Around our (Maryland) Yard in November 2012

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Maryland in November is the time the raking of the leaves peaks. The leaves on our sycamore have stayed on longer than I thought it would since we already had a few of them falling in early October.

 

The hydrangea blossoms have deepened their color as they’ve dried. I am considering bringing some inside for a dried flower arrangement. 

 

 

The seeds for next year’s crop of onions are ready to fall in the garden.

And it’s definitely time to rake the leaves into mounds to they won’t kill the grass. The maples and tulip poplars are the most prevalent in our yard.
 

Ten Days of Little Celebrations - October 2012

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Back in mid-August I posted about finding things to celebrate each day. It’s an easy thing for me to do and getting into the habit of writing it down each day reminds me to be grateful for these and a myriad of other things in my life. Here are some ‘little celebrations’ I’ve noted this month:

Sleeping late. The night had gotten cold and we didn’t have the heat coming on yet. It was so wonderful to stay under the warm blankets just a little longer than usual.

A rainy day. I like to work when it is raining. There is no temptation to get outdoors and the little bit of noise from the rain on the roof provides the white noise to keep my focus on whatever I am doing. It’s a day to where concentration comes easily.

Pink mushrooms in the grass. Mushrooms seem to come up very quickly after a rain. These were almost hidden in the grass. At first I thought they were scraps of fall leaves. But from the side or underneath ---- they were this wonder color.

Watkins Glen. A beautiful place any time but I enjoyed it in the fall.

Corning Museum of Glass.  I like glass in just about all its forms. Every time I go to this museum I find some other beautiful piece that I’d failed to notice before.

Home again. I always celebrate the first day back home even if I was only gone a relatively short time.

Writing 3,000 words to start a short story. I’ve signed up to participate in the National Novel Writing Month in November. So - I am busily practicing writing something every day and preparing a chapter by chapter outline to be ready to get 50,000 words written in November. Writing a 3,000 word chunk of a short story in a day was one of my practices that was successful! Hurray!

Sweet potato harvest. The weather dictated that it was time. It’s a lot like unwrapping a present although, in this case, you know there will be sweet potatoes. The surprise is how many there might be and how big are they.

Magnificent maple seen on the drive to the grocery store. Sometimes a path we take frequently has something of temporarily extraordinary beauty: in this case - a tree that has a glorious week every year in the fall….and somehow I always notice it.

Bean soup. Humble fare that was exactly what I wanted on a cool fall day.

Fallen Leaves - October 2012

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We made our annual fall foliage trek this week. This year we made our way from Maryland up through Pennsylvannia and the Watkins Glen/Corning/Ithaca area of New York. I'll post some pictures of the specific areas over the course of the next week.

Today the slide show features leaves already on the ground. They were newly fallen so their colors were still vibrant. Some were wet and that made the colors even more intense. How many trees can you identify in this mix? Maples...poplars...sycamores...beech...sweet gum...and more! Celebrate fall today!

Around our (Maryland) Yard in October 2012

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October is the key fall month in Maryland. The leaves are turning and falling. The onions blooming in September now have seed heads. The dahlias are still going strong and there are more puffballs that ever. There were lovely pink mushrooms growing in the grass. There is a new group of caterpillars on the parsley that may not get to chrysalis stage before it gets too cold. Enjoy my October slide show below!

Posts from previous months are here.

Road Trip in May 2012 - Shenandoah National Park Day 1

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Our first hike at Shenandoah was at Gravel Springs Gap (mile 17.6). It was a short hike with some steep places. The water from the springs trickled through rock lined channels that we crossed many times as we made the look. The area was lush and we enjoyed our first glimpses of the wild flowers that were already blooming - maybe a bit early this year. I've picked my favorite pictures from the Gravel Springs Hike for the collage below.

Next we decided to hike down to Dark Hollow Falls (mile 51). Like many hikes in Shenandoah from Skyline Drive, the first part is downhill and the return is up.  I took one picture of the falls and then focused on the wildflowers, shelf fungus, and the way rocks hung over the water. This was the first location I photographed trillium and noticed that the maples are significant later than at home where the samara have already flown off the trees.

By the time we made it to the hotel, my Fitbit had recorded that I had climbed the equivalent of over 80 flights of stairs! It was quite a day.

Maple Samaras Flying

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The maples in our neighborhood have released their samaras. They whirl away from the tree with each gust of wind and land in the yards or collect in drifts at the curbs. It is almost like the fall of the year with the amount of stuff on the street. When it rains there are enough of them to clog gutters.

The samaras that land in the yards will have only a slightly longer life. Many will sprout and grow their first leaves only to be mowed again and again until they give up. They won’t become trees.

What would it be like if we didn’t mow for a season? Would a little forest of maples trees spring up in all the yards? The oaks have big and small years for their acorns but the maples always produce a huge number of samaras and they seem to sprout quite easily. The samara can whirl around to get itself well away from the parent tree.

BeforeAfterThe maple that I see from my office window is looking considerably greener with its samaras going and gone. The tree always starts the spring looking reddish…then rust…then a golden brown. The change from golden brown to green happened over a couple of days this year. I kept thinking it would happen earlier because of the samara color and the stiffness of the breezes. But they weren’t quite ready. Now all the maples in the neighborhood are letting their samaras fly.

Previous posts on Maples:

Maple Sequence - Spring 2012