Wisps of Smoke

 A few days ago, I noticed that a dry, exposed hillside above my house had taken on a new appearance. On closer inspection, I saw that the shrubs on the slope were covered with incredible whorled winged seeds. My naturalist neighbor informed me that this was mountain mahogany (Cercocarpus montanus; Rosaceae), which gets its common name from the shrub's hard, dense wood. She said that the appearance of the whorled seeds was a sure sign that autumn had arrived on the mountain. A horticulture book I have (High and Dry: Gardening with Cold-Hardy Dryland Plants) says that the plumose seed-heads resemble wisps of smoke in the leaves.

Surely, the whorls help with dispersal.  However, I picked off one of the seeds and dropped it; it fell straight down.  I expected to see the seed spin like a maple samara back East. 

The mountain mahogany hillside on Mt. Moriah (shrubs in foreground)

A Poem for Autumn

This poem by H.L. Hix entitled "Will My Word Grow into a Tree While I Water It Every Day with Silence?" appears in the summer 2015 edition of Colorado Review.  For me, it evokes a fall scene in the Tibetan Himalayas.

It offers its gold leaves, the ginkgo,
half to the monastery and half
to the mountainside.  The kept leaves blow,
if not on their way down, soon enough
against the wall.  The given leaves know
their way, or need not, achieve, as if
bidden by it, the stream they follow
toward neither solace nor relief.
Downhill the given gather, mingle
with others equally stream-bidden,
but dwarf maple, and red, in a pool
where, still, they mimic meditation,
whisper nothing, nothing at all,
to any passerby who'll listen.

Pretty Perfect Weekend Field Trip

I'm teaching ecological restoration at the University of Pennsylvania this term as an Adjunct Professor.  It's a class for graduate students, and I have taught it every other fall term since 1992 - that's 22 years now, about as long as some of my youngest students have been alive.

I'd like to take the students on a lot of field trips.  The more that they can get out in the field to see actual restoration work, the better.  But UPenn is very near the heart of Philadelphia and it's hard to get to a site, take a tour, and get back to campus in the allotted 3-hour class period.  So, I always offer a weekend field trip to my preserve.  We did the trip this last weekend.

Many of the students are foreign nationals, and most don't own cars, so they use the regional rail network to get near my preserve, and then Kali and I pick them up at the train station.  Yesterday's trip started off badly - a 60-year-old man walking on the railroad tracks was struck and killed by a train (it happens more often than you might imagine; most victims are suicides), which delayed the start of the trip by one hour.  But the students all finally arrived and we enjoyed two hours of nearly perfect early autumn weather.

Annual Autumn Fest

 

Because of rain two weekends ago, we postponed our organization's annual autumn festival until Sunday afternoon, October 27.  Though it didn't end up raining on the date the event was originally scheduled, the sky that day was still mostly overcast and chilly; in contrast, last Sunday offered a perfect fall weekend, so I'm glad we waited.

The hayrides are popular with children, their parents, and their grandparents.  Our wagon will accommodate about 25 people for a 45-minute ride.  The first two rides weren't full, but we were stuffed into the wagon on the third ride; I much prefer the more spacious rides.

You can see from the images that the native grasses are at their peak right now - tawny and beautiful - but the trees in the background remain dull green or muted shades of tan and brown.  Our forests are never as vibrant as the New England forests on October calendars because we don't have many maples in our woods, but this year's colors will not be among the best regardless.

There's a 10-acre private in-holding in our grasslands: a gentleman's horse farm.  While the in-holding breaks up the sweep of the grasslands, it nonetheless adds an aesthetic accent to the landscape.

Following the hayrides, children had an opportunity to decorate pumpkins and have their faces painted with Halloween themes.  A few kids took advantage of early leaf-fall to dive into a pile and have a great time.

The Creek (for Grizz)

Yesterday was the quintessential perfect autumn day here.  I had a chance to spend the afternoon assessing the survival rate of 1,000 white ash trees planted 21 years ago, and I didn't have to pushed out the door to do the survey work.  (I did end up with four black-legged [i.e., "deer"] tick bites, though, which itch like a son of a gun today.)  During the survey, I chatted with three good friends who were walking the trails, taking advantage of one of the last good days left this season; it might snow on Saturday!  One friend had just returned from a week's trip to western and central New Mexico, which is "Mecca" for me, so I especially enjoyed seeing him.

The afternoon was so spectacular that, upon her arrival at home from work, I immediately told Kali to put on her walking shoes because we were going for a stroll before dinner.  I guess I was a bit too forceful in my proclamation because she became a bit put off and cranky.  Once we were among the golden prairie grasses, though, all her gruffness evaporated.  By the time we got down to the creek, the light was going out of the world, but I managed to make this image, which I'm dedicating to Grizz because I know that all this image would need to make him happy would be to PhotoShop himself sanding in the water casting for trout.

By the way, though the survival rate of the white ashes I was assessing was high, I know that they're all doomed once the emerald ash borer gets here to the Mid-Atlantic Piedmont.  Their only hope would be if we treated them perpetually with a systemic insecticide--something we just can't afford. 

Along Harper's Run

Kali didn't have to go to work yesterday, and I took left work1-1/2 hours early (hey, I had to work three hours on Saturday) in order to enjoy a late afternoon walk on a beautiful autumn day with bright sunshine and temperatures in the upper 60s.  We decided to walk at the county park downstream of the preserve for a change of scene.

Part of the walk in the park takes us alongside a modest but picturesque stream called Harper's Run.  Just after we parked and started upstream along the creek, a hawk flew in from the surrounding woods and landed smack dab in the middle of the creek, and then just sat there, tail fanned out, watching us.  We approached slowly and cautiously, and the hawk flew up out of the creek and onto the rocks alongside.  At that point, I could see that it was carrying something in its talons, but I couldn't tell what.  I pulled out the camera and cranked up the telephoto into the "digital telephoto" range, hoping to get a decent shot despite heavy shade.  I present the best of the five images I captured.  The hawk is a Cooper's Hawk (I couldn't tell in the field), and it appears to have captured a young squirrel (soggy from sitting in the creek).  As we got closer, the hawk carried its meal off to a tree and disappeared.

Green Lane

The best color we saw along the shore of the Green Lane Reservoir  

Kali and I did a 6-mile hike at Green Lane County Park in the northwest part of our county.  Though we've lived in this county for 23 years, we'd never visited this 2,300-acre park.  The parkland surrounds a large drinking water impoundment called Green Lane Reservoir, and most of the parkland hugs the shore of the lake fairly closely,  so the trail system is basically a walk along the lake shore, much of which is very steep.

The parkland is located in an interesting geological area where igneous sills had intruded into sedimentary sandstones and shales.  So, it's easy to see the juxtaposition of soft, red sandstones and shales right up against very hard, erosion-resistant black igneous diabase rock.

 

 The Blue Trail; despite appearances, it was very muddy, even here

Fall color was not spectacular around the reservoir, the trail was frequently muddy, the guidebook did not give comprehensive directions for the hike, and the trails climbed up and down hills a lot.  Kali and I decided that (1) the experience was 25% positive and 75% a slogging trudge, and (2) we wouldn't repeat the hike.  Nevertheless, there were some pleasant spots, especially a side trail that traversed two hemlock ravines with nice, small waterfalls.  Unfortunately, my camera battery was exhausted mid-hike and I didn't get images of the best parts of the hike.

Autumn in Miniature

The ripening Northern sea-oat seeds in my garden are a reflection of autumn, with green gradually giving way to yellows and browns.

Harbinger?

It's still too early in autumn to grade the season's foliage display, but this flowering dogwood is already in fine form.  Dogwoods are always the first trees to "color up" here in the Mid-Atlantic Piedmont.

The dogwoods are heavily laden with drupes this year, which will be a boon for the migratory birds that fatten up on the lipid-rich fruit.

The first Northern Harrier appeared over our grasslands earlier this week.  At least one harrier usually overwinters here, but the early arriver may move on, to be replaced by another bird as the season progresses.

October Afternoon

 

Hazy sun and (perhaps?) the peak of fall colors in my natural area yesterday.  The first three images were captured at the wetland at the heart of the preserve, and the last two struck me as typical of the trails, the first of which is an abandoned road that has been incorporated into the preserve's trail system.  Enjoy.

 

 

Pretty Poison (Ivy)

I took a walk before dinner two evenings ago. I've got to go out before dinner now that dusk is coming on so early.  The light was already fading by the time I got to an old field near my house, but there was still enough light to photograph a beautiful poison ivy vine scrambling up a white pine trunk.

In the opposite direction, the setting sun illuminated a meadow of goldenrod and big bluestem growing hard by a woodlot showing some autumn hues.

Glorious Early Fall Field Trip

Autumn dogwood as stained glass

I'm teaching a graduate course in restoration ecology this term, and brought the students to my natural area to give them some first-hand experience with state of the art restoration techniques and land management strategies in a natural area that is subject to considerable pressure from white-tailed deer and from invasive plants. Many of the students are landscape architecture candidates, so they need some exposure to native ecosystems, not just design classes.

The day was absolutely perfect--temperatures in the mid 70s, low humidity, and billowy white clouds sailing across an azure sky.

The native grasslands are at their peak right now, especially where they contain goldenrod and white snakeroot. The meadows are just gorgeous!

Back at the nature center, white wood aster was blooming in the shade of a specimen tree alongside a white picket fence.

Artsy Weekend

Lucinda Childs' Dance (1979), with film by Sol LeWitt and music by Philip Glass

My wife and I had an artsy weekend. We started on Saturday morning with a 6-mile circumambulation of Lake Galena, a water supply reservoir and recreational area in Peace Valley County Park near Doylestown, Buck County, Pennsylvania. The walk is fairly boring; most of it is along the lakeshore though developed picnicking, boating, and fishing areas or along the crest of the earthen fill dam that holds back the waters of Neshaminy Creek to create the lake. We walk the lake almost solely for exercise.

Canoes brought ashore at Lake Galena

Some parts of the trail near the upper end of the lake pass through young woodlands and old fields, and are therefore more enjoyable. At the very upper end, where Neshaminy Creek enters the lake, an old highway bridge (closed to traffic) spans the creek. There, we joined a small crowd watching a big fat Northern Water Snake lolling in the warm shallows. A smaller specimen investigated riparian vegetation a short distance away. That's where I found out that I had failed to recharge my camera battery...

After our walk, we headed into Doylestown proper for the community's annual arts festival. We're art festival junkies, and this was B-quality work at best--lots of vendors with lots of acceptable work but nothing exciting, innovative, or of the best quality--with the exception of a woman who made beautiful and inventive women's coats. We did buy a quirky birdhouse that we'll mount on an old snag outside our house next spring.
Sunday we got a gentle rain in the morning--not enough to really relieve the terrible dryness we're experiencing, but better than nothing. It was our first rain in three weeks, and it let up by noon, though the day stayed cloudy and cool.

In the afternoon, we went into central Philadelphia to see a performance of Dance, a revival of a dance by choreographer Lucinda Childs that debuted in 1979. The work was part of the Live Arts/Philly Fringe Festival that's in full swing. The festival endeavors to present avant-garde and unusual performance pieces. Dance certainly was avant-garde when it was first performed; American and European audiences booed it off the stage. But, contemporary dance has evolved considerably since 1979, and the 1-hour piece now just feels a bit outdated.

The most interesting aspect of the piece was the juxtaposing of live dancers with film of dancers projected onto an upstage scrim. The filmed dancers and the live dancers, all attired in stark white outfits, performed exactly the same steps at the same time. It was fascinating to watch.

The piece was set to a score that choreographer Childs commissioned from Philip Glass, the minimalist contemporary composer. We never want to hear another piece of music by Philip Glass ever again. Glass's music is highly--highly--repetitive, almost to the point of monotony. My wife asked if I remembered that the U.S. Army had tried to get rid of Manuel Noriega in Panama by blasting him with incessant loud rock music; she said they made a mistake--they should have used Phillip Glass's music! Of course, it might have driven him insane, first. There were so few changes in the music that I don't know what cues the magnificent dancers were using to synchronize their movements.

Wetlands and Witch-hazel

I had occasion to explore a wet meadow this morning and took some images while I was walking around with water nearly flooding into my L.L. Beans. I liked the misty background that I got in this image; it was cloudy, but it wasn't foggy.

A different perspective: here's the wet meadow from the hillside above.

On the hillside, witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) was blooming. (Don't you just love to say that generic name?) Witch-hazel is the last woody plant to bloom each year. Can you believe that this shrub is fairly closely related to sweetgum trees (Liquidambar styraciflua)? They're in the same family. There's a bright red sweetgum in the background of the image above.

A close-up of the witch-hazel flowers. I wonder if the flowering time has anything to do with the plant's common name?

Quarry Woods

Reclaimed hard rock quarry

Yesterday, taking advantage of a glorious October afternoon, I inspected an old hard rock quarry in my neighborhood that had been filled with clean fill. The four-acre site will be donated to a local land trust to be incorporated into the 33-acre preserved forest that surrounds the quarry. The site's owner did a good job of refilling, recontouring, and reclaiming the quarry, but the fill was seeded with a non-native grass mixture to stabilize the soil. Stabilizing the soil is a good idea (especailly considering how much rain we've had lately), but it makes for poor wildlife habitat. Eventually, the land trust will reforest the site.

The land trust already has a nice one-mile trail that leads through the 33-acre woodland above the quarry.
The trail leads to a large patch of Southern arrow-wood (Viburnum dentatum). This probably should be the most common shrub in the woodlands, but it's also a favorite of the large white-tailed deer herd, so it's among the first plants to disappear from the understory and be replaced by spicebush (Lindera benzoin), which the deer don't find particularly palatable. This patch of arrow-wood was growing near the edge of the quarry, so perhaps it escaped because it was relatively inaccessible.

This was the dramatic evening sky at sundown last night.

Chimney Swift Meadows

Late last afternoon (September 20), I went for a walk at my local natural area (where this image was made). Soaring over the fields--and just over these fields, not over any of the other 100 acres of grasses and wildflowers in the preserve--were at least 50 Chimney Swifts (Chaetura pelagica) .

They were soaring, diving and hawking at all levels, from hundreds of feet in the sky, where they appeared as tiny dots, to just above the tops of the grasses. I've never seen such a swift feeding frenzy before; it was amazing.

I know where the swifts are gathering each evening in preparation for their southward migration: an old brick chimney associated with the heating plant of a college about a mile away. Watching the birds disappear into the chimney each evening at dusk is a fantastic spectacle, too.