My Missouri Neighborhood – October 2025
/The mornings are cool…a sign of fall. I headed out for a short walk around the neighborhood pond. There is always something to photograph.
There are two good sized willows at opposite ends of the pond. I photographed the one that seem healthier…no dead branches; its branches move gracefully in dapples of sunlight.
Some of the native plants added last spring near one of the bridges have survived. They will probably do even better next year. There was a skipper sitting on one that seemed to be holding still just for me!
In the water, a few of the pickerel weeds are thriving. There were quite a few that didn’t. Hopefully the plants growing now will propagate…begin to take some of the extra nutrients out of the water. There is a lot of algae in the water this fall.
The maples are beginning to show fall color. We’ve not had much rain the past few months so it might not be as brilliant this year although these maples are near the pond so perhaps they got enough water.
I only saw one turtle, and it was gone before I could get closer. There was a lot of mud on that side of the pond and I wondered if it was from the weed eating too close to the edge.
A river birch has leaves dipping into the water.
The stump from a tree one of neighbors cut down before we moved to area has almost completely decayed. There is some fungus still working on the last of it…and another of the same kind in the nearby grass that might have been working on a root from the old tree.
When I got back to my driveway I noticed a mushroom near the streetlight in a corner of my front yard. It may be that mulching of grass as I mow has increased the plant debris in the soil enough to support more kinds of mushroom – I hope that is what’s happening!
