Ten Days of Little Celebrations – October 2016

More than half my ‘little celebrations’ this month were place/activity specify. There were 3 celebrations of familiar places/activities:

• I spent 4 mornings at Belmont for BioBlitz with fifth graders. The weather was near perfect – much better than the wet weather for the event last spring. Every day held a few surprises and I was pleased that my husband joined me this fall rather than my volunteering on my own.
• My walk around Brookside was a fall morning – a little cool – that was near perfect for walking around the garden loop. I’ll have to go back to see the mum exhibit in the conservatories.
• Mt. Pleasant Farm is probably one of my favorite places in the fall. What’s not to like about hiking with elementary school field trips! This fall the 1^st grades were the most frequent visitors. I got plenty of practice leading those hikes.

Another 3 of new places/activities:

• I’d never been to State College (Penn State) before. We picked a great weekend to go – colorful fall squash, gourds and leaves everywhere.
• Waggoner’s Gap was also new. The weather was not great for raptor spotting…so I celebrating finding the place….but want to go back again to actually spot some birds.
• Being with high schoolers assessing the Middle Patuxent River at Eden Brook was new too. The place was full of fall leaves and the river had plenty of scenic variety….and the perspective of high schoolers doing field work (sometimes with water flowing over the tops of their boots) added elements to the celebration that went beyond just going to the place on my own.

There were some serendipity sights that I celebrated via photography:

• Getting out to the meadow before the dew dried to photograph spider webs and
• Bright fungus growing on a tree where lightning had struck (and killed the tree).

And mixed in with those celebrations was one ‘lazy day’ that I celebrated because it was so different from the rest of the month!

The Middle Patuxent River at Eden Brook

Last week, I volunteered for a local high school’s assessment of river near their school – the Middle Patuxent River at the end of Eden Brook Drive. The high schools start early in our county so the volunteers were asked to be on location to set up by 7 AM (the students to arrive at 7:30). It was still pretty dark when I left my house. My role was part of the abiotic assessment – looking at the corridor of the river. The old bridge abutment was a good place to look up and down the river for the assessment. The bridge had washed away in some flood event (hurricane) years ago and not been rebuilt. I had a table for the materials the students would need.

There was fall color to each side and lots of leaves that had already fall.

I zoomed in on the crumbling abutment on the opposite side of the river.

Some of the concrete was providing nooks for leaves. The brush that might have done the same function had been lifted far above the current water level in the last flood.

To the right was a table set up to support a group of students looking for macroinvertebrates.

There was another table to the left. There would be 6 groups of students in all; three would do the macroinvertebrate search and three would do abiotic assessments. The students would rotate so that they all got an opportunity to do all the activities.

We unloaded boots for students that would working in the river....and we were ready for the students. There as a few minutes of calm.

And then the flurry of 60ish students arriving….half of them putting on boots and going to the river. Data sheets being filled out. It was 2 hours full of activity as all 6 groups fo students rotated through my activity.

The weather was near perfect…the students were exuberant…it was great day for a stream assessment. It's a suburban river - with a lot of problems associated with impervious surfaces and extra 'stuff' from lawns and roads and lots of people getting into the water....but the county had made the banks into an undeveloped park; the situation could improve for the river. I want to go back to hike in the area before all the leaves are completely off the trees – a fall foliage hike close to home.