Fall Is Here

 Well, what can I say? It's been a summer. Hot, very dry, no rain here from early May until the end of July. Tons of bugs. Never seen so many chewed up leaves, or so many butterflies. Some kind of nasty yellowish caterpiller ate an entire Mugho Pine. The weeds got ahead of me by June and it has stayed that way. 

Fall arrived last Sunday, about 8:30 pm. I was at the road making my weekly donation to the Garbage Gods and watched a fog develop over the Marsh. It started as a small white cloud hovering above the cattails, and grew bigger as I watched. In the morning there was fog high in the trees while on the ground spider webs captured some of it as dewdrops.

In the fields and my Hillside Garden, the Goldenrods are blooming.

As are the Coneflowers.

And the Japanese Anemones.

In the Beaver Pond I found a Bur Reed I have never seen before. It took me a while to find its name, but I'm pretty sure now that it is Sparganium angustifolium. From a slight distance, it looked like an orchid blooming in the shallow water, but closer up it seemed to be a Sedge. Bur Reeds are similar, I guess.

After a rainy August, the woods are full of fungi. Mushrooms and lichens literally everywhere! I took Rosie for a walk to the back of the property yesterday and came home with 409 images on my camera's memory card! Closer to home, here are some of the fungi that have appeared on some old wooden rounds I've been using as stepping stones (stepping woods?) in the Sampler Garden. They are all quite small - the rounds are only about 12" across - and I was down on my stomach photographing them.

Since I was back at the house, I let the kittens out and they joined me exploring the stepping stones. Yes, kittens. Since I was on the ground trying to focus on the tiny fungi, this meant they were walking on my head. What happened was, a friend called and asked me if I wanted a kitten, she had to find homes for four of them, and since my old cat Pepper passed on last year and I've been having a problem with mice in the house, I said I'd take one. When I got to her house to pick it up, somehow she managed to convince me I should take both of the last two... they'll play together, she said. They'll catch more mice, she said. They don't eat much, she said. Well, of course she's right, but I'd forgotten the 'kitten phase', which is when they basically trash everything they can get onto, into, or under. Which is everything. But they're cute and they'll grow out of it. So here, drum roll, please, are the two new members of the Team. Tiger is slightly smaller than Fred and has a few white hairs.

Rosie thinks they're great, something to chase, something to lick until it's soaked, something to carry around carefully when Mom isn't watching. 

She expects to get her favourite sleeping chair back when they're a little older.