The turning of the leaves: Ohio buckeyes

The changing climate affects our forests in many ways. One particular effect that I've been following now for about 25 years, is the seasonal color change that affects most of the deciduous trees in our central Appalachian forest.  In particular I've been interested in the Ohio Buckeye, a tree that turns a brilliant pumpkin orange in fall - or at least it used to be autumn.

July 5, 2013

When I first moved to central Appalachia (living in Wise, VA), the Ohio Buckeye changed color at the beginning of the normal autumn season in late September or early October. Between 1989 and 2005 I observed the Ohio Buckeye beginning to show it's brilliant color earlier and earlier. The first time I wrote about this in a different blog in September of 2005, the first signs of color appeared in early August. I wrote about it again in 2013 noting that the Ohio Buckeye color change had shifted even earlier to the first week in July and included a photograph showing the beginnings of color change. 

June 14, 2018

This year first signs of color in the Ohio Buckeye appeared in mid-June, which I noted while attending a week-long watercolor class at Cowan Community Center.  

I have been unable to find anyone who knows why the Ohio Buckeye would be shifting to increasingly earlier displays of seasonal color. It is particularly puzzling since most of the other trees in the region are developing and holding color later in the autumn due to warmer temperatures. Last autumn (2017) we saw one of the latest peak-color dates ever recorded in the region, with the most brilliant color occurring here in late October into early November.

July 23, 2018

This week I caught a picture of at least one Ohio buckeye (at the left of the picture) in our neighborhood that was nearly in full color even though July is not yet over.  You can see two other Buckeye trees that have substantial color, but that none of the other trees in the forest are showing any sign of color - as one would expect in July. 

One day I really hope that I encounter a botanist or naturalist who can explain to me what is happening to the Ohio buckeye. 

Ohio Buckeye July 15, 2017, Whitesburg

mind of the universe

It came to me in the early morning hours as I lie there trying to decide whether to go back to sleep or to get up, that it was an enormous human conceit not to believe in god* or at least not to believe in the existence of a mind/an intelligence greater than our own encompassing the universe. Moreover, that it is a western human conceit to believe that foraging humans like the Mbuti (pygmies) are wrong when they believe in the Forest as a living entity with mind/consciousness to whom they give thanks and offer prayer. 

We rational, scientific, folks of industrial societies don’t actually know why we ourselves have a mind (as opposed to just a brain), so how can we discount the idea that other organized systems (bees, dolphins, forests, planets, universes) composed of organic and inorganic materials just as we are, could not also produce minds and thought. 

Since we aren’t particularly good at understanding other human beings, why should we expect to understand the working of the mind of the universe/god? 
___________
*this is not to imply that any particular human conception of god is necessarily correct.

Color view of M31 (The Andromeda Galaxy), with M32 (a satellite galaxy) shown to the lower left. Credit and copyright: Terry Hancock. https://www.universetoday.com/33986/messier-32/

The best moment of the year

It's the middle of May in eastern Kentucky and white blossoms are everywhere. Wild roses (rosa multiflora) and blackberries spill from banks and hillsides perfuming the warm air, while field daisies and daisy fleabane (erigeron strigosus) march gaily along the roadsides and adorn the unmown yards and meadows.

Driving this week car windows down to smell the roses and blackberries, I found myself saying "now is my favorite moment of the year." Then I laughed to remember that just four weeks ago, when the purple redbud and lacy dogwood were in bloom, I had said the same thing: "my favorite moment of the year."  Moreover, a few weeks before that in mid-March I was sighing over the splashes of yellow daffodils, and exuberant forsythia everywhere, also thinking "best moment of the year."

Not long from now in June I'll be thinking the same thing when the first local blueberries come to the Letcher County Farmer's Market and the day lilies turn my hillside orange. The thought will come again in July when my first tomatoes get ripe and I eat them warm off the vine. I will also be thinking it when the jewel weed blooms its millions of tiny orange flowers that attract the hummingbirds to sup in September - also the moment when the Virgin's bower vines burst into delicate white blooms.

Then comes October and all the maples go scarlet and rose. Once again, I'm thinking "my favorite moment of the year."  One might think that was the end of it, but in November when all the leaves are gone the stately majesty of white limbed sycamores stand tall as the guardians of the winter forest causing me to once again think "this is it."

So it turns out that every moment in the mountains of eastern Kentucky is the best moment of the year.

Burgeoning Green Life

Thirty-nine years, six months, and 17 days ago, I left California where I had grown up and moved to Kentucky.  It was January 1975 and California had been green, rainy with roses blooming. Kentucky was cold, dreary and gray. But three months later spring came to Kentucky, and with it the miraculous abundance of green, growing things. 

Nearly four decades later (some of which were spent in Pennsylvania and Virginia before I found my way back to Kentucky), and I never cease to be amazed by the exuberance verdancy of eastern woods, forest, fields, roadsides, yards, empty lots, etc.  Indeed any tiny open space in which something might grow, things DO grow. 

People who have lived here all their lives do not appreciate how different this is from the western part of the United States. And people who live in the western states fail to realize how different life is when green growing things can actually flourish without attention and even threaten to take over your home and yard without constant vigilance. 

Currently the entire state of California is in advanced stages of long term drought - severe, extreme or even exceptional drought. The image below is from May 2013; before the drought these hills would have still been green.  ( http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Home/RegionalDroughtMonitor.aspx?west) 

But even long before the current drought, California was a place where substantial diligence was required to grow things.  For a lawn to grow, a yard had to be carefully seeded and watered regularly every year in perpetuity.  Our Kentucky lawn (pictured at top) was completely dug up last July for a new septic system, the dirt bulldozed back in place, a few grass seeds were scattered, but no other attention was paid - only rain, sunshine and nature operated on the yard. This summer it is as if the construction never took place.  

Every spring and summer, we must continually beat back the forest to keep it from swallowing our home. Already the pathway and gate that used to lead from our property to the neighbors has been completely enveloped in new trees and shrubs.  It is both beautiful and awesome in its fecundity. 

Nature's orchestra

At dawn freight train wind

hurtles rain in staccato bursts,

a cacophony assaulting the senses.

sgreerpitt

February 5, 2014

A January of Small Stones 25

Flash of movement

in stark, still landscape

dry leaf scampers

over the snow

like a brown mouse

seeking shelter.

January 25, 2014

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 23

In the snowy woods

unexpected robins flock

flashing rufous breasts,

rise, wheel and settle again.

January 23, 2014

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 21

chill eiderdown blanket

covers imperfections,

creates unity in white and black.

January 21, 2014

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stone 17

That rare moment, just before dawn

between shifts, silence settles on the mountain,

and only the brook burbles softly

while the moon makes silver ships

of clouds scudding across an inky sky.

January 17, 2014

In Praise of Winter

At work today, a young woman making casual conversation asked me if I was "ready for summer." I hesitated, because it was one of those things that people say on a cold, grey day expecting only a pro-forma agreement, but then I said the truth "no, I'm not ready to let winter go yet." My response startled her, but she was working and needed to move on, so she just nodded and said bye.  

I am no longer as fond of cold weather as I was when I was younger. Winter weather exacerbates both my arthritis and my asthma. I dislike having to take all the additional medicines necessary to allow me to function when it is cold. I am also less confident of my ability to drive in sleet and snow as I once was. 

But I still love winter. I love how the forest becomes naked and the bones of the world show through - the rocks and crevasses, the bare forest floor. Every drive to work or store is a treasure hunt for the stark white fingers of sycamore trees. I love the lace of brown branches edging the mountains against the pale sky. I love the way the wind rattles the dry leaves and rubs the bare branches together. 

But most of all I love how winter makes spring possible. Until you have lived in a place (like California) where the transition from winter to spring is scarcely noticeable, where roses bloom all year round, you cannot truly appreciate how winter gives birth to spring.  So, no I am not pining for summer, nor waiting for spring, but living with joy in winter.

A January of Small Stones 16

Moments before setting,

slipping beneath

the grey cloud blanket,

Rumplestiltskin sun

turns hillsides of straw

to gold.

January 16, 2014 

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 10

Neither dark nor light,
neither warm nor cold,
lingering to breath
moisture laden air,
mild January twilight.

January 10, 2014
#smallstone

A January of Small Stones 08

January 8, 2014

On the porch

where feral cats

daily find their food

are unexpected

delicate traces

left by feathered guests.

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 05

January 5, 2014

the woods alight,

afternoon glow,

trees of gold

beckon the way. 

sgreerpitt

A January of Small Stones 03

January 3, 2014

deep cold

snow dry as dust

sweeps clean away.

To read more small stones by writers from around the world see:

http://www.writingourwayhome.com/

A January of Small Stones 02

January 2, 2014

faerie abodes

revealed

in the

naked woods.

sgreerpitt

An twenty-four year old environmental puzzle

The second blog post I ever made (back in 2005) concerned an environmental puzzle that I had observed for some 15 years. It is now eight years later, and I am no closer to having a real answer to my question.

Since 1989, when I moved into this part of central Appalachia, I have been observing a trend with the Ohio Buckeye tree.  These lovely trees can be seen all over eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and northeast Tennessee. They have large hand shaped pinnate leaves in groups of five.  They seem to like moist areas and are often seen along creeks and rivers (and the roads that run along creeks and rivers).

Guides to eastern trees speak of the gorgeous pumpkin orange color of Ohio Buckeye trees in the autumn.  However, my environmental puzzle concerns why the Ohio Buckeye has been showing fall color earlier and earlier each year for the past twenty-four years.

 When I first arrived in the region, the Ohio Buckeye changed color at the beginning of the normal autumn season in late September or early October. Between 1989 and 2005 I observed the Ohio Buckeye beginning to show it's brilliant color earlier and earlier.  In my 2005 post, I observed by early to mid-August. Since 2005, the color change has moved even earlier. This year, the color change began last week - the first week in July. The images here were taken today, July 5, 2013 in Kingsport, Tennessee along Reedy Creek from the Kingsport Greenbelt pathway.

This is how it begins a small branch or two of each tree turns brilliant color, then more do, and then the leaves turn yellow and brown and fall off - MONTHS before any of the other trees in the forest. Each year the process of turning color and losing leaves gets earlier.  A tree that once turned color in late September early October, now begins turning color in June and July and has lost all its green leaves by August. At some point in time, if this continues, the tree will not have green leaves long enough to provide the energy it needs to keep on living.

What is going on? Why is this happening? There does not seem to be any pest involved. Is it changing climate? If so what is it about the climate?  Central Appalachia is getting both measurably warmer, but also wetter.  We've just completed one of the wettest Junes on record.

Anyone out there know someone with an answer?

Indigo Bunting - Woven Dreams "Blue"

Indigo Bunting

More elusive than happiness,
more rare than desire,
seconds on a fence
engraved forever
in memory only,
Passerina cyanea,
bluest bluebird of all.

sgreerpitt
Sunday February 10, 2013
Photos by others http://www.pbase.com/dadas115/indigo_bunting


for more creativity on the theme of "Blue" check out Woven Dreams http://wovendreamsprompts.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/woven-dreams-prompt-1-blue/

Winter Meditations

I have always liked winter. When I was a child in California, winter was when the rains came and the hills turned green instead of brown. I liked wearing sweaters and wool more than I liked sundresses.

The thing that I have come to love best about winter is the bareness of the trees. In winter the architecture of the world is easier to perceive. I have always seen a parallel between the world in winter and human life in times of stress and difficulty.

I did not always take comfort in that revelation. When I was young I focused on frailty, on loss.

For the winds are bitterly iced
between trees that,
having lost their summer leaves,
are no longer seen as intertwined,
but only tenuously touching a few brittle twigs
here and there;
solitary in a gray world that prevents
even the insubtantial companionship
of a shadow.
December 11, 1972

As a young person I perceived (often falsely) the failure of friendships to survive stress. I mistook temporary solitariness for abandonment.

Over the years, however, I have come to cherish winter as a time of bareness and spareness. Living as I have now for many years with woods and forest all around, winter is a time when the world opens up, when secrets are revealed. Having seen more of human life,  and where once I saw bleakness and abandonment, today  I see strength, resiliance and people reaching out. It is in the hard and cold times that people draw together, offer each other support.

In winter
nature drops her disguises,
forest opens to sky,
rock cliffs are bared,
sheltering leaves fall away,
wind whistles through
tenuously touching twigs.

Walking the forest floor
one sees further, more clearly,
steps more surely
among rocks and fissures.
November 2, 2008

It is interesting to me that I used the phrase "tenuously touching" in both poems - an unconscious echoing. But there is a tenuous drawing away and a tenuous reaching outward. It is the latter I perceive today.

 

early morning sights in late September

feral cats on the back stoop waiting for food in the faint light...
brilliant green katydid on the front railing like a leaf with legs...
Hickory tussock moth caterpillar all fuzzy white and black on the siding (don't touch!)...
a thriving clump of Pennsylvania smartweed with its tiny pink flowers...
towering joe-pye weed beginning to bow from its own weight...
dozens of dew encrusted spiderwebs between the telephone cables lining the road...
a neighbor's rooster, red combed and strutting his two plume like tail feathers swaying proudly...