Taking the Time

"They" said it was going to be a rather drab fall due to the lack of rains at the end of summer.  I was disappointed...

...and then I wasn't.

There was beauty everywhere, if I just took the time to look!

Placid, Also the Lake

We took a 30 minute drive to a nearby park with a lake just before Thanksgiving.  We knew that walking will burn calories.  The autumn was at its peak and the afternoon was still warm.

The area was not quiet as about four young children were off from school for the holidays and enjoying freedom in a place where they can be children and do not have to use their "inside voice". But the noise was a joyful background rather than annoyance.  They soon disappeared to the rim of the dam.

This was the same walk where we encountered the hunting blind with the scattered corn that I posted on my other blog. We took a new trail as the one around the lake is over 7 miles and we had only a few hours before dark.

Above we are at the berm of the dam. This is a bit of manmade beauty meeting nature. I did look down every once in awhile and found many jewels for the camera's lense and I will share one below.

These days are too few and too short but I am in a pensive, placid, and empty mode in my life and seem to be able to absorb it all to fill me up.  I do not miss the busyness of success, whatever that is, and accomplishments, of which I have had a few.

A Misrepresentation

Fall is noisy and crunchy scattered like butter brickle across the pan of earth.

Fall is the song of crickets belying a firm daring soon to be buried in snow.

Fall is that older friendship that takes you to the attic for a fuzzy plaid throw.

Fall is the angle of sun catching another oblique to show forgotten shape.

Fall is shivers of thought and the respite in reflection before a scalloped landscape.

Fall is careless and fickle shoving its changes such that you can barely foresee.

Fall is a quick reminder that the year is near behind and you are in act three.

Natural Art

There is some beautiful art on my deck this morning:

My Sugar Maple Just Sneezed!

Sunshine Bursts

I am so going to miss these sunshine bursts that are at their peak in the front yard.  I hear there is frost on the way in the coming week.  

Making Lazy Circles in the Sky

 A few days ago, camera in hand, I headed across the yard for a break from housecleaning.  A shadow crossed my path and I looked up and just a short distance away, this is what I saw in the clear autumn skies.

Made my day.

It Starts With Z

In grandmother's garden there were always Zinnias.  Mostly tall and waving in the fall breezes.  I have not had such luck a my rabbits love baby zinnias in spring and early summer and eat them down to the ground.  This year I had a Great Horned Owl which made all the difference!  The nights get down into the 40s F but my zinnias still hang around to feed the insects.

The Way Forward

Sometimes the way forward is just too seductive and beautiful to ignore.

The Party Hour

I am an introvert.  I find that wedding parties can be fun if taken in small doses.  So, in the middle of the reception in the barn at the farm, I notice the sun is setting.  I quietly excuse myself and grab my small camera as I rush down the stairs and past the lower dairy room which just minutes ago had been filled with wedding guests drinking and eating orderves.

I rush to the field at the back, where sheep and one horse are calmly stuffing their tummies before the end of the fall day.  The cool front which collided with Hurricane Matthew has made the meadows green again so late in the summer.

I turn to the road where the sunset is just beginning to paint everything golden.

And while the guests back at the barn have not started their dancing, I notice that the grasses are busy doing their head bobbing just across the road.  He guys, the party is out here.

Double shot

Double shot...an accident.

After Storm

We are awaiting another hurricane.  The odds are in our favor that it will at least push by us if not resulting in a complete smash-up.  We have a really busy weekend and will be out of town on Sunday through the next week.  We just finished about 3 days of gray skies and rain leaving behind almost 5 inches of water.  The plants are loving it as are the mushrooms.

So I walked out into the squishy moss and over the spongey grass and took some photos.

This is the time of year that the grand oaks throw down their nuts for the deer and squirrels as fall closes in.

And I stepped back to get better focus I almost stepped on this little lady.  She also was coming out after the storm had ended.

"Orenge" You Glad It's Fall?

Plastic plates orange in color in a plastic red bucket with the sun shining through.

Orange...the word that poets never use when trying to rhyme.

Orange...the color that few people can carry off in a clothing theme.

Orange...the color that is used when on the roadside so that a driver will not hit you.

Christmas tree lights through a heart filter and given an orange hue.

I do not ever remember anyone saying it is their favorite color.  But it is the color fire in the cold.  It is the color of the setting sun at the end of a day.  It is the color of that juicy fruit.  Before the 15th century the color existed in Europe without a name.  Then when Portuguese merchants brought the first orange trees to Europe from Asia along with the Sanskrit term naranga, the name for the color of the fruit became the name for the color.  It evolved from the Old French orenge from pomme d'orenge.

I love fall because of all the shades of orange.

This zinnia was the only one with such an orange color and only one flower has blossomed all summer from the plant.  I love the peachy color.

I finally saw only ONE monarch in my yard.  They fly through at the end of September and cross the Chesapeake Bay a few miles from me in early October on their way south.  I did see more up in the Smithsonian gardens in Washington, DC and that gave me hope.  They are the perfect orange color.

Above a photo-painting of my orange cosmos which I photograph endlessly as it bobs in the breezes.

None of our trees have faded to orange, but this tulip tree leaf came a little closer than most.

I do love the warm and snuggly colors of fall as the air gets cooler and orange gets to take center stage.

Bugs

I put that title because some folks need preparation for a discussion of one of the largest families on the planet, insects. Early fall is the time they are most abundant as their food supplies, plants and animals, have reached peak levels. 

I cannot take a walk in the woods without encountering a spider web across my arm or across my face.  I do not do the crazy dance when I run into a web because spiders do not bite humans unless they are cornered...such as inside a shoe or glove. They rapidly climb out of the way when you encountered their gathering net.  Spiders are designed to catch small insects and 99.9% of the time cannot penetrate your skin! "Only about a dozen of the approximately 40,000 spider species worldwide can cause serious harm to the average healthy adult human. In North America, there are only two groups of spiders that are medically important: the widow group (which includes black widows) and the recluse group (brown recluses)." This quoted from an arachnologist who actually has had brown recluses crawling on his arm and studied spiders for decades and has never had a spider bite!  Therefore, avoid putting your appendages into dark places, but do not worry about everywhere else!!  So take a deep breath and look at the beauty that moved from our BBQ when we wanted to use it and had to break its web to outside the window of our dining room.  It spent about three weeks staying there and collecting and eating those nasty stink bugs that crawl on our walls in the fall and early winter before moving on.

I am pretty sure this is a Black and Yellow Argiope that is a common orb web spider. Orb web means it spins a web like a circle.  In the early morning when the dew is still on the webs I can see these webs 20 feet off the ground between trees.  They are so mathematically beautiful and we have them in our gardens as well.  I run into their webs fairly often.  The female can get pretty big and thus scares mankind.

Some spiders are great at camouflage.  There is a spider in this cosmos seed cluster above because it moved when I took the photo.  I cannot find it now as I study the photo!  Anyway, there are tiny spiders and big spiders and if you are outdoors in a good non-paved environment they are EVERYWHERE!  Yet, you are not bitten, are you?  You do not actually see them, do you?  They are very important to us, so call a truce if you are a bit arachnophobic.

These dramatic caterpillars I did declare war on.  They were completely eating all of my milkweed plant, which is the only one I plant for the Monarch larva.  These caterpillars are the larva of a plain brown moth which is abundant.  I would have left them if they only ate a small part of the plant, but no such luck.

This little guy on the petal of the cosmos is some beetle that eats other bugs.  Hopefully he eats bugs that eat my cosmos.  I did not know he was there when I took a picture of this glowing cosmos flower.

And, of course, we all love the butterflies.  No one swats them away or does the crazy dance when they fly in our face!  This little skipper butterfly is in abundance in my yard.

Little Green Guys

I had a volunteer parsley plant appear in one of my pots this spring.  I kept forgetting to harvest to add to my meals and then I went out last week and saw this.

I counted twenty little green black zebra swallowtail caterpillars.  They were hugely busy.  

Then as the plant became more decimated some of the little green guys moved on elsewhere to find shelter for their cocoons, I guess, unless a bird or two picked them off.

They left behind lots of little green peas of poop, which probably are pretty good for that potting soil!

Needs a shave?

Under my husbands 4 foot baby chestnut tree that is a variety (hybrid) of the one America has lost due to disease there were two of these fellows enjoying lunch.  Because the tree is so small we did have to move them somewhere else into the woods.  Perhaps they wandered back as we did not check. 

There were two and they were each about 3 inches long.  I think it is the caterpillar of one of the moths.  

"Polyphemus Moth Larva Larvae reach nearly four inches in length and appear "pushed together" from the ends, making it accordion-shaped. Larvae are fat, pale green, and sparsely covered with hair which are not harmful if touched. They feed on many trees and shrubs including oak, hickory, elm, maple, birch, apple, boxelder, cherry, chestnut, willow, ash, grape, pine, and members of the rose family. The larval period is 48 to 50 days long. In late summer or early fall, the larva spins a rounded, tough, parchment-like cocoon in the tree or shrub in which it has been feeding. It overwinters in this cocoon, and emerges the following spring or summer as a very beautiful adult moth.

A common giant silk moth, the male has a wingspan of nearly five inches and the antennae are large and feathery. The wing color is light brown with gray dusting on the forewing edges and vertical pink lines near the body. Each hindwing has a larger yellow eyespot in a field of dark blue to black. Small yellow eyespots occur in the center of the forewing."

This is a photo I got from an Ohio website..

Wish I would see this some evening.

The Price We Pay

While the hot days of summer seem to be making an exit and we can now look forward to some rain in the coming days, it does not arrive without a price.