Category Archives: Seasons

PSA, Seasons, Snapshots

Visiting with trees

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“What did the tree learn of the earth to confide in the sky?” –Pablo Neruda

Another of Neruda’s questions to ponder on a Friday night. This is one of the local trees that I keep track of and photograph now and again. Nice tree, nice view. I like to see it as the landscape around it changes. The fields just out of view have woodcock or meadowlarks in season. Maybe a bluebird or two. And harriers, usually, or a kestral. The day I took this pic I sat myself down in the tall grass there and watched a harrier for an hour or two with the sun on my face.

The leaves have finally fallen and there’s talk of a bit of snow for the weekend. Only just enough to be a nuisance, though.

The Festival of the Trees should be up and running by the time many of you read this tomorrow. Be sure to stop by for a visit.

Seasons, Snapshots

Fall questions

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If spring is born at the river’s edge and the burning summer in the dust of the highway, then where do we discover fall?

Is it in the mothball-scented chests where the blankets are kept? In the hedgerow that vibrates with migrating birds? Or do you find it, like me, in the darkening sea and the immense sky of an October afternoon. Or in the dunes, scattered among the quick sweep of goldenrod.

I find fall when my shadow reaches out over the waves to meet the moon. In days that shrink before I’m done with them. In this time of anticipation, relaxing and enjoying the change, and the wait.

Yes…I’m still pondering fall while all the neighbors are perfecting their Christmas decorations!

Garden, Seasons, Whatever

Autumn in our hands

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Thanks to everyone who took the time to send pics! We’ve made a lovely mosaic of fall color, don’t you think?

Hand and leaf ID’s are as follows (clockwise from top left): Redbud, I think (from the Net), Piracantha berries from Donna who doesn’t have much color yet, Maple from Nina, Pin Oak from Mary, Locust from John, Maple from Ruth, Maple leaves (from the Net), Striped Maple from Al (also called the Moosewood Maple or the Goosefoot Maple which I can totally see – thanks Mojoman – I learned a new ID with that name!), Staghorn Sumac from Ruthie J., Larch needles from me, Sourwood from Jayne, and Dogwood from Larry.

Books, Seasons

I’m such a book dork

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The people at Barnes and Noble must love me. I think they dig out the oldest and least-likely-to-sell books and pile them up in a pretty seasonal display in some far off corner of the store just hoping for someone like me to wander by. I zoom past the popular fiction-of-the-moment and go right for the dorky nature books.

This little book is my latest find and it’s been getting a fair amount of use for the last week or so. It has nice pics of leaves, berries, and nuts to help me know what I’m seeing out in the woods. I’m not very good with trees and thought the fall color or seeds of certain trees might give away their identity more easily now than in the summer when everything is just so much green.

Seasons

Fall color

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“A tree in Autumn is a lovely sight. One tree alone can concentrate the beauty of a whole woodland, leaf by leaf and branch by branch, as one flower can give the essence of a whole garden. The beauty of the turning woods is not alone in the scarlet of a maple grove or the sun-gold glow of a hillside stand of beeches. It is in the subtle change that creeps along the leaves themselves, from point to point and vein to vein. A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least; but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.

Watch even a single branch outside a certain window, and you are watching the color of change. One morning there is a spot of yellow on a certain leaf, yellow which has not yet quite achieved the glow of gold. Another day and that glow may be there. It spreads. The spot becomes a splash of gold, edged perhaps with a thin line of scarlet. It creeps down the leaf between the veins, and then across the veins; and the scarlet edging widens into a band and then a border. Meanwhile other leaves have begun to turn, some to gold, some to dull bronze, some to blood-red beauty. All on the same branch, yet no two alike either in pattern or coloration. And finally it is a branch as full of color as the whole woodland.

Thus comes Autumn, leaf by leaf and tree by tree; thus the woods become a hooked rug flung across the hills with all its folds and all its colors as they came to hand. But pause beside one tree and look, and you can see Autumn on all the hills. Pick up one leaf of those already cast adrift and you hold Autumn in your hand.“
–Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons. Image grabbed from the Web and tweaked.

Do me a favor, will ya? Find a tree that you admire dressed in fall color. Take a pic of your hand holding a fallen leaf and send it to me. I’ll post them here to make it feel like Autumn despite the 75 degree temps. This’ll keep me occupied for the next few days while I anticipate the weekend in Cape May. But do it quick – deadline is Wednesday at 6 pm. Use the close-up setting on your cameras. It’ll be pretty. My email is lc-hardy at comcast dot net.

Birds, Seasons

Night sounds

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Fall is slowly disrobing summer of her great green canopy and hushing the symphony of bird and insect life. Night sounds have diminished; there is only the slowing drone of crickets and the occasional soliloquy of a moonlit mockingbird. Instead of singing to an intended mate, as he did at night for most of the summer, his outburts now seem to be of complaint. I find myself wondering what it is that wakes him up like this, so indignant and bad-tempered. Is it the chill wind or is he startled awake by some unseen predator?

Very early in the morning, before dawn out with the pup, I sometimes hear the soft contact calls of the neighborhood cardinals and chip notes that come from the sky – no love songs these; they speak of cold and coming hunger. Within an hour the first chickadee is at the sunflower feeder and the mockingbird in his appointed place in the holly tree. Only the odd angle of the sunlight gives away that it’s no longer summer, no longer the season of growth and abundance and love songs.

Birds, Dog days, Seasons, Snapshots, Wanderings

Great Bay Marshes

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I often think I’m spoiled to live where I do, with so much beauty within an hour or two of driving. The ocean is just minutes away and I suppose that makes me take it somewhat for granted. At this season of the year, I don’t think there’s much more beautiful than the salt marsh. The seaside goldenrod is blooming, as are the big white bouquets of the groundsel trees. The really large marshes are a bit of a trip for me – Delaware Bay or south to the barrier islands stretching from Barnegat Bay to Cape May.

A return visit to the decoy show on Sunday left with me an hour or two before heading home to explore the salt marsh at Great Bay near Tuckerton. I wasn’t looking for birds, just enjoying the scenery along the 5 mile road into the pristine marsh, passing salt ponds and little inlets and channels along the way. I found a sandy beach before the first bridge where Luka could run through the shallows while I studied the skies and the passing Monarchs stopping to feed on goldenrod. There was a noisy flock of Boat-tailed grackles near to a ridiculously-narrow wooden plank bridge and a few Great Egrets stalking the marsh grasses. I was surprised not to see more of them – one of the little creeks close to home has had at least 3 dozen egrets feeding in the early morning when the tide is right. I keep reminding myself to stop and photograph them before they’ve gone.

For those of you coming to the Fall Weekend – Tuckerton and nearby Brig is within driving distance from Cape May and may be worth a stop if you’re coming from the north. I don’t usually stop here on my way south to Cape May, prefering instead to head west to the Delaware Bayshore and visit the marshes there.

I wonder if this will be anyone’s first chance to dip their toes into the Atlantic Ocean – Susan? Lynne?

Birds, Seasons, Whatever

Passage

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Gliding like a tiny shadow before the tide, little more than a bit of wind-shifted sand, I search the place where sand and water become sky. The waves quickly erase my tracks and leave the beach empty of any memory of my passage. Days pass this way, the ebb and flow of life and memory, of abundance and heartache. With a note from high overhead I depart toward the southern stars in search of some other land and leave this piece of shoreline in the solitude of a late summer evening.

Dog days, In the neighborhood, Seasons

Rambling and grazing

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I’m counting on someone out there recognizing this flower; it’s blooming in all the weedy places right now and I haven’t been able to come up with a name. I spotted this patch on a weekend walk with Luka through an overgrown pasture full of goldenrod, milkweed and thistles.

We had actually been walking on a dirt road around the pasture, but took a detour through the middle of it when I heard insistent osprey calls from the treeline in the distance. I wonder if it wasn’t a youngster recently left to fend for itself. Of course, it flew from the perch as we approached, but along the way we came across these flowers and many scattered piles of deer poop which Luka found just delicious! I swear that pup has to put everything in his mouth – thank heavens we haven’t wandered across any dead animals yet!

I don’t have the enthusiasm for identifying wildflowers that I had in the Spring and wonder why that is. I find myself noticing berries, mostly, and trying to guess which animals they’re meant to feed. It took me a while to realize that the ground-level clusters of red berries I’d been seeing were the fruits of Jack in the Pulpit – who eats them, I wonder? The viburnums have set fruit that will persist for months, yet the red dogwood berries are long gone by mid-September. The starlings see to that over the protests of the local mockingbirds. Fallen apples litter the ground, tempting deer and puppy the same, as Fall ambles our way.

Birds, Seasons, Snapshots

Season’s end

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Empty osprey platform at Horseshoe Cove, Sandy Hook

I’ve been so out of it this summer that I missed spending any time with the local ospreys and before too long they’ll be gone south for the season until late March.

There’s a pair that nests on a cell phone tower here in town and mostly I watch them while stopped at the railroad tracks that pass beneath their nest. I don’t see much besides an osprey-shaped shadow perched high up, but I’m glad to have them so easily within view. I tried a few times to photograph them from the parking lot nearby, but they always seemed to be off fishing when I was there with the camera. I see the pair though, and their young from my yard once in a while. Their calls stream down from above and I think myself blessed to have osprey as a yard bird.

My favorite nests to watch are the platforms on the marshes at Sandy Hook – especially at sunset. It wouldn’t take much to convince me to set up a home with such a pretty view! I don’t know that this or the other platform at Horseshoe Cove were used this year – the birds seem to have some mysterious preference for Spermacetti Cove or the chimneys on Officer’s Row instead.

I always miss the osprey when they go. What birds do you miss the most when the season changes?