A Little Too Much Rain

Thursday September 12th started off a little murky and then it began to rain harder than I’ve seen it rain in a long time. And it rained and rained-we had what was essentially a continuous thunderstorm that lasted for several hours and dumped almost 6 inches of rain. I didn’t get any photos of it, but I saw a local pond top its banks and overrun roads for the first time in over 20 years. When I saw that I knew we would see some washouts.

 

Scenes like this were common the next day. It was too bad that this particular spot washed away because a coltsfoot colony had taken hold here, and this is where I used to get my coltsfoot photos in the spring.

 

You didn’t have to be a detective to figure out what direction the flood waters took.

 

This was the repair. It’s just like the earlier repair that washed away in this storm, so I don’t expect it to last long. There are many coltsfoot plants buried under these tons of rock, and I’ll be amazed if they appear anywhere near here next year.

 

Some places had it even worse. This hole where a road used to be is about a foot deep.

 

The trails weren’t impassable, but it was sloppy going in places.

 

The river was on full boil and didn’t look too inviting. Before I got to a spot where I could get a clear shot I watched 3 teenage boys go down the river in an aluminum rowboat, going so fast it looked like they were being towed by a speedboat. All I could do was stand there and gape, not believing what I was seeing. They made it through these rapids without capsizing and I hope that they made it out of the river safe and sound. I did some dumb things as a teenager but I never took on the river when it boiled like this.

 

Imagine getting turned sideways in an aluminum rowboat and facing this. These waves were high enough to easily jump the sides of the boat and swamp it. And then there are the boulders that cause the waves. The roar of the river on this day was as loud as I’ve ever heard it.

Everywhere you looked it seemed like water splashed and roared. This is the outflow of a local lake.

 

All day Friday the sun tried to burn through the murkiness, but was having a hard time of it.

 

Finally the clouds began to break up and things started to dry out. It was good that they did-this stretch of river wouldn’t have taken much more rain.

Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains.  ~Henry Ward Beecher

NOTE: The flooding we saw here it is nothing compared to what the poor folks of Colorado have gone through, so let’s not forget them.

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In Search of False Hellebore Flowers

I knew that false hellebores were blooming so I set off to find some over the past weekend. I’ve been promising for almost two years that I would show you the flowers, but I’ve had quite a time finding plants that are mature enough to blossom.

One of the places I visited had a path I like to follow. Can you see it? Why, I wondered as I climbed, is everything worth seeing uphill? Why, I have to ask, can’t beautiful things ever be found on flat, level ground? I suppose that one of the answers would be that it is hard to find a waterfall on level ground.

I took a rest from climbing to get a shot of this boulder covered with polypody ferns. They are living up to their common name of rock cap fern. It wasn’t until I got home and looked at the photo that I saw all the bracket fungi on the tree in the background.

I don’t know who carried this piece of plank here, but it makes a nice spot to sit and catch your breath, so I’m glad they did.

This is what I came to find-the flowers of false hellebore (Veratrum viride.) These plants are hard to find in flower because they do so only when they are mature, which means ten years or more old. When they do blossom they do so erratically, so you never really know what you’ll find. When they finally bloom they carry hundreds of flowers in large, branched terminal clusters.

The small flowers aren’t much to look at, but it’s easy to see that the plant is in the lily family by their shape. These flowers are the same color green as the rest of the plant but have bright yellow anthers. There are nectar producing glands that ants feed on and when they do, they pollinate the flowers. Animals leave this plant alone because it is one of the most toxic plants known, and people have died from eating it by mistaking it for something else.

This is the other reason I came to this particular place. Though this stream was within its banks there was evidence everywhere that it had flooded recently-probably just the night before. We’ve had a lot of rain over the last week including some thunderstorms that triggered flash flood warnings, so I wasn’t surprised to see that it had flooded. Roads have washed away in some towns.

The flooding wasn’t strong enough to take down trees but it sure flattened almost everything else in its path. I learned a few things here-first and foremost was that, although false hellebore plants appear to have weak stems, they are actually very strong. They were one of very few plants left standing in the path that the water carved out of the forest.

This grass was underwater and it isn’t aquatic, so the water level of the stream was still several inches higher than it had been when the grasses grew.

All of the warmth and moisture was prompting some mushrooms to fruit. I think this one was possibly fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) in the button stage. It was about half the size of a grape.

All but one of these photos were taken in a small town called Marlow, New Hampshire, which is about a half hour north of Keene. I thought I’d include the kind of photo that you see in tourist brochures-almost a cliché view of the small New England town, but those of us who live here enjoy it. The mill pond in the foreground is part of the Ashuelot River, which has appeared in this blog many times.

 

The mill pond is full of fragrant white water lilies (Nymphaea odorata) that I couldn’t get very close to, so my camera’s zoom was almost fully extended for this one.

 

 Not long after it leaves the mill pond the Ashuelot River is squeezed between narrower banks and so begins to rage-especially because of all the rain we’ve had. This is a favorite spot for kayakers and I saw two of them unloading kayaks as I was leaving. You wouldn’t catch me riding a tiny plastic boat through these churning waters. I stood on an old wooden plank bridge to take this photo and that was enough for me, because the water level had almost reached the underside of the bridge. What does someone in a kayak do, I wondered, when faced with a bridge they can’t get under while speeding down a raging river? Maybe I’m better off not knowing-I’d still like to buy a kayak someday.

 

If you have ever been swimming and heard the noise that somebody makes by doing what we used to call a cannonball, imagine that sound repeated over and over countless times in rapid succession. It creates a loud roar that is heard long before you can even see the river.

 

 

 A cabbage white butterfly was interested in the knapweed (Centaurea) that grows along the river bank and let me stand there taking photos as it went from blossom to blossom. Mike Powell showed an excellent close up of this butterfly recently on his blog that revealed its green speckled eyes. They were quite beautiful-and unexpected.

It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things. Nicholas Sparks

Thanks for coming by. Have a great 4th of July.

 

 

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A Sense of Place

We’ve had all kinds of weather extremes here lately, from heat and humidity to torrential rains, so I’ve been spending time at the Ashuelot River. The banks of the river are always cooler when it’s hot and after heavy rains the rapids really get rolling, and I like to watch them.  Since I spend so much time here and so many of my photos are taken here, I thought I’d do a post with a little background information of the area.

This stretch of river is easy to get to and there are many good photo opportunities here-from the rapids to the many wildflowers that grow on the river banks. There are 4 small rapids that were built when a 250 year old timber crib dam was removed in 2010. The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services created the rapids by laying very large boulders side to side across the riverbed in a crescent shape.

The timber crib dam was owned by the Homestead Woolen Mill, which is the large brick building in the background. The dam was built in revolutionary war times to power the mill, which in its heyday made many different kinds of textiles. Removing this dam opened up 20 miles of river and now brook and rainbow trout are caught here regularly. Salmon have also been caught and someone said they saw an eagle this spring.

Photo by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Division of Habitat Conservation, Open Rivers Initiative.

When we’ve had a lot of rain if you stand in the right spot at the right rapid, you can see some fine waves. Since there are a few seconds of delay between when you press the shutter release and when the wave crests, getting shots of waves cresting and crashing is really hit and miss. Every time I try to anticipate what the river will do it does just the opposite, and that’s what makes trying to get a shot I’m happy with so much fun.

 

This view is looking downriver at two of the rapids and the shoreline that floods regularly, but where many wildflowers grow.

 Slightly upriver from the rapids is the Thompson covered bridge, named after playwright Denmon Thompson, who was a native son, and built in 1832. This bridge is a truss style bridge with two spans that meet on a center support. One span covers 64 feet and the other 63.5 feet, making the total length 136 feet 10 inches long. It once had two covered walkways, but now has only one on the upriver side. It can be seen on the left in the photo. The bridge is so close to the mill building that I had my back against it when I took this photo. Town records indicate that there has been a bridge in this spot since at least 1789.

 

This view of the bridge shows the covered walkway. At the far end is where I perch to take many of the river photos that appear on this blog. The covered walkway comes in handy when it’s raining. Many wildflowers grow on the steep embankment on this side of the river, just below where I was standing when I took this photo.

This view from downriver shows the stone center support for the two spans. The bridge design is known as “Town lattice,” patented by Connecticut architect Ithiel Town in the early 1800s. The Thompson Bridge is considered by many to be the most beautiful covered bridge in New England.

 

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 this much light inside a covered bridge would have been the talk of the town.

 

At the same time that the old dam was being removed stone jetties were built upriver from the bridge to protect its abutments. These jetties, one on each side of the bridge, direct the strength of the current and prevent erosion of the abutments at each end of the bridge. If you look closely at the white water at the far end of the jetty you can see the ripples of the current flowing in towards the middle of the river.

This view from the bridge shows just a few of the wildflowers that grow on the river bank near the jetty in the previous photo. The town of Swanzey is planning on building a park in this area so the future of these plants is unknown at present. I thought the lupines growing here were our endangered wild blue lupine (Lupinus perennis) but after going back and counting leaflets and looking for leaf hairs, now I’m not so sure that they aren’t a natural hybrid. I’m hoping I can save some of their seeds and grow them in my own yard and get to know them a little better.

Flowers, rapids, and solitude aren’t the only reasons I come to this part of the river. The view downriver from the bridge is wide open and you can catch an occasional beautiful sunset here. I also like to come here to watch storms roll in.

 Local artist Lori Woodward was also taken with the view from the Thompson Bridge and did this painting from one of the photos that she saw on this blog. There is an upcoming exhibit of paintings and photos of the Ashuelot River at the Cheshire County Historical Society and this painting will be part of it. Lori works in acrylic, watercolors and oils. If you’re an art lover interested in collecting fine art, or just like looking at beautiful landscape paintings, you can visit Lori’s website by clicking here.

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known. ~A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

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High Water

Last weekend we had enough rain to trigger flash flood warnings in parts of the state, so like any nature lover I went out to see the high water.

I had a tripod so I could practice my blurry water technique. This stream didn’t appear to have risen all that much.

The water was quite high in several other places but I didn’t see any flooding. There were some clever ducks living in this marsh-they quacked so I could hear them, but stayed hidden so I couldn’t see them. They might have been nesting in the high grass.

The geese weren’t quite so clever, but the mom and dad hurriedly herded the young ones away.  I took two quick photos and left them alone.

Just after I commented on Jennifer Schlick’s blog that we were suffering a butterfly drought, this eastern tiger swallowtail dropped to the ground in front of me. This happens to me all the time-as soon as I say on a blog that I haven’t seen this or that I usually see it. Of course, when I say that I see a certain thing everywhere I go I might never see it again.  Does this happen to other people?

I sometimes wonder if people realize how hard it is to get a photo of a single tree when you live in a place with 4.8 million acres of forested land. I saw this lone tree off in a pasture but I couldn’t tell what it was. It has the shape of a young American elm.

This magnificent example of bovine beauty and a waist high barbed wire fence kept me from getting any closer to the tree in the previous photo. She seemed to want her picture taken, so here she is.

After my encounter with the guard cow I headed back into the woods, where I found another small water fall that I hadn’t known about. I decided not to blur the water on this one.

False hellebore (Veratrum viride) is about three feet tall now and all ready to bloom. This was a fine example. Usually they suffer a lot of insect damage and look quite ratty by this time of year, even though they are one of the most toxic plants in the forest.

Plenty of our native orchid pink lady’s slippers (Cypripedium acaule) grew along this stream as well.

Painted trillium (Trillium undulatum ) also grows here, but they had just about gone by. It’s always good to find another spot where these plants grow, because they seem to be getting harder to find.

The setting sun was just kissing the top of the distant hills when I stopped at one of my favorite viewing spots along the Ashuelot River. The water was high but nowhere near flood level.

There was enough fast moving water in the Ashuelot to create some good rapids downstream.  I like watching the waves forming and crashing.  No two are alike-just like snowflakes.

There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky. ~Dejan Stojanovic

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