On The Level

This post was going to be about the beeches and oaks at Willard Pond in Antrim. For years now I’ve finished the foliage season by visiting this beautiful hardwood forest but this year the light just wasn’t with me on my first visit. This photo has been lightened somewhat so it doesn’t show how dark it really was, especially under the trees. Shooting photos in such conditions would have been a waste of time so I turned and left.

A week later on Halloween I returned to Willard Pond on a cold, blustery morning to find that most of the leaves had fallen. I thought this was a bit odd since Halloween has always been my time to visit but the weather has been strange and unpredictable for all of this year. To be truthful I wasn’t upset that there would be no Willard Pond post this year because the Tudor trail that I usually follow is one of the roughest I know, with a lot of boulders and other things to step over and around. Each time I went I followed the trail for a short while and found that it bothered the knee that I damaged in my recent fall on Pitcher Mountain, so skipping it this year will probably turn out to be the right decision. If you want to see what Willard Pond Forest is like just go up to the search box at the top of the page and type “Willard Pond.” You’ll find several years of posts.

On the road into Willard Pond I saw some beautiful maple leaved viburnums on the side of the road. The color range of these plants is really amazing.

I also saw some bright red winterberries at Willard Pond. The fruits of this native holly hold their color for quite a while so they are sought after by people wanting to use them for holiday decorations. I often find bushes that have had almost all the berry bearing branches cut off.

I think for a while due to leg pain and maybe some balance issues that I should stay on flat, level surfaces like this rail trail in Keene. Other than an occasional woodchuck hole there is little to trip over as long as you stay on the trail. This will not be a hardship because I grew up on this trail way back when it was a working railroad route and I know it as well as I know myself. On this day I went to see the tree colors, which were a bit muted.

The muted colors come naturally because I think there are mostly silver maples in this area. Silver maples turn different shades of yellow in the fall unlike red maples, which have a much wider color range including red and orange.

Though there are still a few isolated red maples showing color most now look like this one.

All the yellow seen in this view comes from beeches, silver maples, birches, and Japanese honeysuckles.

Even the deer tongue grasses turned yellow this year. Quite often I see a lot of purple on these plants.

The silvery, fluffy seedheads of virgin’s bower vines line the rail trail. When in flower they’re known as traveler’s joy but at this stage they’re called Devil’s darning needles. Both names are just meaningless labels we’ve put on a pretty plant. The truth is, in nature there is no good or bad, no right or wrong, no past or future; there is just the perfection of this moment called now. We would do well to learn from this.

In a college botany class I once had I did my final exam paper on poisonous plants. The plant seen here was one of the deadliest, but also one of the most interesting. It is monk’s hood or monkshood; Queen of poisons, and it has been used to kill for countless centuries. If you were found growing it in ancient Rome there was a good chance that you’d be put to death, because as far as the Romans were concerned the only use for the extremely toxic plant was to add its toxic sap to the water of one’s enemies to eliminate them.

A side view of the flowers shows where the name monk’s hood comes from. The plant is in the aconite family and its sap can be absorbed through the skin. In 2015 an experienced gardener in the U.K. died of multiple organ failure after weeding and hoeing near aconite plants. I will often hold a plant steady with one hand while taking a photo with the other hand on windy days but not this plant.

Monkshood plants can stand a lot of cold so it is often one of the last to bloom in this area. The flowers are quite unusual and very pretty but it should only be grown where there are no children present, in my opinion. Knowledge of its dangers and always working around it with gloves on means anyone can grow it. If you do it will certainly be a conversation starter. Just think, you could tell friends how the Roman Agrippina hired Locusta to poison the emperor Claudius I in 54 AD. It is said that Locusta chose aconite to do the deed.

I saw some oak leaves with odd patterns on them. Whether made by insects or caused by nutrient deficiency, I don’t know. There is an insect, a leaf miner I think, which eats all the soft tissue of an oak leaf, leaving just the ribs and a net like skeleton leaf behind.

Some of these photos weren’t used in other posts for whatever reason. One of them is this misty morning visit to the wetlands when the maples were still colorful.

I saw more dewy spider webs on that visit. It’s hard to believe how many large webs are in these trees. This one was about the size of a basketball and I’d say on average that would be the size of most of them.

The colors have been beautiful this year but they’ve also been drawn out because of the warm weather. Everyone I meet seems to have an opinion about what a strange year it has been weather-wise.

The staghorn sumac colors have been amazing this year. The reds especially have been intense. Red is often a tough color for cameras to reproduce accurately but I think this is a fair representation.

Except for the deep purples of ash and oak I can’t think of a single fall leaf color that isn’t represented here in this scene from the wetlands. They’re all there and how beautiful they are when they’re all together in this way. It can take your breath away sometimes.

This is another scene from the wetlands that I like very much. All summer long I thought it would be beautiful in the fall because of the maples, and it was.

In the past the photos I’ve taken of poplars (Aspens) in the fall have almost always been soft and impressionistic as if they had been drawn with pastels, but these trees in the foreground seemed a bit loud to me. In shape and in leaf color poplars look a lot like birches from a distance. Only the gray bark tells the story. Most birches in this area growing in large colonies like that seen here are gray birches, which have white bark.

This is why I call this place the wetlands. The road I walk on was built through a swamp and there is water all along the roadsides. There is abundant life in a swamp and this is an excellent way to stay dry while seeing it.

I’m not sure where else I’d see autumn meadowhawks still flying in November. They were everywhere yesterday, resting in the sunshine. This one landed on a stump right in front of me and I had to wonder if they could read minds. I also saw lots of bluebirds on this day but I couldn’t get any of them to pose.

I was surprised to see a few pickerel weed flowers blooming in the wetlands after all others in various places had gone to seed. I have to say that this spot is a real jewel, with an abundance of birds, animals, insects, and interesting plants and wildflowers. There’s really no telling what you’ll see on any given day and I’m very happy to have finally discovered it, right there alongside the Keene Airport of all places. The level, paved road is easy to walk but there are plenty of places where you can leave it and explore the forest.

It was there in the wetlands that I saw the fall colors of tall meadow rue for the first time. This plant always blooms just at or before July 4th with flowers that look like bursts of fireworks. The “tall” part of its common name is very true; I’ve seen it reach over seven feet.

Since we had snow flurries as I was writing parts of this post I’ll end it with a white aster. We’ve also had our first freeze, almost a month late and coming before the first frost that should have happened in mid-September. Oh well, since a friend in Michigan reported 10 inches of snow on Halloween I don’t think we have anything to complain about.

An autumn forest is such a place that once entered you never look for the exit. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for coming by.

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A Slight Return

Hello again everyone, I hope you are all well and hope that you’ve had a wonderful summer. I can’t believe that fall is here already but as you can see, the trees are saying that it is so. I’d like to thank all of you for understanding my need to take a break and I thank you for your well wishes. Also, thank you to those of you who have written to ask how I’ve been doing. I’ve been fine, and though you haven’t heard from me in a few months I’ve still been out meandering around and taking photos, though not in the large numbers I once did. Fall in New England is a special time and this year has been particularly colorful, so I didn’t feel right letting it pass without showing you some of it. I’m not going to say much about the photos because I think just about everyone everywhere knows that leaves change color in October in New England.

I’d like to think that I’ve used the time away from this blog wisely by finding answers to some difficult questions, some of which concerned this blog. For years it had been such a joy to do. It was hardly a burden at all; I just went on walks and took photos of anything that caught my eye and then showed them to you, and that was really all it was. Easy, laid back, no cares, no troubles. But then somehow it began taking more and more time and the joy was slowly seeping out of it. What to do was a question I had to answer.

The problem was, putting this blog together was taking every minute of free time I had, and that’s because I let it happen. I thought readers were getting tired of seeing the same old places so I tried to find new places to go, even if it included driving to them to do it. Then, because I always took far too many photos I added more and more to the blog. One day I saw that it had grown into something I really didn’t enjoy anymore, but I felt chained to it.

For all of my life, I have found answers to difficult questions through simply being silent and listening. Solitude has always been part of the solution because it is solitude that makes silence shine like a bright light in the darkness. That light leads you into yourself and it is there where the answers are found, because they come from the heart. That’s a large part of why I had to take a break from blogging.

When I was a boy summer seemed to last forever, and for many years I wondered why that was. The answer, I finally saw, was that there was no time then. Though I still had chores and other things to take care of I could do them whenever I wanted, so I was completely free of time. It was easy to envision retirement being the same way. I would just throw away all the clocks and step out of time and I’d be free, but if we don’t pay attention in life, we can set traps for ourselves and then fall into them, and that’s just what I had done. I had all the free time I wanted yes, but I also had no really constructive ideas about how to use it. I knew that I didn’t want to use it all writing this blog, but I had to ask myself what life would be. Would the high points of life now consist of walking, mowing the lawn, reading, and writing blog posts?

There had to be more to retirement than that, so I thought I’d travel a little. I’d get to see some places I hadn’t seen in years and I could take photos while there and show you our mountains and seashore, each about two hours away. But then gas prices started rising almost on the day I retired and went so high that any plans that included driving any real distance had to be put on hold. I had also always wanted to volunteer as a reader for / to the blind so I wanted to use some of my free time for that, but apparently advances in audio gadgetry have put an end to that need. Both my father and an aunt were blind so I know what a challenge it can be. Other volunteering opportunities in the immediate area seem to be slim to none. I couldn’t believe that I had all this free time and could find no good, useful way to use it.

So to feel somewhat useful I found a part time job. It isn’t much; just 25 hours per week, but I feel like I’m accomplishing something. I’m not one to sneeze at a little extra money but that’s not what having a job is really about for me at this point; it’s more about feeling like I’m doing something that matters while having the chance to be around other people. The hermit that lives here inside me was telling me that I should go and stay in a cave I found but as tempting as it sounded, I think it would be too much of a good thing. I’m getting too old to fight off animals and sleeping on stone has never been any fun. Besides, the people I work with are among the kindest, most helpful people I’ve met and so far, I feel at home there. It may not last forever but at this point I think I could look back on it fondly, as a good thing.

Finally, I had to sit down and ask myself why this blog was even here. What did I expect from it? Was it a hobby? What good was it? It started as an offshoot of a garden coaching business that never took off. Garden coaching is where you show homeowners how to do the “hard and scary things” like pruning trees and trimming shrubs and hedges, and transplanting. You help them find solutions to what they see as problems, hence the strange name of this blog. The other part of it was proving that I didn’t have what it took to write a weekly gardening column for a local newspaper. People were telling me I should and I told them if I did, it wouldn’t last. After eleven years of keeping this blog going that thought has obviously gone out the window. But here was this blog, coming up out of the ashes of two ideas that had collided simultaneously. At first it was about gardening and nobody cared, so I decided to end it on its one-year anniversary. But then I stepped back out of the way. I hung my mind on a peg and just let this thing do what it would. Posts began writing themselves, and suddenly people began showing some interest.

It’s hard to explain what I mean when I say a post “wrote itself” but it’s almost as if I’m taking dictation when it happens. I sit and watch words appear on the screen and I’m often surprised and baffled by what I see. Here’s an example of what I mean:

I remember wondering, where did that come from? It came pretty much as it is, with very little tinkering required. I had to turn it into an image so WordPress wouldn’t change the format, so that’s why the text looks smaller.

I’ve always had a spark in me that made me want to draw and paint, or write, or design gardens, or take photos, or anything else that made me feel that I was making something out of nothing. When that spark of creativity begins to burn inside, bright and hot enough so you have to do something about it, it is the most wondrous thing you can imagine. You just step out of yourself; get out of your way, and let whatever it is you’re doing flow out of you unobstructed, like water. When it happens it is euphoric, and that’s putting it mildly. So yes, as a creative outlet this blog has value, but obviously it is a personal thing.

All of you, through your comments and emails over the years, have shown me that this blog has value beyond any personal satisfaction that I might receive from it. I’ve heard from many people who are nature lovers but who for whatever reason can’t get outside easily anymore, and they’ve told me that this blog is their only link to the outdoors. Their situations are what made my recent break so hard, because I felt as if I was letting them down. That’s why it’s important to me that you know that the decision to shut down for a while wasn’t just off the cuff. I put a lot of thought into it before finally understanding that it had to happen. In the end it is all of you who have answered the question, why is this blog even here?  

I’m not here to win prizes or to see how many people I can get to read this blog; I’m here to get you out there. The hope I’ve always had is that whoever reads this will want to get out there and see the things I see because I can guarantee that if they do, they too will fall in love with nature. That’s important, because when we love something, we are less apt to destroy it. That is the essence of this blog in a nutshell so please, go out and fall in love with this beautiful place we live in, and then tell everybody you know about the miracles you’ve seen. No matter where you live, there is beauty there. There is beauty absolutely everywhere you look, and part of the fun is exploring your piece of the world and seeing it. If you pay attention, you will notice how nature quietly leads you from one beautiful thing to another all throughout your walks, and over time you’ll find that one of the most beautiful things it has led you to is you. It is by losing ourselves in the beauty of this world that we can find our true selves. One of the biggest surprises about being in nature is, we learn as much about ourselves as we do about nature. Just be there fully, with your whole self, and walk with nature, not through it. This isn’t a bare rock we live on; it’s a garden paradise, and we are as much a part of it as it is a part of us. Let nature show you that you don’t stop at your skin. You are so very much more.

So here we are. I can answer my own questions with yes, this blog does have value and as a creative outlet it is more than just a hobby. I see creative outlets as similar to pressure relief valves, so I’ve decided to keep it going. I’m going to have to cut back on the number of posts I do though; no longer will I be doing two posts per week. I don’t know if I’m just getting old or what it is but two posts per week seem to have really become just too much. For years I told readers they didn’t have to go anywhere to see the wonders of nature because nature was everywhere. I could walk into the woods or along the banks of the river each day and see new things every single time. So this blog is going to go back to that easy, laid back, joyful, no cares thing that it once was. I’m going to let simplicity be my guide and just wander and see what I see with nothing more in mind than walking with an old friend. I can’t say what the new schedule will be yet because I don’t know that myself. Friends have suggested that one post each month would be easier to bear but no matter what I decide you might want to click on the “Follow This Blog Via Email” button over there on the right. I was getting lots of emails from people saying they were no longer being notified of new posts and the way to solve that problem (I hope) is by clicking that button and adding your email address, even if you’ve already done so. That way if these posts become just a random thing you won’t miss any, not that there is anything earthshaking here to miss.

I have to say that when I think about it, I find that it’s very strange to be doing something like this. It’s easy to get carried away by it, always thinking the current post should be better than the last. That’s why it’s a good idea I think, to sit down every now and then and remind yourself what it’s really all about. A kind of reaffirmation of the core principles that made you want to start doing it in the first place. I can never know how many people this blog has touched, and I’ll never know what they might go on to do or be, and I have to be okay with the not knowing. All I can really do is hope that the message gets through and makes people want to get outside and explore their world. From then on if nature fills even one of them with the kind of love and reverence that makes them fall to their knees and weep tears of joy and gratitude, this blog will have done something.

Until the next time, which shouldn’t be too long, thanks for stopping in. It’s been nice talking to you again. Take care, and enjoy life.

There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice. ~John Calvin

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40 Foot Falls

Every year at this time I like to go and see 40 foot falls up in Surry. It’s a very dark place because of the tree canopy, but once the leaves fall it opens up enough to take photos. It’s the only place I know of with a waterfall that you can get close to. We’d had quite a bit of rain the day before so on this day it was roaring.

This trip comes with a price and that is the climb. It can be a little dicey, especially on wet oak leaves, but if you’re careful it isn’t too bad. I found a nice straight and stout tree branch to use as a walking stick.

Years ago I read somewhere that you should slow down water in a photo to show movement. Now, I’m fairly certain that anyone who reads this blog knows that falling water has motion but just in case someone comes by who doesn’t, here it is in full slow motion. I’ve always thought that it was really done so a photographer could show off their camera skills, but that’s just my opinion and I should probably keep it to myself.

I prefer the real myself, and this is as real as it gets. By the way, that boulder over there wouldn’t fit in a pickup truck. Not only does this water have motion, it has great force as well. You’ll most likely note all the downed trees in these shots. They aren’t saplings; they’re mature trees. Or they were, anyway. When this brook floods people tremble. Severe flooding in August of 2003 washed away large parts of the road that the brook parallels, and flooded houses. I’ve read enough about it to know that I don’t want to be anywhere near here if it happens again.

What I believe were late fall oyster mushrooms (Panellus serotinus) grew on on a log. Oyster mushrooms exude “extracellular toxins” that stun fungi eating nematodes, and once the nematode has been stunned mycelium invades its body through its orifices. The mushrooms also consume bacteria in order to get nitrogen and protein, and all of this means that oyster mushrooms are a truly carnivorous mushroom.

Here is a look at the underside of one of those oyster mushrooms. I’ve read that the late fall variety are chewy and nearly tasteless, but I’ve never tried them.

A large number of smoky eye boulder lichens (Porpidia albocaerulescens) grew on a boulder. Their fruiting bodies (apothecia) were beautifully blue and the bodies (Thallus) were golden just like they are at Beaver Brook. I think this is the first time I’ve seen them looking like this outside of the Beaver Brook Natural Area. This is a very beautiful lichen and is one of my favorites so I was happy to find them. It’s like finding jewels sprinkled on the rock.

There are three waterfalls along this section of the brook. We’ve seen the lower falls and this is the middle falls. I think this one is the most photogenic.

There used to be a snowmobile trail up here with a bridge that crossed the brook but flooding tore it apart. This steel cable is all that’s left and it’s slowly being engulfed by trees.

Other miscellaneous pieces like this steel strap can be found here and there.

An old culvert once ran under the trail but the soil of the trail has been washed away.

A tinder fungus (Fomes fomentarius) grew on a dead tree. The Fomes part of the scientific name means “tinder” and the fomentarius part means “used for tinder.” They are called tinder fungi because of their age-old use as tinder to start fires. The Cree tribe of Native Americans used these fungi to carry coals from one place to another. Tinder polypores produce huge amounts of spores; measurements in the field have shown that they release as many as 800 million spores per hour in the spring and summer. They grow on dead deciduous trees and logs. This one was quite pretty, I thought.

This is the first place I ever saw beech scale (Cryptococcus fagisuga) and unfortunately it is still here. Excessive feeding by this scale insect causes two different fungi, Neonectria faginata and Neonectria ditissima, to produce annual cankers or blisters on the bark of the tree. The continuous formation of lesions around the tree eventually girdles it, resulting in canopy death. It has killed many trees.

Heartleaf foamflowers (Tiarella cordifolia) grew in a small colony that I’ve never noticed here before. They’re one of our prettiest late spring flowers and are easy to spot because of their hairy, maple-like leaves and foot high flower stalks. Native plants have leaves that are bright green at first and then turn a darker green, sometimes mottled with maroon or brown. Many hybrids have been created and foam flowers are now popular in garden centers and are grown in gardens as much for their striking foliage as the flowers. They are an excellent, maintenance free choice for shady gardens that get only morning sun.

Now we’re up above the middle falls, and we’re done climbing.

Because you don’t climb that. I can’t guess how deep this canyon is but I do know that I wouldn’t want to be up there on the rim.

The stream bed is course gravel, made up of stones that have presumably fallen or have been washed from the canyon walls.

The boulder against that tree wasn’t there the last time I was here. You can see how all of the bark has been scoured from the base of the trees, most likely from stones hitting them. Losing their bark kills them and then the brook then just tears them out by the roots and washes them downstream.

After all the roar and white water the upper falls are a bit anti climactic. I don’t know where the name “40 foot falls” comes from because the upper falls don’t look 40 feet high and the brook is far more than 40 feet long in this section of falls. I’ve tried many times to find the origin of the name but have had no luck. As I was writing this post, I found a website that claimed the falls and brook are on private land and are posted no trespassing, but that isn’t true. I’ve never seen a no trespassing sign in this area and since I don’t ignore them, this post would never have appeared if I had. I have no idea who actually owns the land but I would thank them for allowing people on it if I did.

Now comes the trip down. Parts of it are so steep and slippery with leaves I have to sit and slowly slide down, so if you come here you might want to wear sturdy pants as well as sturdy, waterproof shoes.

I saw that some mushrooms had hidden themselves inside a hollow tree stump. More late fall oysters, I’d guess.

Coltsfoot plants (Tussilago farfara) grew in a sunny spot. I always tell myself that I’ll come back in the spring to see the flowers but by then I’ve usually forgotten that I’ve seen them.

Christmas ferns (Polystichum acrostichoides) were dotted here and there on the forest floor. They are one of 5 or 6 evergreen ferns found in these woods, and their common name is thought to come from the early settler’s habit of using its fronds as Christmas decorations. Native Americans used the Christmas fern to treat chest ailments like pneumonia and to relieve flu symptoms.

If you look closely you can see that each Christmas fern leaf has a tiny “toe,” which makes it look like a Christmas stocking. Another unusual thing about Christmas fern is the shape of its fronds, which start off narrow at the base, widen in the middle, and then get narrow again at the tip. Most ferns have fronds that taper gradually; widest at the base and narrower towards the tip.

It is clear that nature rules here and maybe that’s why I come. There are few places left in this area where you can find the kind of untamed wildness found here. It makes you feel small, and everybody should feel small now and then. It keeps us humble and helps us keep life in perspective. In fact studies have shown that people who often feel a sense of awe and amazement at the vastness of nature and creation were more likely to be compassionate toward others, and more ethical when making decisions. So there is another reason to get into the woods.

Explore often. Only then will you know how small you are and how big the world is. ~ Pradeepa Pandiyan

Thanks for stopping in.

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Into the Mist

I was happy to wake up one morning and see a thick mist rolling across the landscape. This isn’t rare here but it is rare to have it happen on a day off when I have time to run out and play in it. That’s why you see so few misty blog posts here. I quickly got myself together and off I went, into the mist.

At first being in such heavy mist seemed a bit like trying to breathe under water and I wondered if my weakened lungs would stand for it, but as usual seeing the beauty of the forest took me away to that magical place where there are no cares, and I quickly forgot about breathing issues. If, when you come out of the forest, you immediately give attention to your time spent there, you find that there were no problems to solve while you were there, no yesterdays or tomorrows to worry about, only the joy of what was happening right then and there. Nothing else existed for you. This is why, I believe, people seek out wild places, and this is why people like Jane Goodall say things like “It was in the forest that I found the peace that passeth all understanding.”

And the beeches might have seemed more beautiful than you had ever imagined they could be. How could you have missed such beauty, such serenity, and such sheer joy for so long, you might wonder. Don’t wonder; just be thankful that you have found what you have, because now, as John Muir said: “Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

The sun kept trying to break through the mist and I kept trying to get a shot of it happening, but neither of us had much success.

What I believe was a crust fungus called Phlebia radiata, or wrinkled crust fungus, had formed a cup and it was holding water. In fact the mist was so thick on this day that everything was wet and dripping.

I admired the perfectly round holes an insect had made in a pine tree, which was now a log. I once knew what made these pencil size holes but I have forgotten, and it really doesn’t matter anyhow. At least to me it doesn’t matter. It might matter quite a lot to the forestry students at Yale University who come out here to practice their craft.

Wood ear fungi (Auricularia auricula-judae) listened to the silence. This “winter mushroom” is usually found on fallen branches in winter and early spring. It’s one of the jelly fungi and it feels just like your earlobe. They can have some color but these examples were fairly pale. My color finding software sees “peach puff.”

I saw that the mist seemed far off now. It wasn’t as close or as thick as when I had started.

And over there bright sunshine was falling on the beaver swamp. It was luminous, and it reminded me of the luminists; those American painters who tried to capture the quality of light.

Here is a fine example of a luminist painting. It was painted in 1875 by by Frederic Edwin Church, who called it “Autumn.” Luminism shared an interest in the quality of light with impressionism but that was about all they shared. There were a lot of technical differences like the quality of brush strokes between them, but I won’t go into all of that. Luminism lasted from about 1850 to 1870, and was concerned not only with light, but mood as well. Luminist paintings are calm and tranquil, with soft hazy skies and reflections in the water, just like what I found here in Yale Forest.

But here in Yale Forest all thoughts of Luminism quickly evaporated because the sun had won out and the misty atmosphere had left the place. I supposed I’d have to turn to the impressionists for the rest of my walk. It really is amazing how fast mist can disappear. I’ve raced up hillsides hoping to get shots of mist in the valley below, only to find no mist and the sun shining brightly when I reached the summit.

I found quite a few partridge berries (Mitchella repens) that the turkeys had missed at the the base of a tree. They are interesting so they’re worth a closer look.

What is amazing about these small berries is how a single berry originates from two flowers. The ovaries of the two flowers join and form one berry that contains 8 seeds, and the two dimples found on the berries tell the story of where the flowers once were. Partridgeberry is one of the lowest growing evergreen plants on the forest floor, hardly growing more than 3 or 4 inches high.

I saw a fungal garden growing on the end of a log.

And I saw some more pixie cup lichens forming. Isn’t it funny how you can go all of your life without seeing something but then when you finally do see it, you start seeing it everywhere?

There are still lots of fallen trees out here. The wind has really ravaged the place over the last couple of years, it seems.

But there was little wind on this day. It was still early in the morning and it was a beautiful day to be outside. I wasn’t too far from the beaver pond when I took this photo.

You have to cross what was a small stream to get to the beaver pond. It has gotten wider over the years so what I was once able to step over I now have to jump over. I’m always a little wary of jumping when I’m off in the woods alone but I came back unscathed. I’d rather jump than try to walk across on slippery rocks. I have a friend who tried that and ended up nursing cracked ribs for a few months.

I saw that someone had pulled the beaver dam apart again. This might seem cruel to some but it is neccessary when beavers build dams too near human structures. There is a busy road near here that has nearly flooded due to beaver dams, so the highway department keeps a close eye on them.

I’ve taken beaver dams apart and taking apart even a small one like this is hard work. They use stones, mud and branches to weave a very strong dam. It would easily take two men all afternoon just to do what we see here.

The stone wall going down into the beaver pond says two things; that this was once farmland and that the beavers came along after the wall was built.

The beaver pond drains off into the woods and the woods are turning into a swamp. Along this stream is where I come in spring to find the beautiful woodland horsetail (Equisetum sylvaticum.)

I also come out here to see hundreds of goldthread plants (Coptis groenlandicum) in bloom in spring. Their shiny evergreen leaves make them easy to find at any time of year.

A cinnamon fern hung on to one last leaf.

But I’m sure it must be part of this pile by now.

As I was leaving I saw an old man, asleep in a pine branch, with a jelly fungus for moustache. I took a couple of quick shots and let him sleep. I hoped his dreams were pleasant ones.

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

Thanks for coming by. I hope this post helped make your day a little brighter, and I hope everyone will have a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

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A Little More Fall Color At Beaver Brook

I thought I might see some good foliage up at Beaver Brook but by the time I got there most of the leaves were on the old abandoned road. But not all of them; I did see some color a little further up the road.

Someone had swept away the leaves on part of the road so you could see the old no passing zone lines.

I stopped at the old bridge over Beaver Brook, which still has its guard rails made of channel iron beams and stout cables.

It’s not a bad place to get a glimpse of the brook as long as you’re steady on your feet.

The beeches were still colorful, which is what I expected.

And the hillsides were full of them.

But of course all the other trees like maples and birches had already dropped their leaves. I used to like moss hunting on the ledges here but there have been some big rock falls so I stay away from most of them now.

I did get close to this ledge so I could show you the icicles, but I didn’t stay long. It was cold in the shade.

The wet leaves below the ledges showed that the icicles were melting.

These were my favorite icicles. That rock on the right with an icicle on its chin reminded me of a skull.

The exposed ledges show that the place is quite literally crumbling away. Much of the stone here is soft, as in feldspar, and it looks like it has shattered. It’s no wonder there are rock slides happening.

The place is slowly putting itself to bed for another winter and once again it will sleep under a blanket of leaves. Seeing them covering the entire length of the old road showed me that.

The brook is slowly eating away the road and evidence of this is everywhere, like in the stilted roots of this golden birch. All the soil has been washed away from them and now the tree hangs precariously out over the brook.

These birches have some impressive root systems but they’re shallow, and the trees do fall over.

I saw a place where I could get to the water without breaking my neck. I noticed that one of the concrete guard posts had been washed up on shore but I didn’t want to think about how the brook would have had to rage to move such a heavy object. They’re about six feet long.  

When I reached the water, I looked upstream…

…and I looked downstream. I saw that the brook was being very well behaved and staying within its banks. It isn’t always so. Someday, I thought as I sat here, in the summer when it’s hot and dry and the water is low, I’d like to walk across this brook and explore the other side. The only thing I know for sure about it is that there is a boulder as big as a house in one spot.

I saw an animal den. It looked like maybe a woodchuck in size but I doubted they would dig so close to water. I don’t think they would find enough to eat here. They’re more a meadow or hayfield animal. Or your flower or vegetable garden.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a frost crack on an eastern hemlock before but I think these warty growths were a healed frost crack. If so, it would now be called a frost rib.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a red maple leaf this color before either. I like it.

What I call the disappearing waterfall usually only runs down this hillside in spring when the snow melts, but here it was running in November. It shows how much rain we’ve had. It’s a pretty scene and I’ve seen lots of people stop to take photos of it.

Once again, especially with all the slippery leaves, I couldn’t talk myself into crawling down the steep embankment to get a shot of Beaver Brook Falls. I did get a side view though. It was roaring.

The old road dead ends and there isn’t much to see after the falls so I usually turn around and head back the way I came. I admired more beautiful beech trees along the way.

And some colorful turkey tail fungi (Trametes versicolor.) They’re doing well this year and I’m glad about that because I like seeing them. There must be a thousand variations in color. I like the blue and orange ones.

I think it was my blogging friend Eliza who asked me last year if I ever saw any bigtooth aspen leaves. I believe I told her that I didn’t but I should have said that sometimes I miss things, because they were everywhere.

The presence of a path doesn’t necessarily mean the existence of a destination. ~Craig D. Lounsbrough

Thanks for stopping in. I hope none of you are seeing any severe winter weather. So far, so good here.

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The Last of the Fall Color?

This small maple burned brightly when caught in the early morning sunlight, but as you can see all of the trees behind it were bare, and that’s the way it looks in many places now. Will this be the last fall color post? Normally I would say most definitely but I can’t say this year because it seems to go on and on.

This is what I saw on a back road recently. These are mostly beech with a few maples here and there. It was a beautiful drive.

Here was a lone beech also looking very beautiful, I thought.

This is a forest scene I drove past at first but then I had to turn around and go back. Mostly oak with a few beeches I think, with the tallest evergreens white pines.

This was one of the most colorful native maple leaved viburnums that I’ve seen. This is a great shrub for a woodland garden because they can take quite a lot of shade, and then just look what they do in the fall.

I love the soft, quiet color of these ginkgo leaves. Fossils of Ginkgo leaves have been discovered that date back more than 200 million years.

A red maple was beautifully orange.

In this closer shot of a red maple you can see how the leaves that are shaded by other leaves are yellow, while the leaves in full sun are orange. This is the first year I’ve noticed that some leaves are darker in full sun. It must have something to do with either the way or the timing of how the chlorophyll leaves them. Does it disappear quicker in shade?

I’ve seen the same thing in blueberries but this one was beautifully red.

Forsythias can be beautiful in the fall, with mostly reds and purples showing.

Another ornamental shrub, called Fothergilla or witch alder, is also beautiful in the fall. The bottlebrush like flowers in late spring are also very pretty. It’s a shrub that really is underused in gardens.

Oaks and beeches go so well together.

Here is an oak that shows that same light and dark shading caused by sun and shade.

I hope you can stand more beech trees. I can’t get enough of them.

The sumacs have also been beautiful this year. I’ve seen lots of vibrant reds everywhere.

These sumacs were shiny due to a rain storm but they were also very red.

For those who have never seen one, this is what the leaves of the ornamental locust called sunburst locust look like in the fall. Sunburst is an appropriate name.

Though there was sunshine there was also frost at the Ashuelot River in Swanzey.

But with a wider view you couldn’t tell that it was frosty at all. I saw that the oaks were still showing a lot of color.

Here is the same view in the rain. It was more of a drizzle, actually.

I went to the river specifically to see the burning bushes that grow in the forest there. They’re showing good color this year and don’t seem to be in any hurry to shed their leaves. I know that they’re terribly invasive and all the reasons for not having them here are good ones, but you can’t deny their beauty in a setting like this.

They look kind of magenta to me. Since they grow in the shade they never seem to achieve what I’d call red.

Slowly over time their leaves lighten until they’re a very pale pink–almost white, and once they’ve lost all their color they’ll drop. This year they’ve held on quite nicely but I’ve seen years when every leaf dropped over night.

Here is a closer look at the colors of the “wild” burning bushes. When you’re surrounded by them in a forest it’s almost like floating on a pink cloud.

Any time I get the chance to end a post in November with a flower, I’ll take it. The witch hazels bloomed beautifully this year.

I watched the surrounding landscape with great curiosity, and I wanted to discover the words that could describe all its unspoiled beauty. ~Daniel J. Rice

Thanks for coming by.

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Getting Untangled

Last weekend I was working on the mushroom post you saw last Wednesday but it wasn’t coming together. I was getting all tangled up in it and I needed to get away from it for a while, so I decided to go out for a walk and maybe catch the last of the fall color. I chose a familiar rail trail that I know as well as I know myself, so I hoped I wouldn’t have to search for the name of anything I saw there. I thought maybe I could just put my mind in my back pocket for a while and enjoy the beauty. The above shot is looking west across a cornfield that runs alongside the rail trail, and looks over to some of the many hills that surround Keene. We sit in a kind of a bowl that is surrounded by hills, and since cold air acts like water and flows down hills to fill valleys like this one, it can get cold. Most of the trees were bare over across the cornfield but it was still a colorful scene.

Canada geese have been coming to this cornfield by the hundreds for as long as I’ve been here, and here they were again. This year though, they would get a surprise because there was no corn grown in this field. I’ve always thought that the geese came after the harvest so they could eat all the spilled kernels of corn but for the past two years drought stopped the corn, and this year the fields flooded, so they’ve had slim pickings.

When I got to the rail trail I noticed that some of the trees weren’t that colorful but that was fine, I thought the shrubs more than made up for it.

Here was an invasive but beautiful burning bush. I’ve only just discovered that the red color is more prominent when they grow in sunshine. I’ve shown the pale pastel pink and magenta bushes along the river in Swanzey on this blog many times, and now I know that their paler colors come from them growing in shade. That shade doesn’t stop them from growing into an impenetrable thicket though.

They were loaded with berries and the birds love them, so in the future we’ll have more burning bushes.

Goldenrod still bloomed and I could hardly believe it.

They were covered in small flies. This one had a buzz.

Dandelions bloomed as well and, since I’ve seen their blooms in every month of the year, they were a little less surprising.

At times I had to just stop and look, and then take a photo or two so you could see what I saw. What a beautiful day it was. I was happy to be outside away from the computer, but then I’m always happy to be outside. It never gets old.

The rains we’ve had have washed all the joy out of our native clematis called traveler’s joy apparently because their seed heads were looking a little bedraggled. This native vine is also called old man’s beard and I thought maybe that name was more appropriate on this day.

Its deep purple, almost black leaves are usually quite pretty. I’ve never seen them splotched with green like this.

The American hazelnuts are ready for spring.

The seedpods of wild cucumber had empty chambers where the seeds grow, so it is also ready for spring. It’s an annual that grows new from seed each year and the vines that grow from those seeds can sometimes reach 30 feet long in a single summer.

Some of the maples still had leaves and they contrasted nicely with the red of the oaks.

This staghorn sumac was trying to be pumpkin orange.

And this one wanted to be tomato red. Or maybe plum purple. They have quite a color range.

The American beeches are slowly losing their yellow but they’re still very beautiful. They’re easily one of our most beautiful trees at almost any time of year.

Another nearly 5 inches of rain the previous week had caused Ash Brook to flood and the woods near it were flooded all along the trail. This has been happening for a long time here and the silver and red maples that grow here can take it. What can’t take it is corn. The cornfields have deep drainage ditches around their perimeters but they can’t keep up with this much rain. The Ashuelot River takes all the runoff away to the Connecticut River and then on to the Atlantic, but the river is also being overwhelmed. Come to think of it there must be a lot of silt spilling into the Atlantic these days.

The old rail trail wasn’t like a Manhattan sidewalk on this day but it was fairly busy with dog walkers, bike riders and joggers. The area south of here, where the bike rider in the photo is heading, is densely populated and over the years people have discovered what a great trail system they have right in their back yards. It’s nice to see more people getting outside.

I think the boards that the snowmobile clubs put down on the trestles helped bring a lot of people out onto the rail trails. A lot of people were scared to walk over them when there were gaps between the ties. Until I was about ten I was afraid as well but I finally found the courage to cross, and then I had the whole world in front of me. I was a bird that had escaped its cage, and I flew. Stephen King once said: Some birds are not meant to be caged, that’s all. Their feathers are too bright, their songs too sweet and wild.

There was a lot of water where there normally isn’t any.

Despite the flooding the railbed was high and dry, and so very pretty. I hated to leave.

When I got back to the car, I stretched my zoom lens out as far as it would go and took a last shot of one of the distant hills. I was surprised to see so much color still on the trees. It was the perfect end to what had turned into a beautiful afternoon. Now I thought, maybe I could finish that mushroom post.

If you seek creative ideas go walking.
Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.
~ Raymond I. Meyers

Thanks for stopping in.

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Fall Fungi

Though there are mushrooms known as “winter mushrooms” we’ve had a few nights of freezing temperatures now so I think our mushroom hunting season is over. What you’ll find in this post are all the mushrooms I’ve found since the last mushroom post I did in September. Mushrooms can be both interesting and beautiful, and by the end of this post I hope you’ll agree. Hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa,) shown in the above photo, is an edible polypore that often grows in the same spot year after year. I usually find them at the base of very old oak trees. They are called the “dancing mushrooms” in Japan. That’s something my imagination won’t let me see, but I can see the back of a brown hen’s ruffled feathers, and that’s how they come by their common name in this country. They are also called ram’s head or sheep’s head.

Lion’s mane, bear’s head, monkey head, icicle mushroom-call it what you will, Hericium americanum is a toothed fungus that is always fun to find in the woods. Soft spines hang from branches that reach out from a thick central stalk, making it look like a fungal waterfall. They can get quite large and I thik the biggest one I’ve seen was about the size of a grapefruit. Every one I’ve seen has been growing on a log or a dead tree as this one was. Though it was slightly past its prime I thought it was still pretty. This mushroom is edible but unless you can be 100% sure of your identification you should never eat a wild mushroom.

Carnation earth fan (Thelephora terrestris) is also called the common fiber vase. It is a small, tough, inedible fungus that grows on soil. It is said to like sandy soil under pine trees and that’s just where I found it. It is also said to have a moldy, earth like scent, which I didn’t smell. It does look like a carnation. I like its deep reddish-brown color and frosted white edges. It has a cousin called the stinking earth fan (Thelephora palmata) but it looks quite different.

I found quite a large colony of common ink caps (Coprinopsis atramentaria) on a lawn at work, and it was a good thing I found them when I did because the cap margins were starting to roll up.

Once the cap starts rolling like this, this mushroom doesn’t have a lot of future left. Common inkcaps are said to be edible, but they become toxic if consumed with alcohol. For that reason they are known as “tippler’s bane.” They create a strong sensitivity to alcohol by inhibiting the liver’s ability to break it down. You don’t die but you do get very sick.

Inkcaps release their spores by a process called autodigestion, dissolving into an inky liquid which contains their spores. The black, spore rich liquid that this mushroom becomes was once used as ink for printing. They come and go quickly; I’ve seen them disappear in just a day.

White worm coral fungus (Clavaria fragilis) is one of the club fungi, and is also called fairy fingers. Each fruiting body is tubular and unbranched, and they usually grow in clusters like those seen in the photo. I found these very clean examples at the edge of a swamp. They’re fragile so if you want a photo of them complete it’s best not to touch them.

Cockscomb coral mushrooms (Clavulina cristata) are ghostly while and, like many coral mushrooms, seem to prefer growing in hard packed earth like that found on woodland trails, and they often grow in large groups. It’s startling to see something so pure white come out of the dark soil.

The deceiver (Laccaria laccata) gets its common name from the way it resembles many other small mushrooms. When young like these in the photo were they can appear reddish, pinkish brown, or orange. As they age, they can change enough to even appear white or sometimes nearly colorless.  

The rather deep gills of the deceiver are a mixture of long and short. Though when young these gills are dark colored, they lighten as they age and get covered by this mushroom’s white spores. They are said to be edible but with their ability to mimic other mushrooms and a name like the deceiver I’m not sure I’d eat them.

Every time I do a mushroom post I have photos of mushrooms I can’t identify, and this is one of those. I’m adding this shot to this post because they’re a pretty color and fun to look at, and you don’t need to know a name to be able to see their beauty.

In case you’re searching for a name for that mushroom in the previous photos, here are its gills.

I found a big cluster of red painted suillus mushrooms (Suillus spraguei) in a lawn. It is also called the painted slippery cap and red and yellow suillus. The caps are dark red when young like I think these examples were, and develop yellowish cracks as they age. They also have mats of reddish hairs on the cap but it had just rained so they were hard to see.

The real surprise was the hairs on the underside of the cap. They looked like spun sugar, but are really the remnants of a partial veil that once covered the spore bearing surface. Along with the marbled stem and yellowish elongated pores, they made this mushroom very pretty. It does indeed look like it has been painted.

A young thin maze, flat polypore (Daedaleopsis confragosa) might fool you into thinking it was a turkey tail fungus, but one look at its underside would tell you otherwise.

On a turkey tail fungus the underside is full of round pores that look like pin holes, but the lower spore bearing surface of the thin maze polypore is maze like, as its name suggests. Michael Kuo of Mushroom Expert. com says that this mushroom’s appearance is highly variable, with pores sometimes appearing elongated and sometimes rounder. With mushrooms it’s always about increasing the surface area that its spores grow on so it can produce more spores, so I’m guessing this one produces an amazing number of them. These polypores grow on fallen branches and logs.

Usually, if you say the word “polypore” to someone who knows mushrooms they think of a mushroom with pores on the underside of the cap but as we saw with the thin maze flat polypore, they don’t always have pores. In fact, sometimes they have gills, like the rusty gilled polypore (Gloeophyllum sepiarium) seen here. I found them growing on an old timber at work and that made sense, because their job is to decompose dead wood like white pine, which our forests are full of.  It’s a velvety, colorful mushroom that often grows into a lozenge shape like that seen in the above photo.

And here is what the gills on a rusty gilled polypore look like. There are always unexpected surprises in nature.

The velvet footed pax (Tapinella atrotomentosa) is a large bracket type fungus that grows on conifer stumps and logs. Though it is considered to be a bolete it has gills, so it’s easy to get confused when you find it. The most interesting thing about it is how it contains several compounds that repel insects, so it is unlikley that you’ll find any fungus gnats on it. All those insect repellants will also make you sick, so it’s best to let it be. It looked like an animal ran its claws over the cap of this example but I didn’t see any insect damage. The depressed center and rolled rim help with identification, so I think I have this one correct. It matches several examples I’ve seen online.

The real clincher for indentification on the velvet footed pax is its velvet foot. Black to brown velvety hairs cover the base of the stem (stipe.) One of the things that bother me about this one is how the outer rim isn’t rolled under quite as much as I’ve seen on a few other examples.

Pear shaped puffballs (Lycoperdon pyriforme) grow in clusters on stumps and logs but I’ve also seen them growing on a rotted part of a living standing tree, and that is never good for the tree. Their common name comes from their kind of upside-down pear shape. As they age pores open in the top of each one so its spores can be released. This one is fairly common but I see it more after it has released its spores than before.

I’ve seen a lot of yellow spindle coral fungi (Clavulinopsis fusiformis) but I’ve never seen them do this. These fungi usually grow in tight clusters often in the hard packed soil on the side of the trail, but I’ve found them on the forest floor as well. I’m not sure why they would have entwined like that.

Surprise webcaps (Cortinarius semisanguineus) appear in early fall under pines, and the pine cone in this photo shows where these grew. They are also called red gilled fibercaps because of the fine fibers that grow on the orangey brown caps.

The semisanguineus part of the scientific name means “half blood-red,” which is a reference to the bright, blood red gill color, and this is what the “surprise” in the common name also refers to. Though my color finding software sees “Indian Red” I think this color would pass.

This group of yellow mushrooms, so tiny I couldn’t see enough features to help in identification, have to take the prize for smallness in this post. The penny shows you just how small they were.  

I think this (parasol) mushroom has to take the prize for simple beauty. I’ve had a bear of a time trying to identify it though, and even though I started trying a month ago, I still don’t know its name. But not knowing a name isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it can be a good thing. As Henry David Thoreau said: I begin to see an object when I cease to understand it.

Of course the prize for the most colorful mushroom in any mushroom post has to go to the turkey tails (Trametes versicolor) with their bands of vivid color. Just after the leaves fall but before it snows is the perfect time to find them, and I’ve been seeing a lot of them. I hope you’ll have a chance to see them in person as well.

Nature makes nothing incomplete and nothing in vain. Aristotle

Thanks for coming by.

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Willard Pond

Just before Halloween as I do every year, I visited Willard Pond in Hancock. It’s about as close to a wilderness as you can come these days, at least in this area, and it’s very beautiful. Even the road in was amazing.

Unless you have time to go to a place each day to watch the turning of the leaves you can only go by experience, which in this case means what you’ve seen in the past. In the past I’ve always found the oaks and beeches in this forest at their peak during Halloween week, but there were a lot of bare trees over there. But no matter; I knew it would be beautiful. We’re going to walk right along the shore of that hillside.

It was a windy day and the wind turbines that just peek up over one of the hills were spinning faster than I’ve ever seen. I remember being shocked by their size the first time I saw them.

Though I don’t remember if this photo shows the start of the trail, it does show what the trail typically looks like. It follows along very close to the water and in many places it’s one person wide.

Since you have the hill on your left and the water on your right on the way in, it’s virtually impossible to get lost, but just in case the trees are well blazed. By the way, it’s a good idea to know what trail blazes mean and how they’re used.

From here on it is total immersion in a kaleidoscope of color and beauty. There’s nothing quite like a hardwood forest in the fall; some of the most beautiful fall foliage I’ve seen has been seen right here.

Small maples that had been cut along the trail had grown back, and they were beautifully red.

But most of the maple leaves had found their way into the water of the pond.

There are several places where small streams come down off the hillside to the pond but there are boardwalks in place. Still, wearing good waterproof hiking boots here is a good idea.

Maple leaf viburnums (Viburnum acerifolium) were beautiful as always in reds and pinks but they were also untouched by insects, which is unusual.

Big, hand sized hobblebush leaves (Viburnum lantanoides) weren’t quite so pristine but they were still  beautiful. I noticed that all their fruit had been eaten already.

The hobblebushes had their buds all ready for spring. These are naked buds with no bud scales. Instead their hairs protect them. The part that looks swollen is a flower bud and come May, it will be beautiful.

As is always the case when I come here, I couldn’t stop taking photos of the amazing trees. It’s hard to describe what a beautiful place this is, so I’ll let the photos do the talking.

There was a large colony of corydalis growing on a boulder and if I had to guess I’d say it was the pink corydalis (Corydalis sempervirens,) also known as rock harlequin. That plant blooms in summer and has pretty pink and yellow blooms but since I’ve only been here in the fall, I’ve never seen them in bloom. Next summer though, I’ll have a lot more free time and I’d love to visit this place in all four seasons.

A tiny polypody fern (Polypodium virginianum) was just getting started on another boulder. Polypody fern is also called the rock cap fern, for good reason. Though I’ve seen them growing on the ground once or twice there must have been a rock buried where they grew, because they love growing on stone. They are evergreen and very tough, and can be found all winter long.

There are plenty of boulders for rock loving plants to grow on and this is one of the largest I’ve ever seen. Easily as big as a garage, the black coloring on it and other boulders comes from the spore bearing surface of rock tripe lichens (Umbilicaria mammulata,) which grow here by the many thousands. Rock tripe is edible but I imagine they must taste like old rubber. Still, they were a source of emergency food for Native Americans and saved the lives of many an early settler. Even George Washington’s troops are said to have eaten rock tripe to survive the brutal winter at Valley Forge in 1777.

A beaver once gnawed on this huge old yellow birch and it was in the process of healing itself, which is something I’ve never seen a tree this old do. The will to live is very strong in all living things, and this is a great example of that. Though I didn’t see them in person I see some polypody ferns growing at the base of it in this photo. Whether on an unseen stone or on the tree itself, I don’t know.

Something else I’ve never seen is target canker on a yellow birch, but here it was. Target canker doesn’t harm the tree but causes its bark to grow in circular patterns of narrow plates which helps protect it from the canker. According to Cornell university: “A fungus invades healthy bark, killing it. During the following growing season, the tree responds with a new layer of bark and undifferentiated wood (callus) to contain the pathogen. However, in the next dormant season the pathogen breaches that barrier and kills additional bark. Over the years, this seasonal alternation of pathogen invasion and host defense response leads to development of a ‘canker’ with concentric ridges of callus tissue—a ‘target canker.’” Apparently, the fungal attacker gives up after a while, because as the tree ages the patterns disappear and the tree seems fine. What interests me most about this is how I’ve read that target canker is only supposed to appear on red maples. Now I can no longer say that is true.

A common earth ball (Scleroderma citrinum) grew beside the trail and looked as if it was nearly ready to release its spores. Another name for it is the pigskin puffball and it is toxic. It likes to grow on compacted soil like that found on forest trails. They often have a yellow color on their surface and are also called citrine earth balls because of it. I’ve seen them with a beautiful lemon-yellow color.

My grandmother was with me in spirit when I found a berry on an American wintergreen plant (Gaultheria procumbens,) which she always called checkerberry. It was the ffirst plant she ever taught me and we used to go looking for the minty tasting berries together. It is also called teaberry because the leaves were once used as a tea substitute.

The big leaves of striped maple (Acer pensylvanicum) had taken on their yellow fall color. They’ll lighten to almost white before they drop.

I saw many things here I’ve never seen before on this day, and one of them was the seeds (samaras) of striped maple. I’ve seen thousands of these trees but this is the first time I’ve ever seen the seeds.

Witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) grows in abundance all along the trail. Though I’ve seen them blooming profusely here, on this day these were the only blossoms I saw.

This little wooden bench is usually as far as I go for two reasons; because by the time I reach this spot I’ve usually taken far more photos than I can ever use, and because I like to sit in this quiet place and enjoy the serenity and splendor of nature. It just doesn’t get a lot better than this, in my opinion.

As I sat on the bench I watched the ripples for a while as they flowed over the still fresh and beautiful leaves on the bottom of the pond. I could hear a loon calling off on the far shore and I wasn’t surprised. I hear them almost every time I come here but I’ve never seen one. Probably just as well, because they’re an endangered bird. They die from eating lead fishing weights, and that is why only fly fishing is allowed here.

Sometimes when I sit on the bench I watch the water, and sometimes I turn around to see the colors. One is just as beautiful as the other but colors like these can’t be seen year-round.

As I got back on the trail to leave a chipmunk ran up a tree root and stared, as if to ask why I was leaving so soon. Though it had seemed like hardly any time at all, I had been here three hours. I hope all of you have beautiful woodland places to visit. They’re very uplifting.

If you are lost inside the beauties of nature, do not try to be found. ~Mehmet Murat ildan

Thanks for stopping in.

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Things I’ve Seen

Anyone who has read this blog for very long knows I like to play on the banks of the Ashuelot River, which meanders through several local towns. Though when I was a boy it was terribly polluted, now people fish for trout along its banks and eagles can sometimes be seen flying over it. That’s why a few years ago I was disturbed when I saw an oily sheen on the water that filled my footprint on the shore. It looked much like the puddle I found on the shore in the photo above and I posted it on this blog, saying how I was hoping I’d never see such a thing on these riverbanks again. Then happily, thanks to several knowledgeable readers, I found out that this sheen might easily have come from natural sources. Iron rich ferrous hydroxide that occurs naturally in soil can cause the oil like sheen on water, as can bacteria which generate hydrocarbons in oxygen depleted soil. I was very happy to hear that because though I don’t want to see this river polluted, I do think that this film on the water is beautiful. Just look at those colors.

While I was at the river, I spotted trees that had grape vines loaded with grapes growing in them. Wild river grapes (Vitis riparia) like a lot of rain, and I know that because we’ve had a lot of rain and I’m seeing more grapes than I’ve ever seen before. The odd thing about it though, is how the birds don’t seem to be eating them. These grapes are a favorite of many birds and they are often gone even before I can get a photo of them, but on this day I didn’t see that a single one had been picked. That’s a little disturbing.

Also disturbing is how none of the Oriental bittersweet berries (Celastrus orbiculatus) have been eaten. They are another favorite of the birds and they disappear as quickly as the grapes, so why aren’t they? This vine is very invasive and can strangle trees to death so I don’t want it to spread, but I do wonder about the birds.

While I was there wandering along the river, I took a shot of the Thompson covered bridge, named after playwright Denmon Thompson, who was a native son, and built in 1832. The bridge design is known as “Town lattice,” patented by Connecticut architect Ithiel Town in the early 1800s. The open lattice work lets a lot of light into the bridge and this is unusual because many covered bridges are dark and cave like. In the 1800s being able to see daylight inside a covered bridge would have been the talk of the town. The Thompson Bridge is considered by many to be the most beautiful covered bridge in New England but the person who ran the wires must not have known that.

This bridge is known as the Cresson Bridge, also in Swanzey and also crossing the Ashuelot River. It was opened to traffic in 1859 and I wanted you to see it so you could get an idea of how dark it was inside these old covered bridges. The tiny square windows didn’t let in much light, and that’s why Town truss bridges like that in the previous photo were such an innovation, and why they were so welcomed by the traveling public. By the way, back in those day traveling was done by sleigh in winter, so snow had to be shoveled onto the plank floors of covered bridges so sleigh runners would have something to slide on. What a job that must have been.

I finally found a blue bead lily plant (Clintonia borealis) with a ripe berry on it and now you know why I call it “electric blue.” That might sound like the title of a Jimmy Hendrix song but it is a very unusual shade of blue, to these eyes at least. It seems to sparkle in the right light and it is a deer magnet. From seed to berry can take 14 years, with two of those years taken up by seed germination. This is not a fast-growing plant.

I went to see Baily Brook Falls up in Stoddard and was surprised to see how little water was actually falling. With all of the rain we’ve had I thought they would be roaring. I have a feeling that beavers are involved and if I walked upstream, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they’ve dammed up the stream.

Since Bailey Brook Falls werent roaring I went to where I knew I’d hear the roar of water; the outflow dam at Swanzey Lake.

I’m always amazed by what I see when the leaves start falling. Here was a wasp nest as big as a soccer ball up in a maple tree, and I had been walking under it several times each day all summer long without seeing it. I’d bet its residents saw me though, and I’m glad they decided we could coexist. I was pruning a large rhododendron once that had a similar nest in the center of it. By the time I was able to stop running I had been stung on the back several times.

When the leaves fall from the trees the wind has greater force as it whistles through the bare branches and inevitably, small bird nests like these get blown out. I don’t know what bird made this one but you could barely have fit a hen’s egg in it. It was as light as a feather and very well made of grass.

I saw a spider web on a lawn and it reminded me of the synapses in my own brain. One of the questions that has been nagging at that brain for quite a long time is why nature uses the same shapes over and over again.

I looked down into the heart of a yucca plant and thought of the Native Americans who used every single part of this plant. They pounded the leaves and used the strong fibers inside them to weave sandals, cords, belts and baskets. They also ate the flowers and fruit of the plant. The sharp points at the tips of the leaves were used as sewing needles and the roots were peeled and ground and mixed with water to make soap for washing their hair and treating dandruff.  Sap from the leaves was used medicinally to stop bleeding and heal sores. Not a bit of it was wasted.

I found this colony of wooly alder aphids (Paraprociphilus tessellatus) on an alder limb in a swamp one recent day. Wooly alder aphids grow a white, filamentous waxy covering that looks like it’s made up of tiny white ribbons. A colony of them looks like white fuzz on the alder’s branches and this white fuzz helps protect them from the eyes of predators. They are sap sucking insects which secrete a sweet honeydew on the leaves and branches of plants. This honeydew attracts a fungus called black sooty mold, but since the mold grows only on the honeydew and not the plant, it doesn’t harm plants. The aphids themselves will do far more harm because they can literally suck the life out of a plant.

I’m not sure if the aphids with dots in this photo I took previously always look that way, if they haven’t grown the white waxy covering yet, or if they’ve lost the covering for some reason. They are very small; not even half the size of a house fly. I find them usually on the undersides of alder branches. If you are lucky enough to catch these insects in flight, they look like tiny white fairies. In fact another name for them is “fairy flies.” This is the best time of year to find them.

Here is something quite rare, unfortunately. American chestnuts were one of the most important forest trees, supplying both food and lumber. An Asian bark fungus (Cryphonectria parasitica) was introduced into North America on imported Asiatic chestnut trees and the disease all but wiped out over three billion American chestnut trees. New shoots often sprout from chestnut roots when the main trunk dies so they haven’t yet become extinct. Unfortunately the stump sprouts are almost always infected by the Asian fungus by the time they reach 20 feet tall but since some trees do bloom maybe these particular examples are growing from chestnuts. I found these three or four young trees a few years ago and have watched them get bigger over the years. They look very healthy so far. Though the leaves resemble beech leaves they are much bigger with very serrated margins. Many botanists and other scientists are working on finding and breeding disease resistant trees and maybe these trees will one day fit the bill. If you happen to find any you might want to keep an eye on them.

A tree “marriage” happens when two trees of the same species rub together in the wind. When the outer bark is rubbed off, the inner cambium layer of the trees can become naturally grafted together and they will be married from then on. The process is called inosculation and isn’t as rare as we might think. This example is special because it looks like the very tip of a branch on one trunk grew directly into the other trunk. It must have taken many years of strong winds and bark rubbing before they could grow together as they did.

Frost cracks happen when the sun warms the tree during the day and the temperature drops quickly at night. If you’re in or near the woods at night in winter you can often hear the trees splitting and cracking, and sometimes it’s as loud as a rifle shot. Frost cracks can heal in the summer when the tree produces a new layer of inner bark to heal the wound but then can crack again in winter. When this repeated healing and cracking happens over the course of a few years the buildup of new tissue can create a frost rib like that seen in the photo. I’ve seen them on several different species, so I don’t think any one species is more or less susceptible to cracking than others. It’s more a matter of how the sunlight falls on a tree’s trunk. Wrapping an ornamental tree’s trunk loosely in burlap in winter can help prevent the bark splitting.

If you grow stone fruits like peaches, apricots, plums or cherries then you should know the disease called black knot. It is caused by a fungus called Apiosporina morbosa. This fungus grows in the wild and its spores can be spread by rain or wind. The spores will typically infect trees from April through June on new growth. Infected stems swell up and produce hard black knots like that in the above photo. This disease can eventually kill the tree so infected limbs should be pruned off 2-4 inches below the knots and buried or burned before bud break the following spring. Black cherry seems particularly susceptible to the disease.

I saw a hollowed-out stump that was slowly filling with fallen leaves beside a trail. From what I’ve read in the book Bark; a Field Guide to Trees of the Northeast, by Michael Wojtech, eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) are the only trees with stumps that will rot away from the inside out. It’s an interesting thing that I don’t see that often.

You would think that with all the rain we’ve had I’d be seeing slime molds everywhere, but actually I’ve seen very few this year. I believe the orangey brown material in this photo was once an active slime mold but by the time I found it, it was dry and hard. There are many different orange slime molds so it’s impossible to tell which one it is but it was still interesting. It shows how a slime mold will spread over its immediate surroundings, looking for food. Slime molds “eat” tiny unseen organisms such as bacteria and yeasts, and they are also said to help decompose leaves and rotting logs.

I’ve seen many thousands of pixie cup lichens (Cladonia pyxidata.) They’re the ones that look like tiny golf tees, but I’ve always wondered what they looked like when they first started forming. Did they always look like golf tees? I didn’t think so but I couldn’t say why. Then one day I thought I had found the answer. As you can see in this photo the little golf tees start life looking like simple pegs. You can see a few with tiny “cups” just starting to form. Pixie cup lichens are squamulose lichens with fruticose fruiting structures called podetia. Squamulose means they have scale like lleafy obes that often overlap like shingles. The parts that look like tiny golf tees are called podetia. Podetia means a stalk like growth which bears the spore bearing fruiting bodies. Finally, frucitose means a lichen with bushy, vertical growth. It is thought that some colonies of pixie cup lichens might be as old as 4,500 years. It’s good I think, to know a little more about these tiny life forms that see everywhere I go.

A boulder on the side of the road was covered by moss and though that might not seem surprising or earthshaking, it caught my attention.

Picture yourself in a small, single engine plane flying low over the treetops in the Amazon jungle, and you’ll understand why I was fascinated by this mossy boulder. I imagined that scene would look a lot like this.

Here’s a little hint of what’s to come. We finally had a frost, more than a month after our average first frost date and the second latest since such things have been recorded. But we haven’t had a freeze, and that means we still have colorful leaves on some of the trees.

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

Thanks for coming by.

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