Pictures of the Outside World...
Fall isn't quite here yet, even with the colder nights... the trees are holding onto summer as long as they possibly can. I don't know why I'm so hungry for the colors and sounds of fall this year, because fall means winter and winter's lockdown on the Great Lakes is relentless and harsh, but I am desperately craving the flares of orange and red and gold, the ground covered with hickory nuts and apples, the paths ankle-deep in a rustling blanket of leaves, the white tufts of asters gone to seed drifting through the air, the twining scarlet of Virginia creepers, the otherworldly peach shades of sassafras, the pale gold of birches, the trembling silver beech leaves that cling through the winter and whisper in the wind that blows though the naked branches.
It has been too dry for most mushrooms, although a good year for acorns and from the looks of it, an excellent year for hickory and walnuts. It feels like the world is clinging to the remnants of summer, with the little asters still blooming and the Joe Pye weed still towering overhead, its purple flowers gone brown and rough. In my mind, fall is golden and orange, and it smells like wood smoke and dry leaves and clear air. I never really think of pumpkins or spices or pies or all the things that seem to be official signs of the season... fall for me is all about transition, the shifting of the world, the brief time between summer's long, hot, green, sun-baked months and winter's endless days of blinding crystalline precision, of gray lumps of tarnished snow, of shards of ice and slumping frozen mud. Fall is that brief and glowing flash of change in between, that moment where everything changes, a moment where the entire world is caught in a snapshot of ceasing to be one thing and becoming another.
Not much science in this post today... not much to identify and no new discoveries. Just my lake and me.
This view always seems to look the same... except that six months ago, I was walking through the middle of it, across a lake transformed into winter pavement buried in snow.
The water is still very low in the creek below the dam, and the exposed stretches of rocky shore are slippery with the tough filaments of algae that cling to their barely damp surface. Algae can be amazingly delicate, wispy and ethereal, but it can also be tougher than almost anything.
Little purple asters. Exact species is your guess... I used to try to identify all the little purple and white fall asters, but they're so similar that species names seem to be more of a frustration than a useful tool.
Little white asters, eagerly occupying the space that had belonged to the thistles and milkweeds.
The water will start to ice at the edges soon, and the semi-aquatic plants with their roots in the muddy shoreline have begun to pull back their leaves, storing the energy in underground tubers and rhizomes. Muskrats may dig them up if the lake shore is thawed during the winter... despite the name "duck potato", the roots are not eaten by ducks, which are not generally good diggers.
The holes in this particular tree keep getting deeper and deeper, even though none of the surrounding trees are attacked the same way. I'm not sure what is going on inside this tree that the woodpeckers are so passionately pursuing, but they have nearly drilled the entire way through the trunk.
While in the shaded places ferns are still green, in the more exposed areas the dryness has bleached them into pale versions of themselves.
Leaves beginning to change, and a sky dusted with white clouds. I am hungry for this view to change, for the leaves to turn to fall's golds and oranges and reds and for the sky to be luminous blue filled with towering masses of white cumulus clouds.
This quiet cove has stayed swampy and humid even while other places were dry, and the undergrowth here still clusters close to the sun-warmed water.
The only fungus for today, the tough, woody remnants of something that has been well-eaten by all sorts of things.
This tree has been making an interesting sculpture for quite a while, but during the height of summer there are thorns and needles that prevent getting to it.
I love to watch the same fallen tree for years in a row. This one is slowly becoming a strange arch of bleached wood and moss, while other ones might crumble and brown as the cellulose decayed. But I've lectured enough times on wood decay, and amazing as I find it, I won't repeat myself again.
.
.
.
It has been too dry for most mushrooms, although a good year for acorns and from the looks of it, an excellent year for hickory and walnuts. It feels like the world is clinging to the remnants of summer, with the little asters still blooming and the Joe Pye weed still towering overhead, its purple flowers gone brown and rough. In my mind, fall is golden and orange, and it smells like wood smoke and dry leaves and clear air. I never really think of pumpkins or spices or pies or all the things that seem to be official signs of the season... fall for me is all about transition, the shifting of the world, the brief time between summer's long, hot, green, sun-baked months and winter's endless days of blinding crystalline precision, of gray lumps of tarnished snow, of shards of ice and slumping frozen mud. Fall is that brief and glowing flash of change in between, that moment where everything changes, a moment where the entire world is caught in a snapshot of ceasing to be one thing and becoming another.
Not much science in this post today... not much to identify and no new discoveries. Just my lake and me.
This view always seems to look the same... except that six months ago, I was walking through the middle of it, across a lake transformed into winter pavement buried in snow.
The water is still very low in the creek below the dam, and the exposed stretches of rocky shore are slippery with the tough filaments of algae that cling to their barely damp surface. Algae can be amazingly delicate, wispy and ethereal, but it can also be tougher than almost anything.
Little purple asters. Exact species is your guess... I used to try to identify all the little purple and white fall asters, but they're so similar that species names seem to be more of a frustration than a useful tool.
Little white asters, eagerly occupying the space that had belonged to the thistles and milkweeds.
The water will start to ice at the edges soon, and the semi-aquatic plants with their roots in the muddy shoreline have begun to pull back their leaves, storing the energy in underground tubers and rhizomes. Muskrats may dig them up if the lake shore is thawed during the winter... despite the name "duck potato", the roots are not eaten by ducks, which are not generally good diggers.
The holes in this particular tree keep getting deeper and deeper, even though none of the surrounding trees are attacked the same way. I'm not sure what is going on inside this tree that the woodpeckers are so passionately pursuing, but they have nearly drilled the entire way through the trunk.
While in the shaded places ferns are still green, in the more exposed areas the dryness has bleached them into pale versions of themselves.
Leaves beginning to change, and a sky dusted with white clouds. I am hungry for this view to change, for the leaves to turn to fall's golds and oranges and reds and for the sky to be luminous blue filled with towering masses of white cumulus clouds.
This quiet cove has stayed swampy and humid even while other places were dry, and the undergrowth here still clusters close to the sun-warmed water.
The only fungus for today, the tough, woody remnants of something that has been well-eaten by all sorts of things.
This tree has been making an interesting sculpture for quite a while, but during the height of summer there are thorns and needles that prevent getting to it.
I love to watch the same fallen tree for years in a row. This one is slowly becoming a strange arch of bleached wood and moss, while other ones might crumble and brown as the cellulose decayed. But I've lectured enough times on wood decay, and amazing as I find it, I won't repeat myself again.
.
.
.