The Last of Fall

Went out walking today under darkening gray clouds, with snow in the forecast for tonight. But still some Fall color left.

Election Afternoon 2024

Gorgeous day in Catonsville, headed for a near-record high. 

Perfect for walking the oblivious dog past the oblivious trees and flowers.

Volunteer chrysanthemum that popped up in the front steps. I'm going to try to transplant to the garden it once it is done blooming.

Interesting observation from Scott Siskind: 

Future generations will number American elections among history's greatest and most terrible spectacles. As we remember the Games in the Colosseum, or the bloody knives of Tenochtitlan, so they will remember us. That which other ages would relegate to a tasteful coronation or mercifully quick coup, we extend into an eighteen-month festival of madness.

Which reminds me of something I wrote about Carthaginian baby sacrifice:

The Carthaginians were not inhuman. They loved their children, and in our sparse sources we can glimpse the struggles they went through, their lapses, the years when times were good and the required sacrifices were forgotten. But then would come the disaster: a plague, a war, a terrible fire. The cry would go up that the Gods were angry, and parents would feel the sick sense of dread and impending loss. Who knows what motivated the ones who volunteered their babies? Perhaps they had already lost other children to disease, or their home towns had just been sacked and half their families snuffed out. Others faced the holy lottery, all of life in a concentrated moment: the worst fear, followed by either the most terrible loss or the greatest relief. They gambled with what they held dearest, and sometimes they lost. But don't we all? And doesn't the Carthaginians' acknowledgment of life's terror make their religion, in a sense, more honest than the sweet reason of modern Christianity, or the cool compassion of the Unitarians?

Sometimes, as I have said, I get the sense that humans are capable of only a certain amount of happiness. When things seem on the verge of getting too good, some of us feel compelled to insist that they are actually terrible and then blow the whole thing up.

I mean, have you ever wondered why people won't believe in the moon landings despite millions of pages of evidence? I think their imaginations just can't encompass something so amazing. If they believed that humans had walked on the moon they might have to believe that we – we as we are, not we after some world-wrenching revolution – are capable of making life really good.

I think we are.

October

So here I am in Catonsville, watching two weeks of absolutely perfect weather pass by while I wait for the permit to start six weeks of fieldwork that will now stretch into mid December and possibly into January, when we will shiver and curse that we were stuck inside now. Sigh.

Turtle meeting.

Happy Solstice

May the sun of the longest day drive shadow from your life.

Cormorants and Mayapples

Spent Friday back on the Potomac, a day made interesting by two signs of progressing Spring.

Down on the river, something was clearly happening. At least a hundred cormorants were swarming the half mile or so of river I could see from my vantage point. Here you can see four resting in a tree and one floating on the river beyond.

They were all over the river because the shad were running. Shad (Alosa sapidissima) is eastern North America's main anadromous fish, that is, they spend most of their lives in the ocean but return to fresh water to breed. They were a vital food source for Indians and a key economic support for the early British colonies. 

The swarms of cormorants were amazing. Overfishing, dams, and polution nearly ended the shad migration in the Potomac by 1970, but since then they have been coming back, and it is great to see.

And then when I took a lunchtime walk I found that the mayapples are blooming.

The blooming of mayapples is one of those events that is wonderful mainly because it lasts such a short time, and is so unpredictable, that you are unlikely to see it. It's been at least a decade since I last enjoyed it.

So to most people mayapple flowers are sort of a myth, and mayapples just boring forest plants that other people tell you are amazing when they bloom. In fact just two weeks ago somebody pointed to a mayapple plant growing near our site and said, "They tell me those bloom." They do!

Following the mayapples up a little creek called Donaldson Run I blundered into this concrete dam. I think this had something to do with the quarrying that took place all along this stretch of river from the 1890s to World War II. (The Pentagon was built with stone from around here.)

So it ended up being a pretty good day.

The First Hot Day

I was back on the Potomac today for what turned out to be our first hot day of the year, 88 degrees (31 C).

It seemed like I could feel green leaves bursting out all around me.

I was startled by these pinkish new oak leaves.

I was not feeling so great after an exciting weekend meeting with a kidney stone, but I did take one pleasant walk. Besides the garter snake I saw an Osprey very close, and then three pairs of crows squabbling over territory.

Every time I read that wisteria is a destructive invasive species I find myself wishing that all our problems were this pretty.

And then back in my neighborhood, the season of pink trees.