Ten Days of Little Celebrations – October 2016

More than half my ‘little celebrations’ this month were place/activity specify. There were 3 celebrations of familiar places/activities:

• I spent 4 mornings at Belmont for BioBlitz with fifth graders. The weather was near perfect – much better than the wet weather for the event last spring. Every day held a few surprises and I was pleased that my husband joined me this fall rather than my volunteering on my own.
• My walk around Brookside was a fall morning – a little cool – that was near perfect for walking around the garden loop. I’ll have to go back to see the mum exhibit in the conservatories.
• Mt. Pleasant Farm is probably one of my favorite places in the fall. What’s not to like about hiking with elementary school field trips! This fall the 1^st grades were the most frequent visitors. I got plenty of practice leading those hikes.

Another 3 of new places/activities:

• I’d never been to State College (Penn State) before. We picked a great weekend to go – colorful fall squash, gourds and leaves everywhere.
• Waggoner’s Gap was also new. The weather was not great for raptor spotting…so I celebrating finding the place….but want to go back again to actually spot some birds.
• Being with high schoolers assessing the Middle Patuxent River at Eden Brook was new too. The place was full of fall leaves and the river had plenty of scenic variety….and the perspective of high schoolers doing field work (sometimes with water flowing over the tops of their boots) added elements to the celebration that went beyond just going to the place on my own.

There were some serendipity sights that I celebrated via photography:

• Getting out to the meadow before the dew dried to photograph spider webs and
• Bright fungus growing on a tree where lightning had struck (and killed the tree).

And mixed in with those celebrations was one ‘lazy day’ that I celebrated because it was so different from the rest of the month!

Pumpkins and Gourds

There as a display of carved pumpkins at the Botanical Garden at Penn State when we were there last weekend but I enjoyed the piles of whole pumpkins, squashes, and gourds more – so that is what I photographed. Some were stacked like cairns, others were arranged on shallow stairs, or drifted around pots of fall blooming plants. This is the kind of display I associate with fall as much as piles of raked leaves!

Sometimes their shape and texture makes them a stand out among all the rest.

My favorite display was in the children’s part of the Botanical Garden: a big bowl full of gourds and squashes. See the tubes mounted on the frame? Those are kaleidoscopes. There were steps so that even a small child could take a look!

Here’s the view through one of the kaleidoscopes when the bowl was still. I didn’t attempt a picture when the bowl was moving. What a great active sculpture for a Children’s Garden!

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!