autumn – In the Woods

red-spotted purple

George & Julia Brumley Family Nature Preserve
9.9.25 ~ Chapel Hill, North Carolina

An atypical lovely September day dawned and invited us to explore another wonderful nature preserve. There we were delighted to find a labyrinth and two new kinds of butterflies. Tim was pondering how to describe his current style of walking, coming up with strolling, but not entirely satisfied with that word. Thinking of Thoreau, I suggested sauntering to him. He tried it on and used it a few times. Looked it up at home. It’s sticking.

🍃

The butterfly obtains
But little sympathy
Though favorably mentioned
In Entomology —

Because he travels freely
And wears a proper coat
The circumspect are certain
That he is dissolute

Had he the homely scutcheon
Of modest Industry
’Twere fitter certifying
For Immortality —

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1701)

🍃

We couldn’t get enough of the bright color of these red-spotted purples and couldn’t wait to get home to identify this butterfly!

There were hundreds of these satyrs flying around the labyrinth and nearby. They were tiny and didn’t stay still long enough for a good photo shoot.

To be honest, I forgot to think about ticks before taking this walk. Then, about half way through the walk we encountered three serious birders coming down the trail, carrying large camera lenses and binoculars. I noticed they all had their pants tucked into their socks, which jogged my memory and started me worrying since I had no tick repellent on.

Later that evening I felt a strong itch near my knee and the next morning saw the seed tick bite. Just one. Why do I never see an adult tick? Why do these invisible seed ticks get me every time??? (And never bother Tim…) But one bite is better endured than the 27 bites I got the first time this happened. I’ve got to learn to not let my guard down.

green leaves whispering tales

July went down as the hottest month ever recorded in North Carolina history, but what a surprise, August turned out to be the coolest August in over thirty years. With all the recent medical appointments we didn’t get out much to enjoy the fresh air, but on Labor Day we did get a chance to walk out in the woods.

We kept thinking we were hearing a creek’s water running but finally figured out it was a breeze stirring the leaves above our heads. The first autumn we were here we learned to look up if we wanted to see any leaf colors, and we applied that lesson this day, looking up to see the leaves, still in their lovely summer greens.

It was slow going and there were many stops for Tim to catch his breath, but we managed to walk three quarters of a mile and he seemed none the worse for wear after we got home. The rests gave us time to notice all sorts of little treasures on the forest floor, too.

A woman once described a friend of hers as being such a keen listener that even the trees leaned toward her, as if they were speaking their innermost secrets into her listening ears. Over the years I’ve envisioned that woman’s silence, a hearing full and open enough that the world told her its stories. The green leaves turned toward her, whispering tales of soft breezes and the murmurs of leaf against leaf.
~ Linda Hogan
(Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World)

My respiration and inspiration….the beating of my heart….the passing of blood and air through my lungs,
The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves.
~ Walt Whitman
(Leaves of Grass)

as autumn becomes a memory

11.27.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden
northern mockingbird

November ends. I come across a poem by my favorite poet — she describes the sense of loss and disconnect I had been feeling all month.

She could not live upon the Past
The Present did not know her
And so she sought this sweet at last
And nature gently owned her
The mother that has not a Knell
For either Duke or Robin
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #1535)

I’m grateful for and encouraged by nature, poetry and my books, and family and friends, as I imagine most of us are. This squirrel came up to me on our last visit to the botanical garden, as if to say, “I’m here, too.”

The poorest experience is rich enough for all the purposes of expressing thought. Why covet a knowledge of new facts? Day and night, house and garden, a few books, a few actions, serve us as well as would all trades and all spectacles. We are far from having exhausted the significance of the symbols we use. We can come to use them yet with a terrible simplicity. It does not need that a poem should be long. Every word was once a poem.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(The Poet)

spotted cucumber beetle on a New England aster

simple healing in
watching a mourning dove feed
on the forest floor
~ Barbara Rodgers
(In the Woods)

for what we have been given

“Autumn Berries & Flowers in Brown Pot” by John Constable

The Honorable Harvest asks us to give back, in reciprocity, for what we have been given. Reciprocity helps resolve the moral tension of taking a life by giving in return something of value that sustains the ones who sustain us. One of our responsibilities as human people is to find ways to enter into reciprocity with the more-than-human world. We can do it through gratitude, through ceremony, through land stewardship, science, art, and in everyday acts of practical reverence.
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer
(Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge & The Teachings of Plants)

Happy Thanksgiving!

beloved mourning doves

11.19.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

At last! I found some mourning doves in North Carolina! I think these two were probably a pair. I’ve really missed seeing these gentle birds, who frequently visited my balcony in Connecticut, and also used to hang out with me whenever I was weeding my garden. They had come into my life to comfort me after my mother died in 1991. Now I feel my mother’s spirit here. More of this story here.

As I was photographing the mourning doves I got the feeling someone was watching me. Turned out to be a squirrel on a nearby tree, eye level with me. I didn’t need to zoom in at all.

Also close by was a tufted titmouse who was diligently looking for something to eat inside that twig.

Down a different path we encountered a northern cardinal walking ahead of us, and then turning around to give us this backward glance.

Another northern cardinal was way high up in a pine tree, tackling a couple of nuts.

pine needles in the water, leaves hanging over the water

I think I’ve seen a red-bellied woodpecker down here, but this female is the first one I’ve photographed. Isn’t she pretty? It was definitely my lucky day in the botanical garden.

She was inside the wonderful garden and she could come through the door under the ivy any time and she felt as if she had found a world all her own.
~ Frances Hodgson Burnett
(The Secret Garden)

a praying mantis

Finn’s praying mantis
11.1.24 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden

On Tim’s and Finn’s birthday the grandkids happened to have a day off from school, so we took them to the botanical garden so they could participate in a sculpture scavenger hunt designed for children. After we had located all but two of the selected sculptures we were stumped. Katherine and I went to the outdoor information booth to get an adult map to help us with a little detective work. But Finn and Tim went inside to ask for help inside the welcome center.

While inside there Finn spotted this praying mantis walking across the floor! Tim asked for a piece of paper and they offered the insect a ride outside to the garden on the sheet, which it accepted. After letting if off in the greenery Tim got this picture with his cell phone. Surely a token of good luck for grandfather and grandson on their shared birthday!

four seasons photo hunt

Back in January of this year, Karma (Karma’s When I Feel Like It Blog) suggested a four seasons photo hunt. I decided to include four more “seasons,” taking photos on Groundhog Day, May Day, Lammas Day and Halloween, which fall between the solstices and equinoxes. I will come back and add the final picture to this post when we get to the winter solstice.

Courtyard Gardens
North Carolina Botanical Garden

6.21.24 ~ (the day after) Summer Solstice

10.30.24 ~ (the day before) All Hallow’s Eve

12.20.24 ~ (the day before) Winter Solstice

black vulture, fall colors, a pond

11.4.24 ~ Anderson Community Park, Carrboro, North Carolina

We found a lovely little walk around Anderson Pond in Carrboro’s largest town park. The fall colors were very pretty but I was disappointed to not see any waterbirds.

Trees don’t simply maintain the conditions necessary for human and most animal life on Earth; trees created those conditions through the community of forests. Trees paved the way for the human family. The debt we owe them is too big to ever repay.
~ Diana Beresford-Kroeger
(To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest)

This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.
~ Richard Powers
(The Overstory: A Novel)

Carrboro has been recognized as a Tree City USA for 39 years by the Arbor Day Foundation. It’s one of 3,577 tree cities found across the nation. Every time we leave the house I love seeing all the trees in our densely wooded neighborhoods. And I love looking out our windows and seeing almost nothing but leaves!

bigleaf magnolia

10.30.24 ~ tufted titmouse
North Carolina Botanical Garden

For this walk we set out to locate the bigleaf magnolia specimen at the botanical garden because we heard its leaves were changing color for fall. But along the way I spotted an adorable titmouse waiting for a turn at the birdfeeder…

… and an American witch hazel in bloom with a caught leaf…

The native range of this southeastern tree is spotty, but the botanical garden is home to this majestic magnolia.

The bigleaf magnolia has the largest simple leaves and largest flowers of any tree indigenous to North America. It is a rare, native, deciduous, pyramidal tree with a single trunk and develops a spreading, broad, rounded crown with age, and grows 30 to 40 feet tall and equally as wide. It may be semi-evergreen in the deep south. The huge oblong-obovate leaves measure up to 3 feet long and 1 foot wide. The leaves are green above and silvery-gray and pubescent below. Showy fragrant flowers are creamy-white with rose-purple at the petal bases, and measure 8 to 14 inches in diameter. Although quite large, the flowers are often located far off the ground and are not always easy to see close up. The flowers give way to spherical cone-like fruits which mature to red in late summer, releasing individual red-coated seeds suspended on slender threads at maturity.
~ N.C. Cooperative Extension website

I have to admit I haven’t paid too much attention to this tree, even though we pass by it often in the Mountain Habitat part of the garden. I will try to look up more often to see if I can see the flowers and then the seeds in the coming seasons. But for now, these are the huge leaves in their fall colors.

Perhaps because the flowers are located so far off the ground is the reason I never noticed them before. I hope the zoom lens on my camera can get some pictures of them in the spring.

looking up through flowering dogwood branches and leaves
to the bigleaf magnolia canopy

I love the contrast between the size and colors of the dogwood leaves and the huge magnolia leaves, high above them. Since the dogwood leaves are closer to the camera and they still seem much smaller it gives a little perspective.