings and other events. There have been many weddings here, and many photos taken of this view.

 

 This is the kind of place I hope to visit today. Happy trails!

Boy, Gramp! Nature’s so much bigger in person than it is on TV! ~ Dennis the Menace

Thanks for stopping in.