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!

Mt Pleasant – October 2016

It was very damp – almost raining – last Saturday during my hike at The Howard County Conservancy’s Mt Pleasant Farm. I took a few pictures to document the day: black walnuts on the ground in various stages of ripeness,

Colorful dogwood and grass along the drive to the farmhouse….and a zoomed view of the grass.

But the biggest surprise of the hike was some chicken of the woods fungus growing high on a tree near the stream. I was leading a hike so I only took time to take one picture….and then went back again yesterday to take some more documentary pictures. The one below shows that the fungus is at least 10 feet above ground level (near the middle of the image below).

Zoomed in a little – it appears to be growing in a groove in the trunk…maybe a place where lightning damaged the tree. The tree may be standing deadwood since it had no leaves.

Zoomed some more – the groove where the fungus is growing has no bark.

I walked a little further to take some pictures from directly underneath. The underside of the fungus seemed to glow in the morning sunlight.

There were other things to see as well yesterday: the fork in the path down to the stream,

Water on horse nettle fruits and past-prime flowers (the water on the grass soaked through the tops of my hiking boots and got my feet wet!),

And the larger rocks deposited by the storms of last summer at the ‘beach’ area of the stream.

I hiked back to the nature center to get ready to hike with first graders. It was quite a change from last week’s fifth graders!