Zooming – November 2016

November is my second month with my new camera (Canon PowerShot SX720 HS). My earlier posts this month have used a lot of zoomed images…but I’m sharing 7 in this post that are new. The first is an immature milkweed bug. See the stubs where the wings will be in a later instar? In October, I thought they would gone by November but the weather stayed reasonably warm and there were still green milkweed pods well into the month. Some of the bugs probably didn’t make it to maturity before the first frost.

November included the brightest fall color this year. I like the light shining through these maple leaves.

The Bald Cypress cones were more obvious against the rusty brown of the foliage being shed this time of year.

Ferns have sporangia on their underside; these reminded me of the dots on dominos.

Inside the conservatory at Brookside the banana plant had maturing fruit.

I’m not sure what this is…but it is growing (and blooming) in the Brookside Gardens conservatory.

I discovered Virginia Creeper growing on the brick in front of my house. It is turned red with the cooler temperatures.

Outside at Brookside – November 2016

On the day I went to photograph mums at Brookside Gardens, I also made my normal loop walk around the gardens. The first segment is the boardwalk between the conservatory parking lot and the Nature Center. The boardwalk was dusted with leaves. The ferns were still green but the thick undergrowth that blocked the view of the Cyprus knees further along had died and they were visible again as they will be until next spring when the skunk cabbage grows again.

I was there early enough that the sunlight cast a warm glow on the stones of the scent garden.

There were robins – looking a little scruffy – looking for food in the leaves.

I took pictures of single leaves on the ground all along the way and they are included in the slide show below. Can you identify the maple, several oaks, tulip poplar, redbud and gingko?

A gingko was dropping its leaves quickly and there were drifts of them along the path.

The Japanese tea house overlooks the pond – this time without geese or turtles around.

There were some surprise bulbs blooming - perhaps a fall crocus.

Many of the leaves had already fallen but there were some swaths of color.

Here’s a path that has an ‘icing’ of leaves (mostly maple) to top of mulch.

Some oaks have leaves that look very red in bright sunlight but brown on the ground. The light was bringing-out-the-red on this tree.

On the path – within sight of the conservatory again – a squirrel made enough noise in the leaves for me to notice and was still while eating an acorn….I took the picture.

The gingko near the conservatory seemed to have more leaves than the one I’d walk by earlier. Some were still tinged green.

In a pot – someone had stacked a small pumpkin on a larger white one…a little cairn like we saw a few weeks ago in State College.

There was some lantana blooming nearby and a skipper was enjoying a meal.

There is always something new to see at Brookside.

Raking Leaves – 2

I started raking leaves toward the middle of October and still have quite a lot to do based on the leaves still clinging to the trees. Even the oak that was my focus in October still has some leaves – although there are noticeably fewer still on the tree. I’ve raked the area around the purple-leaved plum tree too although the tree still has leaves on it too; they don’t change color – they just fall. They are more fragile than the oak leaves and compress more easily into the trash can.

I noticed a small pine tree growing in the mulch of oak tree.  Maybe a squirrel planted a pine nut there? If it survives the winter – I’ll dig it up in the spring and move it someplace where it can grow more easily.

I’ve also noticed that a small azalea that is about 25 years old has turned red this fall when the sun shines on it. It looks good in front of the green bushes…and I should do some weeding around it while I’m out raking leaves.

In the back – I rake the leaves back into the forest. The maple is just beginning to drop its leaves. They fall more rapidly than the oak leaves once they start. Every breeze makes the tulip poplar and maple leaves swirl away from the trees. I’ve made one pass so far….and know that there will be at least one more…probably two…over the next week or so.

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.

Fall Walk Around Penn State

What’s not to like about a sunny fall day with colorful leaves – maybe not in abundance but clearly visible. We started in Botanical Garden and then walked down through part of the Penn State campus –

Making the building where my daughter might do a post doc after she finishes up grad school as our on-campus destination.

It was a busy weekend with high school seniors and their parents visiting too.

The Botanical Garden included water features,

Colorful curves over a gate,

Sculptures of snakes on sunny rocks (in positions that real snakes might like),

And some larger sculptures that were holding pumpkins in keeping with the pumpkin carvings being displayed on many low walls (more on this in tomorrow’s post).

There were a few small butterflies in the pollinator’s garden too – I couldn’t resist testing the increased ‘zoom’ capability on my new camera!

Mid-October Road Trip

We made a fall foliage road trip last weekend from our home between Washington DC and Baltimore MD to State College Pennsylvania. We headed out on I 70 to western Maryland and then I99 to State College. Our first rest stop was in Maryland – the South Mountain Welcome Center with a rock façade (maybe from a local source?) and the morning sun showing off a little change in the leave color.

The next rest stop was the Pennsylvania Welcome Center (still on I70). That had big sunflowers in various stages of development. It was easy to see how the seeds look as they begin to mature.

Two of the flowers I photographed had bugs in them (I discovered when I looked at them on the big screen of my monitor. This one looks like and assassin bug

And then was is a milkweed bug.

Just after we left the welcome center – we started to see more color. It wasn’t the peak of fall foliage colors…but a beginning.

There was also fog hanging in the valleys…with a clear sky above.

The drive to State College was a good start to our fall road trip. I’ll post more about it tomorrow.

1979 – Southeast Oklahoma in the Fall

Back in the last 70s and early 80s, we enjoyed a fall foliage camping trip almost every year. I favorite destination was southeastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas….where there were more trees than the area around Dallas. In 1979, we made two trips during the fall. The first one was in September when most of the trees were still green and it was to visit relatives further north than our usual fall stops. But we made a stop at a place just off the highway called Limestone Gap. There was a railway bridge over a stream – that was crumbling even then. Based on the weeds growing on top – maybe the train already was running over a new bridge.

The highway at that time did not have rest stops…so this stream and crumbling bridge made a pleasant stop for a picnic south of McAlester OK. My family had stopped there for years when we were on that stretch of highway. This picture was taken at one of the last times we stopped before the highway was upgraded – there was no longer a ‘Limestone Gap’ sign for the turn off – and we stopped at a fast food restaurant or truck stop further along the highway rather than a ‘scenic’ stop.

Later in the season, we made our annual camping trip. Many of the leaves had already fallen from the trees.

But there was still a golden quality to the forest with a few leaves hanging on and many on the ground – but not enough to cover the rocky floor of the forest.

The golden them was carried with mushrooms

And shelf fungus.

My husband picked the picture below as his favorite and printed it as an 11x14 not long after the trip.