Month: October 2017

Well, there wasn’t much snow—only a few flurries in the afternoon, most of it mixed with sleet. It was a cold and cloudy ramble, but the trees were still colorful. I was happy to get the corn and apples down for the critters in the afternoon just as the wet stuff started.

The next day was windy and cold, I missed my morning walk to the river (but stopped on my way out for the photo) and headed out in the afternoon. The light and the colors literally stopped me in my tracks several times!

The cold has made colors more vivid every day, especially the maples.

Halloween has been another stunning day, and I couldn’t resist a few more photos:

Soon the leaves will fall (except the beech), and I’ll be seeing a different kind of beauty on my rambles.

 

 

 

Fall is fickle weatherwise, and we go from rain to sunny, calm to windy, and warm to cold. Today it is windy and cloudy with rain approaching and a forecast high in the 50s. Tomorrow’s forecast calls for another windy day with a high only in the 40s and a low in the high 20s. Oh, and a chance of snow flurries! It will be a brisk ramble!

The leaves are getting more colorful each day. They are spectacular against the blue sky but sometimes stand out even more on cloudy days. The leaves on some of the hickories almost glow like golden lights, but I can’t seem to catch the magic with the camera. I am particularly fond of the many American Beech (Fagus grandifolia) trees in the Hollow, especially those near my house. They are still almost fluorescent green but beginning to turn yellow. The leaves will eventually turn to a coffee brown and will stay on the trees for most of the winter. (Today I am trying the slideshow feature of WordPress; I hope it works for you!)

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Many of the smaller plants are also colorful, like this sumac—one of many in the Hollow—and the beautyberries (Callicarpa americana) I planted soon after moving here.

Especially on cloudy days, even the bare branches of the black walnuts ((Juglans nigra) and the fallen leaves and husks of a hickory are beautiful.

Here are the views from the gate

and from my deck late yesterday afternoon and early this morning.

 

Fall has really arrived, bringing some beautiful weather. However, we had 3 inches of rain Monday, which limited my rambles. The last two photos above show the French Broad at 2:30 PM (in the rain) and again at 5:30, after the rain had passed. Places upstream were hit by more rain, and some places were flooded. The rain was the harbinger of much colder temperatures, and these changes in the weather have made the the foliage begin to get more color. I don’t know if the rain simply washed the dust off, revealing color already there, or if the colors are being revealed as the chlorophyll fades. Probably both.

Here is a sample of what I am seeing. I hope to edit these a little and post a slide show with additional photos tomorrow.

The deer and turkeys are coming pretty regularly. The deer let me get close, but the turkeys run when I approach. Have you ever watched a wild turkey run? (I don’t know where this video was made.) They are fast but not very graceful.

As for now, it’s about time to fill the pail with deer corn and deer apples and head down the hill to feed those critters.

It seems as though fall weather has arrived—at least for a few days. Yesterday morning it was 34 degrees, and the highs have been only in the 60s. As you can see, some of the mornings have been very foggy.

Although we experienced dry weather and temperatures that were more like summer than fall, the trees that haven’t already lost their leaves are beginning to turn. The maples and sourwoods are getting redder and redder, and the some of the hickories are turning golden brown. The sycamore leaves are beautiful,  and some of them are even bigger than these.

The deer continue to come to the meadow, but there are plenty of acorns, persimmons, and other things for them to eat. I think the does have run off the male fawns; several of this year’s fawns seem to be alone rather than with their mothers or others in the herd.

The turkeys continue to come around, too, and the squirrels are gathering the abundant black walnuts and run away when I get near.

I haven’t seen a hummingbird in over two weeks, but the butterflies are still around and enjoy the flowers that remain in the garden.

The weather is wonderful, and this is a beautiful time of year for rambling in the Hollow.

 

 

 

Although Nate left only about an inch of rain in the Hollow, it dumped several inches upstream. I use the rocks in the river as a gauge of how much rain fell elsewhere. Of course, the river is much louder when it is high, and I can sometimes hear it roaring in my little part of the Hollow.

I try to be aware of what is happening in the nature around me on my rambles. I know that I am being watched as I walk, and sometimes I am able to get a photo before the watcher runs or flies off. (Yes, one of the neighbors recently scraped this part of the road.)

And sometimes I’m glad to see only what was left and that the scat was old enough that someone ran over it. (The bears like persimmons, too.)

We have been experiencing near-record high temperatures, and it hasn’t been cooling off at night as it usually does. The low temperature has been warmer than the average high on several occasions recently. And we’ve had high (for us) humidity; since Nate passed, we’ve had many very foggy mornings.

It’s been a while since I last posted. My sister, who lives on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, went through both Hurricanes Irma and Maria, and we were lucky to get her a ticket here for a brief respite. Then the remnants of Nate came through the Hollow with a few pretty powerful winds gusts (but barely an inch of rain), and she got to help me prop up a broken post on the grapevines and rehang a bird feeder. She has had more than her share of hurricanes this year!

I am working on catching up with the Hollow and will take a few posts to do it. As you can see from the photos, the  leaves are turning, but the temperatures make it feel like summer.