The first hike of September
Sep. 1st, 2005 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanRaphael and I went out to Carver Park Reserve today. We got there around 4:30 (we are not early starters), and the light over the fields and fields of goldenrod was already taking on the richer golden colors of evening. As we turned into the park, Raphael noticed a maple that was already turning its color. Here and there were others, and a few sprays of sumac were already red.
We took our usual route, Maple Trail to the lake, backtracking over the Cattail Trail to the boardwalk over the marsh, then back to the Nature Center, through the butterfly garden, and along another trail I can't recall the name of, that overlooks a steep slope of flowers and is in turn overlooked by another one. At the bottom of the first slope is a pond of varying size and algae infestation. After that we went through the woods and up a steep hill and along a very slanty mown path and around and finally up again to the high prairie, whereupon we were so tired that we eschewed the other wetland with boardwalk and went through a short bit of high prairie to the road, and past the shorebird sanctuary, and through a space of more goldenrod and small juniper and ash and oak trees, past a lake, and another, and back to the car.
It was a sunny blue and gold day, but extremely windy; the weather service forecast gusts to 35 miles an hour, and I believe that. The constant push of the air altered the look of the landscape. I kept thinking, what kind of tree is that, and realizing when I got close to it that it was a maple or an oak with all its leaves blown back so that the paler undersides showed. Sumac was much affected, and half the water-lilies had half of each leaf standing up perpendicular to the water, reddish and oddly veined. The whole landscape looked like an excitable puppy with its ear turned inside out.
We didn't see as much life as we sometimes do. There were darners; I got a good look at one female green darner because she was flying against the wind just hard enough to hover right in front of me. Mostly it was a day of startling small life from underfoot. When we walked along the boardwalk over the marsh, damselflies and tiny speckled moths flung themselves out from under the edges of the boards, either landing on the wood itself for a brief moment or else fleeing over the water. Darners flew up out of the cattails. There were meadowhawks everywhere, especially anywhere there was an edge of any sort: between asphalt and mown grass, between short and longer mown grass, between mown and unmown grass, between shrub and grass, between wood and water, even between light and shadow, as we walked along the meadowhawks appeared, rising and falling and darting, their wings glittering and their straight bodies darning the air.
As we moved from the slope of flowers, where we saw the first of the blue wood asters and the first of the tiny foamy white asters, along with yellow and gray coneflower and goldenrod, we passed through the shade of some big buckthorn bushes and some small trees, and all around us there rose up a cloud of monarch butterflies, a dozen or more. As we went on a few more floated up from the undergrowth, and then one, and then no more.
A large and a small wedge of geese, a handful of swallows, and a tiny bird like a hummingbird on steroids, yet arrested in motion, gleaning berries out of a dogwood bush, were almost all the other life there was. We did hear a lot of chickadee conversation, particularly the alleged "chicka-dee-dee-dee," which always sounds much more like cackling laughter to me. Raphael agreed, saying that chickadees were almost as amused as corvids.
We ran some errands on the way home. As we got into the car in the vast parking lot of PetSmart, I looked at the western sky, as I had been doing repeatedly since the sun set; and there were Venus and Jupiter, heading for their own setting in the pale orange western sky.
P.
We took our usual route, Maple Trail to the lake, backtracking over the Cattail Trail to the boardwalk over the marsh, then back to the Nature Center, through the butterfly garden, and along another trail I can't recall the name of, that overlooks a steep slope of flowers and is in turn overlooked by another one. At the bottom of the first slope is a pond of varying size and algae infestation. After that we went through the woods and up a steep hill and along a very slanty mown path and around and finally up again to the high prairie, whereupon we were so tired that we eschewed the other wetland with boardwalk and went through a short bit of high prairie to the road, and past the shorebird sanctuary, and through a space of more goldenrod and small juniper and ash and oak trees, past a lake, and another, and back to the car.
It was a sunny blue and gold day, but extremely windy; the weather service forecast gusts to 35 miles an hour, and I believe that. The constant push of the air altered the look of the landscape. I kept thinking, what kind of tree is that, and realizing when I got close to it that it was a maple or an oak with all its leaves blown back so that the paler undersides showed. Sumac was much affected, and half the water-lilies had half of each leaf standing up perpendicular to the water, reddish and oddly veined. The whole landscape looked like an excitable puppy with its ear turned inside out.
We didn't see as much life as we sometimes do. There were darners; I got a good look at one female green darner because she was flying against the wind just hard enough to hover right in front of me. Mostly it was a day of startling small life from underfoot. When we walked along the boardwalk over the marsh, damselflies and tiny speckled moths flung themselves out from under the edges of the boards, either landing on the wood itself for a brief moment or else fleeing over the water. Darners flew up out of the cattails. There were meadowhawks everywhere, especially anywhere there was an edge of any sort: between asphalt and mown grass, between short and longer mown grass, between mown and unmown grass, between shrub and grass, between wood and water, even between light and shadow, as we walked along the meadowhawks appeared, rising and falling and darting, their wings glittering and their straight bodies darning the air.
As we moved from the slope of flowers, where we saw the first of the blue wood asters and the first of the tiny foamy white asters, along with yellow and gray coneflower and goldenrod, we passed through the shade of some big buckthorn bushes and some small trees, and all around us there rose up a cloud of monarch butterflies, a dozen or more. As we went on a few more floated up from the undergrowth, and then one, and then no more.
A large and a small wedge of geese, a handful of swallows, and a tiny bird like a hummingbird on steroids, yet arrested in motion, gleaning berries out of a dogwood bush, were almost all the other life there was. We did hear a lot of chickadee conversation, particularly the alleged "chicka-dee-dee-dee," which always sounds much more like cackling laughter to me. Raphael agreed, saying that chickadees were almost as amused as corvids.
We ran some errands on the way home. As we got into the car in the vast parking lot of PetSmart, I looked at the western sky, as I had been doing repeatedly since the sun set; and there were Venus and Jupiter, heading for their own setting in the pale orange western sky.
P.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-02 06:25 am (UTC)In early spring, before the leaves are out, you get a huge and gorgeous variety of woodland ephemerals. This segues into later spring flowers, also woodland or woods' edge or along the banks of streams and lakes. There are low-growing prairie flowers around this time too. Then there's a kind of pause in early June, though much punctuated with flowering shrubs and trees. Then, as day length grows hugely, everything grows like mad. The peak of most garden plants is at midsummer and in the week or so that follows. This is a sparse time for woodland plants, though you get various things in open woods and along stream and lake shores. Plants of the open prairie, as the grass gets higher, are largely a phenomenon of July and August. I haven't written about Eric's and my trip to Hyland Lake Park Reserve or Raphael's and my visit to Carver in the middle of August, but those are peak times for coneflowers and butterfly weed and sunflowers. Coneflowers and sunflowers will continue into August and September, as well as thistle and a couple of native plants I can't remember right now. September sees the peak of goldenrod bloom, with asters and closed gentian and white snakeroot. There are more August flowers still blooming now than is usual -- we had a very cool very wet June and then a weird dry end of July and August, so things are confused. In any given year, they usually are, one way or another.
One annoying thing about Minnesota weather is that there is usually a hard frost right around September 15. This does not much trouble the asters, but it usually does in other plants that were still flowering cheerfully. So you can have beautiful sunny weather right on through September and into October, but you have to switch your attention to colorful fungi and the changing trees, because wildflowers, while certainly present, are not very widespread.
This seems very muddled; I can double-check my books and do you a more expert answer if you like.
P.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-03 06:47 pm (UTC)I was thinking that it was odd how alike the seasonality of flowers is in these two places which are so unalike in climate. Probably there's a universal truth in there somewhere.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-08 03:23 pm (UTC)Ours seems a bit different water wise. I had at least thunder showers (around 4pm) every day since summer started up to a bout three weeks ago I think. I really should take notes.
I am pleased it is drying actually. Most of my losses in the past (aside from the big April ice storm one year) occur with what happens in the Fall.