Fall meander
For
the first time Saturday, I could smell the rich autumnal odor of newly
fallen leaves as I walked Lucy. I barely managed to force myself
into finishing my chores before I set out into the woods.
My goal, as always, was
to head up the hillside to the older woods, but I had to pass through
grown up pasture to get there. Half a century into its childhood,
the young woods on the lower parts of our property still has Japanese Honeysuckle being stifled in the
understory. But the brilliant Purple-gilled
Laccaria caught my
eye with its nearly pornographic shape and color. By the time I'd
finished photographing one old specimen and her more demure younger
siblings, I nearly believed that there was a fertile, earth goddess
present, repairing human havoc.
Lucy bounded ahead of
me, making more noise than one dog possibly should while leading me to
richer woodlands. Soon I stumbled across three ferns growing so
close together I could fit them into one camera frame --- now that's diversity.
Up
here, the entire cove was blanketed with White Snakeroot in full
bloom. This woodland relative of Boneset and Joe Pye Weed is
poisonous, and its poisons can pass from grazing animals to humans
through their milk. "Milk sickness" killed many European settlers
to our region, along with their horses, goats and cows. On my
protected hillside, though, its beauty is all that matters.
No walk in the woods is
complete without finding something I can't identify off the top of my
head. This lemon-balm-scented flower is Northern Horse-Balm (Collinsonia
canadensis),
which I've seen before but never in bloom.
I followed a couple of
different deer trails until I ended up near the top of my property,
where a line oak had attained a diameter of perhaps four feet.
Lucy barked at snakes while I unpacked my library book and two
cucumbers snagged from the garden on my way out the door and settled in
for a beautiful morning.
Despite my snack, I felt
an urgent compulsion to return home at precisely 11:50, so I wandered
down the hill past this Hearts-a-Bursting (Euonymus
americanus), and
back to my lunch. Even without a watch, my stomach knows its
schedule.
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