It’s been a long time (again), but I’m finally making time for an update on my rambles. Summer has turned to fall, and it looks to be a colorful one. Today, however, it’s rained intermittently and is not expected to get above 50°. I hope it rains all day–and tomorrow, too; we are more than 9″ below our normal rainfall for the year.
I appreciate the beauty of nature as I walk year-round, but rambling in the fall may be my favorite, as the foliage seems to change colors almost daily.
More and more leaves cover the ground. Here’s a link to a wooly bear (Pyrrharctia Isabella) scooting across some in my yard.
The summer wildflowers gave way to the fall, and those will be gone after the first frost, which could come any day now.
The deer are changing with the seasons, too. Most of the fawns have lost their spots, and the little bucks have scraped the velvet off their antlers. (They’re feeling their testosterone, too, and I have seen them pushing each other around. One broke part of his antler.) They are all losing their brown summer coats and turning more gray.
The box turtles spent most of these past dry months buried in the mud. One found a good place in the ditch, and I brought him persimmons once they began to fall. He hasn’t been there the past few days, and I hope he has dug a burrow for the winter. I think this female was on her way to do so when she was in my driveway a few days ago. (I think she’s the same one who laid eggs in my mulch pile in June, and I hope to see babies emerge in the spring.)
I’ve had other four-legged visitors (no black bears that I know of!); mostly the raccoons and possums come at night. A woodchuck/groundhog/whistle pig thought about settling under my porch, but I think I was successful in scaring it away (and then I put up chicken wire to keep it from getting back underneath). And I’ve also seen a skunk! I had seen one on the game camera in the meadow and was not happy to see it near the house. Here’s a video (from a safe distance) of it eating seeds that had fallen from the bird feeder; it was not much fazed by my shouting but finally left. (The wires are an unsuccessful attempt to keep the turkeys from scratching the ground.)
I guess I’ve caught you up on some of the sights and doings in the Hollow. Maybe it won’t be such a long wait until the next post, now that the weather is changing and there’s not much to do in what’s left of the garden. In the meantime, here’s the hollow on the other side of the ridge.
French Broad Hollow Ramble 