Outside the sky is a watercolor of clouds, the air is cold but not brutally so. Twigs stick out from the soft carpet of snow. Some are young trees. Others are poison ivy seemingly disarmed but still carrying noxious oil. Dried stalks of herbaceous plants hold viable seed, like the tall goldenrods and asters that edge my garden beds. When I accidentally brush against them, fluff and seeds rain down to lie in wait for the growing season.

A few days ago a hawk flew overhead as I was driving to town. I assumed it would be a red-tail, but as I got closer I could see the patterning on the wings was wrong. It tilted, and dark patches on its front gave it away as a rough-legged hawk, one of several birds that winter here and are most familiar with our area in its bleak aspect. The species is a refugee from the north through the action of evolution, but individuals experience the brief arctic summer and never see ours.

This past week, the days were below freezing. Freezing in this case refers to the freezing point of liquid water. As I walked along the pond before work, all of us living things were trying to ward off or control the creep of ice. All of us are made up of cells and of large proportions of water, from the white-throated sparrows hiding among shrub branches to the mice and squirrels who made the tracks criss-crossing the pond’s surface. The shrubs themselves have lost their water rich leaves.

When I walked the boardwalk across the street, I half expected my passage to be preceded by shrieking frogs as in summer, but the pools are mostly ice-bound. My footsteps make muffled crunches. Above, trees creak and branches rustle. The red dragonflies which used to alight on the railings have wandered elsewhere. The frogs are tucked away in the bottom of pools deep enough not to freeze solid. They’re taking advantage of the fact that solid water is lighter than very cold liquid water, which sinks to the bottom away from the cold air. Perhaps to them only our growing season is real, while our winter is less than a dream.

Earlier this week, heavy rain turned to heavy snow just in time for my lunch walk. Thick, wet flakes melted into swollen pools or formed sodden ice at the edges. Water coated the bramble. It hovered between liquid and solid with crystals forming along the branches and droplets hanging from the ends.

Wetland pools had redrawn their shores and claimed sections of the path with eddies and waterfalls. I managed to soak through to my socks while trying to jump over a wide incursion of water. As difficult as snowy weather can be, cold liquid water presents its own challenges. Rain can’t be brushed off. It threatens to mat feathers and furs, collapsing their insulating air spaces. Wool socks are also vulnerable. Fortunately I had a heated space to return to nearby.

Many of the forest denizens present and awake for the winter don’t have this luxury. They also can’t add an insulating layer overnight. I wandered among deer in the storm. Two young deer hung close by the sides of their mothers, of whom they have become miniature versions. Stout and furry, they all had little dustings of snow on their backs and skull caps on their heads. They stopped and stared when I appeared. One began browsing towards me, occasionally glancing at me until his or her mother had enough and hurried away. It was a few seconds before the little one caught on and trotted after her.



I left them picking their way among the hillocks and pools and returned to work. That evening I stepped out into the world foretold by the holiday decorations, tinted blue by the evening. Wet snow outlined each branch and blanketed the ground. The next morning, cold temperatures had consolidated the power of ice and snow on the landscape. A small pond bound in ice muttered to itself with tinkles of ice crystals falling from shore-side shrubs. The understory was a spray of branches embossed in white. Where the snow cover is thin, ice crystals erupt from the ground. The other benefit to snow is that a good blanketing insulates the ground from sudden melts and freezes.

End of November

I ventured to town the day after Thanksgiving, something I generally try to avoid every year. Like the morning after the first major snowstorm, the world had been transformed overnight. Except the agents of transformation are bows and santas instead of snowflakes. After all, the most important harvest of the modern economy is holiday spending.

Despite the proliferation of winter festival imagery, the landscape is still dressed for late fall. Sun pierces the clouds and throws naked trees into relief against a dark background. These knobby giants hulk over still green fields. Snow streaks nearly invisible through the air, not a hint of white on the ground.

A different harvest is in progress as the second weekend of the regular deer season comes to an end. Men with guns ride around in pickup trucks or stalk along treelines. Shot booms randomly in the surrounding landscape. We pass homesteads with deer dangling from trees in the yard. Elsewhere a deer lies slumped in a gravel parking lot – a reminder of the year-round sacrifice to that American idol the automobile.

The younger beech trees have retained their leaves, giving the forest a bronze undercoat that shivers in the wind. The bird community has shifted to its winter assemblage. Juncos are dark smudges that dart among clumps of goldenrod now topped by wool.

There are still glimpses of bright color among the winter birds. A flicker exposes the yellow underside of his tail to me as it displaces a downy woodpecker from a tree trunk. A male golden-crowned kinglet flits by, giving us a flash of orange and yellow as we walk the dogs. A closer look at cedar waxwings decorating a small tree reveals bright yellow tail tips. They create a design that changes as birds come in, shift branches, and leave with heartbeat like regularity. Occasionally they pluck at dangling grapes as if nibbling on hors d’oeuvres.

Blue jays and cardinals are the showiest, yet even they are a bit lackluster when the sky is thick and heavy with clouds. Chickadees and titmice make themselves noticeable despite wearing the same gray color scheme year-round. They gather in big chattering groups that attract hangers-on interested in food and safety. Usually a pair of white-breasted nuthatches will be working their way down a tree among them. Other common sights are downy woodpeckers and maybe a brown creeper.

This morning snow filled the air and left a light dusting that melted as the day progressed. Soon we’ll get our first real snowfall that will blanket the ground and bring out the colors. The birds will seem more festive on my walks, and life will be a little harder for them.

Summer's empire falling down

Pokeweed appears conquered by frost, although next year's growth is safe underground and locked in seeds.


Cattail fluff topped with ice crystals.

The sky has been clear for several days, which means the land soaks up the sun’s heat but has no insulating clouds to hold it. The other morning I walked the dogs to the end of the driveway through a landscape under the thrall of frost. The grassy fields beyond our woods were painted bluish-green while dried goldenrods and asters had turned amber. These scenes often make me think of my mom’s heirloom ornaments made of frosted glass.





I took an hour to walk around the pond before work. Some of the smaller pools of water had a fragile top layer of ice, but the mass of the pond keeps the temperature more stable and less susceptible to the whims of the air. A muskrat plopped into the water as I passed by. It paddled out a little ways, making a hasty wake in the calm surface. Farther down the shore it climbed up beside another muskrat, pausing to shake water from its fur. They huddled next to each other, taking turns slicking water-resistant oil through their coat. The pond was cold to my touch and not appealing to this naked primate. It will only steadily lose heat even though the muskrats will need to forage through it all winter.



A robin sat at the top of a tree, feathers puffed out. An alder with leaves still green was graced with ice, but next year’s leaves are snug in their protective buds. The clear sky let the sun penetrate the canopy of branches. Thick vegetation which had retained some warmth in earlier hours now held in the cold air, making shadows of frost. Elsewhere leaves glistened with moisture. Evergreen leaves, such as spruce needles and the leaves of a widespread fern with the prosaic name polypody, control the damage of ice and retain their vibrant green through the melt. Others turn waxy due to ice crystals which had broken through cell walls and then melted away. Everyday it seems more of the grass at the end of our driveway dies.

More fall sights

Witch hazel


Beech leaves which may remain up all winter.


Not all that's green is fading.


Reminder of the summer.

Fall sights

One morning I lingered outside work among flocking birds. Red-winged blackbirds clucked, American robins chuckled, and blue jays voiced their boastful calls of “Jay jay!” All three species are not stereotypical migrants, in that some of the population linger in our area all winter. Most of the blue jays stay. The robins that stay will remain restless as they search for high concentrations of the berries that are their main winter food source.

Berries abound. Nearby trees and invasive shrubs have grown up in old fields. Red honeysuckle berries dot the brushy areas. Taller buckthorns arch over parts of the path, their branches encrusted with black berries. Back home I’ve been noticing maple-leafed viburnum with their black berries and the beaten-down but not yet broken pokeweeds thick with clusters of dark purple fruit.

It’s the time of year I can see that I’ve moved to a different stand in the forest by looking down. At the end of the driveway there are the remains of an old homestead and aspen have grown up in what may have been land cleared by its owner. At the first bend in our driveway, deeply lobed oak leaves replace the rounded aspen leaves, oak being more-shade tolerant, where the forest was once logged but probably not completely cleared.

This past week the leaves have been a study in variation, genetic and microclimatic. All the trees have been performing complicated equations involving day-length, temperature, and water loss and coming up with different results. Some beech trees still resemble striped frozen treats from my childhood – an inner halo of green shades into yellow and an outer layer of orange. Many of the more exposed trees stand bare, especially after this last bout of windy weather. The flush of witch hazel blooms seem showier with this more subdued background.

On a recent sunny day, my mother-in-law’s walls were flush with ladybugs. They have descended on our houses, looking for winter shelter. The pets treat them like little toys, although Ivy has trouble with them because she can’t aim for them and have her nose close enough to sniff them at the same time. Sometimes I wonder if our heated homes, far more numerous and widespread than the longhouses of just a few hundred years ago, provide winter habitat for insects which were previously excluded from our region. Of course many insects already wintered in crevices or underground where the temperature was more moderated.

This is the last we’ll see of some creatures for a few months. Red dragonflies were still patrolling the boardwalks near work last week. There was even a pair joined abdomen to head whose eggs will presumably overwinter. Chipmunks dart about the woods, taunting our dogs with their chirps. It might be nice not to be jerked about when a chipmunk notices me walking Bear and vice versa, but the novelty will wear off long before they rouse from hibernation.

This time of year, I become obsessed with pumpkins. I want to bedeck our house with gourds of all different sizes. Vibrant orange pumpkins are my winter squash of choice, although I know they are surpassed in eating quality by varieties like butternut and buttercup. The outward appearance of many of these sweeter squashes is too pale or merely green, the colors of late or early squash instead of peak.

There’s something satisfying about a hefty squash. It’s like a meaty acorn in a blue jay’s cache which holds out hope and calories against the clouds looming on the horizon, dark and swollen with the first threat of snow. The ephemeral plumpness of wild grapes can’t compare.

This morning seemed like November. The early light washed out fall’s color scheme so that dramatic clouds overlooked a pale orange landscape. I know that late fall has its own charms, but right now the prospect feels bleak. So here are some pictures in honor of fall’s colors before they’re gone.

I stepped outside yesterday and saw no sign of the forecasted frost in our yard. The dogs and I walked through the debris of fall, like the yellowing leaves and spent goldenrods. A creeping cold infused the calm air, forcing me to keep switching the hand holding the leashes with the hand in my pocket.

Out at the edge of the woods, the scene changed. Dandelion leaves were outlined in white and tufts of grass glittered. A distant lawn seemed dusted by an early snowfall. Lone trees and buildings cast dark, frost-free shadows in the lawns carved out of our forest. Across the fields, a line of sunlight drained down a row of trees as the sun slowly crested a hill, bringing the warmth that would eventually melt the frost away.

Fall has ushered moisture back into the landscape. Last week I approached the creek bed on our land and heard water happily murmuring to itself. Silt had turned the steady flow grayish-blue, as if the water retained a vague memory of the recent storm’s origin in the Caribbean. Ripples crowned the surface. All the leaves and other organic matter in the bed had led to clumps of foam which emitted trails of bubbles.

My walks take place in a damp world of soggy paths and darkened tree trunks. Often when temperatures fall in the evening and the air loses capacity for holding moisture, a cool mist coalesces among the trees. It pores in wide bands over sections of my ride home. In the morning vast clouds fill the valley with great wisps of mist rising towards the sky.

Often as I wait for my ride to work I sit on a stone wall beside the edge of a gorge which runs through the town. A box elder leans over the slope, currently thick with bunches of samaras. Another fruit is also present. Grape leaves entwine around the tree’s center and grapes drape in scant bunches.

Nowadays most people consume cultivated grapes like those grown in the surrounding wine country, leaving the smaller wild grapes for wildlife. In this case that might mostly be the gangs of introduced starlings which provide a year-round soundtrack while I wait for my ride. Farther afield plenty of birds and mammals will relish these sweet treats, like a gray catbird I watched picking and choosing among grapes hanging in a tree near my work. Unlike your average human consumer, these wild consumers will then scatter the seeds about with a little fertilizer.

Lately when we go out, we run over the baseball-sized fruit of a black walnut which litters the end of the driveway. The flattened and blackened remains don’t stay on the gravel long, and sometimes we see squirrels carrying them away. If we didn’t have commerce to rely on, the nuts from black walnuts and hickories would be a better target for foraging than greens or fruit. Unlike the sugary grapes, nuts are full of fat and protein and store a lot longer. These traits appeal to the squirrels and jays as well as humans.

Acorns are a traditional food source which is less appealing to modern human foragers. This year we’ve had a large crop. Acorns lie everywhere, alternately brown, tan, burnished red or streaked with different colors. Caps lie askew, empty of their nuts. Some acorns are excavated, leaving shells empty of meat. On a walk I picked up two green acorns with orange rings where the cap had been. I could see the appeal of harvesting large quantities for flour, despite the need for long soakings or boilings to get rid of tannins. They felt waxy and cool in my palm with a satisfying heft that would quickly reward a forager. Although they might already harbor weevil or moth eggs whose occupants would soon hollow out their insides. We most notice vertebrate herbivores, but often arthropods and fungi are more destructive from a plant’s point of view.

Views of our acorn crop:







My mother-in-law often recites “Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.” It’s true that an oak tree grows from something comparatively tiny. If you consider the massive quantities of acorns produced versus the small amount which ever take root, each mighty oak can be seen as the result of a mighty effort.

Trees blaze red or orange and light up the landscape. Asters grace golden fields with dashes of royal purple. Woodland asters are mostly white, but leaves and goldenrods cast an autumnal glow.



Leaves come down in shimmering displays, or drop noisily when the air is calm. This morning I took the dogs for their wood walk among dancing branches. When we reached the dry creek bed it was a mosaic of yellow and orange leaves instead of bare stones.



Yesterday I was out in the woods wearing the baby in a carrier. I looked up and discovered little yellow streamers adorning a shrub no taller than myself. A witch hazel was blooming, if such a grandiose term could be used for such pale, haphazard flowers. I’ve wanted to see this for two years and now I realized why I’d overlooked them. The leaves they shared branches with were more striking. I had pictured something similar to spring-flowering shrubs, like serviceberry which blooms white against a leafless forest.



The more I looked around, though, the more witch hazel I noticed. The flowers became little treasures which rewarded my closer looks. An understated pleasure in a flamboyant season.

Leaves aren’t the only things turning. Male goldfinches look tattered with pale green showing through the gold. Warblers dart among winter residents in cryptic fall plumage, no longer singing boastful songs.

This is a time of metamorphosis. Alchemy weaves through the fabric of life. Forms change and colors shift. But modern technological societies regulate this alchemy. Birth and death, the most personal changes of all, are supposed to occur in hospitals out of sight. Smaller transformations take place in factories, laboratories, and giant farms. Much of the time people manipulate virtual objects, or at least human generated ones, rather than create from scratch.

So I try to dabble with natural forces. I cook and bake with whole ingredients. Soon we’ll fire up the woodstove, our only method of heating the house aside from leaving the oven open after the bread comes out. If there is a more human activity than taming fire, we have yet to find the archaeological evidence for it. Even using matches, we need to coax the flames as they grow and shrink along their path from newspapers to sticks to hunks of (hopefully) dry and cracked wood. I love our cast iron poker, which is simply yet ingeniously designed with a pointy end and hook that facilitate pulling and prodding logs into place.

The most important thing about working with natural forces is that the result is collaboration. We adapt our expectations and keep our mind nimble. The garden this time of year is a good illustration. Some plants never sprouted, or like the beans were grazed by slugs and rabbits until they grew stunted. Cabbage planted too late in the spring is making heads in the fall weather behind a backdrop of goldenrods.

Where are they now?

Above and to the left of the leaf bud are the pieces of the brown fruit heads of a skunk cabbage.


Hepatica leaves.


Wild leek seed head.


Berries of a false solomon's seal ripening. Unlike the skunk cabbage fruit, these are calling attention to themselves to attract seed dispersers.

I’ve been going in the woods while wearing the baby in a sling. Sometimes she sleeps, but other times she soaks it all in. Leaves are especially fascinating. Her motor skills are continuously developing so that soon we’ll have to stop her from stuffing the closer ones into her mouth. Most forest leaves are probably just inedible. Some pack nasty surprises specifically designed for mammal browsers.

Like the single baneberry I came across on a random woods walk. It was a surreal addition to a familiar background with its fruit shaped like eyeballs on red stalks. The name comes from the fact that it’s a bane to those who sample its berries, thanks to some cardiac glucosides found in all parts of the plant. Birds and some mice, however, are immune. This is the sort of discovery I want to share with our daughter. The way the forest can be experienced in different scales and layers. I like to observe intersections of multiple histories, including both “natural” and “human.”

I love old, evocative names for plants which were obviously applied by those who paid more attention to such things than most people nowadays. These names can be based on incorrect assumptions. Take the spring flower hepatica, whose liver-shaped leaves are scattered in clumps throughout the forest where they will be green all winter before being discarded. Despite the origin of the name, this plant is not at all effective at curing liver disorders (hepat- = liver). The boneset scattered along the driveway with its strong, fused leaves adds possible liver toxicity to its lack of demonstrated effectiveness against “bone-break fever.”

A related plant, white snakeroot, is definitely toxic. I can’t find studies of its use against snakebites, but it’s infamous for spreading deadly “milk sickness” among early European settlers. Cows grazed in woodland when pasture was unproductive or unavailable would eat snakeroot and their milk would become contaminated with a toxin if they lived. Cows always seem to be eating something toxic in the annals of poisonous plants. The story of milk sickness felt much less distant when I came across this bit of the past growing on our land. White snakeroot seems particularly lush where the stream crosses the ghost of a boundary road.



But not all the stories I want to show our daughter involve humans. Nor are all the interactions in the forest antagonistic. Species can compete with, cooperate with, exploit, avoid, or even ignore each other. Interactions spread out and converge. This snag has fed fungi and insects. Woodpeckers have pockmarked the surface to find the insects, creating holes which spiders use as they weave webs to catch more insects. Poison ivy climbs up to replace the leaves which once belonged to the live tree. Poison ivy flowers cooperate to be pollinated by insects and the seeds are spread by hungry birds.

Sometimes these stories are easy to read, other times they play out over long time periods, or below the soil surface. Cooperation may not be readily apparent, like the trans-kingdom, more or less equal partnerships of fungi and algae or cyanobacteria which make up the lichens tinging many tree trunks or rocks green in our forest. In the soil, mycorrhizal fungi partner with plant roots, increasing their access to nutrients and water in exchange for carbohydrates manufactured by the plants. Little, ghostly Indian pipes actually parasitize these fungi, not the plant roots, to make up for their lack of chlorophyll.



But that’s not the first thing I think of when I stumble across a random cluster of Indian pipes in the forest. There’s the joy of discovery and recognition. I feel a connection, however brief. I want to share with my daughter a love of life and delight in all its variety. Whatever I share, she’ll find her own way.

Two days ago I borrowed a truck to haul two cords of wood home. Burning wood can be hard for me – I get so much from living trees and the act of burning anything puts various particles into the air. Fortunately our local supplier mostly cuts trees that are already slated for removal. The wood isn’t moved very far, so theoretically we’re not helping disease causing organisms spread far and wide. Some pieces were gutted with tunnels from before the wood was cut. I tried to avoid the various beetles, pill bugs, and spiders, but one spider hitchhiked on my shirt until my partner noticed the quarter-sized spread of legs and freaked out. I’m sorry to say that it was killed in the confusion.

We’re all preparing for winter. The yard was littered with brown leaves as the trees begin to shed their photosynthetic apparatus. Clouds and brisk air added to the autumnal feel. Summer and fall have been playing tug of war with the weather. Last week I stepped out of work into a steamy, oppressive haze. The landscape blushed orange, yellow and pink. Many trees had sparse canopies of brittle leaves, and goldenrod leaves had collapsed in on the stems to conserve water.

I walked into the dappled shade of the forest, where the air was warm but comfortable. The last bout of cool weather also brought our precipitation back to normal. In the rain soaked aftermath, the mulch paths smelled of damp earth and mushrooms. Now mushroom patches erupted along sections of the trail. Individuals crowded against each other, turning round caps into many-sided polygons. Patch color ranged from white to smoke-tinged. Some were sacks of brown spores which puff into the air when disturbed.

I walked across the boardwalk that passes over wetlands. Frogs announced their presence with shrieks as they flung themselves into the dredges of water clinging to depressions. The thick prehistoric undergrowth of ferns was tinged yellow, and some edges were burned brown. Before returning to work I passed through a younger section of forest with a more open canopy. The temperature rose noticeably. Sensitive ferns lay withered along the trail, not even waiting for the frost which their name refers to. Much of summer’s glory is conquered by her own excesses long before winter closes in.

Summer's empire falling down

Joe-pye weeds losing their wispy appearance.


Cattails bursting into fluff.


Goldenrods preparing to open.

Autumn encounters

Recently I walked into the forest during a pause in the insect buzz. Wind rustled among branches, a thin layer of leaves crunched underfoot, and, like in every other woods I’ve been in lately, a pewee was singing. I moved through one area where the brown structures of blue cohosh lay about in various states of collapse, sometimes topped with brilliant blue berries. Some poison ivy leaves were beginning to turn yellow.

I came upon a juvenile great horned owl screeching amid a chorus of chickadee chips. Perhaps because they’re used to the safety of a flock, chickadees are the self-appointed harassers of raptors. The irritated owl puffed up and shook before flapping to another perch, which excited the chickadees to chip faster and call “chickadee-dee-dee” in alarm. From the new branch, the owl turned its head backwards, seeming to contemplate whether I was also following it, and then scanned the other direction before flying out of sight. An oriole rattled from a different tree, where two of them graced the canopy with a splash of tropical color. As they flew off one sang the song that had been a familiar refrain in the yard earlier in the summer.



Mushrooms are surprisingly scarce, perhaps due to our water deficit. A few hide in the shadow of logs, or in other out of the way places. More striking are all the funnel webs propped against trees and leading down into crevices. Their makers were present earlier in the season, although the spiders’ creations were less noticeable then. In contrast, a new generation of carpenter bees is emerging, sort of a second installment for the year. Our dog Ivy scratched at the base of an old stump which may have had a tunnel, because when she left a couple of carpenter bees trundled out to investigate the damage while a third flew a low perimeter.



The one thing disturbing my peace was wariness towards a different stinging insect. I came across several solitary yellow jackets moving low to the ground, which made me anxiously glance around for more that might indicate a ground nest. When I used to work in field biology, this was the time of year we would manage to disturb a few nests. No one would notice until several yellow jackets were in place to attack with coordinated stinging. Like the hornets, the various species called yellow jackets grow their colonies from a single founder to hundreds of individuals over the course of the warm season. In a few months most will be dead, survived only by the new queens. It’s a sacrifice to the harshness of a northern winter, like the loss of the leaves in the canopy, or the above ground matter of perennial flowers.

Bald-faced hornet nest

Other animals don’t see the world as we do. I don’t know when a hornet queen decided that this old satellite dish, trash to us, was a suitable nest site. Probably soon after emerging from her winter slumber, although it was a while before we noticed that the dish was gaining grey matter. By then it was a bustling colony. Black hornets with pale yellow markings passed in and out the entrance hole. Their bodies decorated the structure as they added paper to the advancing edges of the outermost layers. It was a little intimidating to walk underneath the basketball-sized nest on our way to my mother-in-law’s house, but they were far enough from the house to consider them part of the natural world which I leave alone.

Then one night a massive insect buzzed among the usual assortment of moths attracted to the porch light. I later found out that the hornets sometimes forage by the light of the full moon. We started to keep the porch light off, not a bad idea for reducing light pollution anyways, but the last straw was when one of them followed my partner inside. She and the baby waited in the dark while I trapped the hornet under a glass. We agreed the nest should go.

Luckily a local grad student was looking for bald-faced hornets to observe. He agreed to remove our nest. The day arrived and he and his assistant came dressed in beekeeping gear and bearing butterfly nets. They set up the ladder. The once peaceful hornets came in an angry, swirling cloud while Ivy barked through the window at the humans on her territory without an escort. The researcher swung his net back and forth among the cloud until the tail was filled with a mass of caught hornets. These went in jars, which went in a cooler. Eventually enough of the defenders were captured that the researcher was able to cut away and bag the nest.



The satellite dish, which had once satisfied a certain hornet aesthetic for a building site, was now a scene of devastation. A handful of stragglers inspected the scraps of paper still clinging to the dish, having lost their purpose in life. Right or wrong, our way of looking at the world usually prevails nowadays.

The growing season, like the dormant season, persists so long that I begin to take it for granted. Then early goldenrods begin to bloom, heralding the approach of fall. I worry that I haven’t enjoyed summer to its fullest. As I walk through green woods filled with insect and amphibian sounds, an eastern wood pewee sings a lonely song. The forest isn’t empty, but many other birds have abandoned breeding behavior and even breeding territories.

I know I’m just objecting to the way time marches forward and every other being insists on living its life while I’m preoccupied by mine. Summer is still here. We have plenty of domesticated pleasures to indulge in like zucchinis, tomatoes, and blueberries ripe for picking. Cardinal flowers beckon just beyond where woods meet lawn. Dragonflies hover over remnants of the stream, disturbing the water with their wingbeats. Lush stands of poison ivy whisper “mindfulness” against my boots.


Maidenhair ferns


Cardinal flower


Skunk cabbage disintegrating

Even in his summer coat, Bear is a furry dog. Plant parts regularly stick to him, such as raspberry canes that drag along on the ground, or sticky leaves that mat his fur. Lately whenever we walk in the woods, Bear becomes festooned with little green burrs. His hitchhikers come from robust burdocks, unassuming enchanter’s nightshade, and several other plants currently unknown to me. The stalks with their dried burrs lie in wait all through the year for their more mobile neighbors to brush by.


Enchanter's nightshade

Not that plants are as motionless as they appear. Their movements may even occur over the course of a day. Many of our early spring flowers open in bright light, thwarting my attempts to photograph them. Other movements, though slower because they are a result of plant growth, actually move the plant along the ground. Wild strawberries and poison ivy send runners into the driveway, anchoring into the ground and growing leaves until we drive the ends into the mud.

Other than champion growers like kudzu, most plants need help to actually colonize new areas. Some plants harness wind and water, but many exploit animals. Hitchhikers can be tenacious, and I often end walks picking little sticky balls out of the folds of cloth they’ve knit in my shirt. Other plants use edible fruits to bribe their transporters, sometimes with a convenient laxative effect on the consumer providing the seeds with natural fertilizer.

The most successful strategy of the last several millennia has been to exploit one specific animal, Homo sapiens. For this relationship, the attractive characteristic does not have to be in the fruit or seed. Plant strategies that run the gamut from poisoning leaf grazers to attracting fruit foragers can entice humans to carefully save a plant’s seed and tend to each new generation. Early colonists to the Americas brought a medicine’s cabinet worth of species, some used very effectively while the use of others was perhaps counterproductive. They also brought a diversity of food plants greater than that found in most contemporary gardens. Many of the hardier (i.e. easier to grow) plants escaped cultivation, and coincidentally fell out of general favor. For example, chicory, queen anne’s lace, plantain, burdock… all were purposefully planted in the new world, and now flourish in the edges of our lawn. A dog may be able to carry burdock for miles, but humans brought it across oceans.


Burdock

The soundtrack of summer is heavy with insects. Male crickets and katydids play long, repetitive concerts in the forest. Busy pollinators bring fields to life with the buzzing of their work, similar to the hum of offices except that it directly creates food and new generations. New generations of office equipment require new resources and make the obsolete equipment into waste.

Forests and fields make plenty of waste, it just gets put to use. Excrement and dead organisms enrich the soil. Compost is a human adaptation of a very old process. Like a wild sourdough, the trick to a good compost pile is to create a hospitable environment and allow the ubiquitous agents of decay to populate it.

This evening I walked out to our bin in the hot, steamy air which is much more conducive to decomposition than outdoor recreation. The pile smelled more earthy than putrid until I disturbed the surface with a pitchfork. Almost all the kitchen scraps which had spent the week in the pile had lost their identity. Straw-colored stalks and matted leaves clung to form, but dark clumps of nearly finished compost filled in the gaps. Lush green potato plants grew up the sides of the bin, satisfied with the state of decomposition.

Unfortunately we’ve been more focused on the baby than our kitchen, especially during the long labor when food was left all around the house. It’s not that nature abhors a vacuum so much as that a vacuum represents an opportunity, and when we exclude most scavengers but have plenty of food around, there’s an open niche for what can get through. Which in this case was an invasion of tiny ants. They’ll disappear when the counters are clean, only to form long lines for foraging when banana peels take too long to make it to the compost.

Our society is rather fastidious, perhaps too fastidious considering all the power humans exert over our environment. We spent last week at my parents’ house along the River Between Two Countries. A dead carp had washed up on their beach and emitted an aroma of fishy decay that hung about their lawn. We weren’t the only ones to notice the smell. As we discussed whether to push the carcass out into the water and let it wash up on someone else’s shore, a large bird swooped low past the house. We crept out to startle several turkey vultures off the bleached body. Thus began a regular stream of vulture, crow, and even gull visitors. All of them busy cleaning the beach while trying to stay out of our sight.

The other day I wandered into the forest without the dogs, a nice break from the task-oriented world of early parenting. The exuberant green of early summer had given way, under an onslaught of insects and summer weather, to a more matured visage. The vegetation frayed at the edges, and even the once robust umbrellas of mayapples staggered about in tatters.

The brittle soil waits for the rain that never seems enough when it comes. For the previous two years we lived here, frogs reproduced in pools created by the spring rains. By this May, these vernal pools had become thick masses of black mud that pulled at my boots. The dark liquor on top was no hospitable environment for masses of jellied eggs, or darting tadpoles. Wood frogs which rely on these ephemeral bodies of water had to breed elsewhere, and hopefully not across too much inhospitable territory in this fragmented landscape. According to AmphibiaWeb, the average wood frog only has 3 or 4 years to reproduce before death. Some amphibians managed to breed, judging by all the tiny frogs and toads that have been crossing our paths.

Babies abound in the woods. Ruffed grouse chicks meander across the driveway. Miniature rabbits infiltrated my garden, to the detriment of my beans. The wetlands where I work are very productive. Young muskrats graze on strips of lawn, only bothering to move away when I lean in for a closer look. I suppose they’ve had no opportunity to learn the dangers of man, though considering my coworkers there’s not much danger for them to discover. Other wildlife takes a dimmer view to our presence. As I walk the trails, the hiss of crossing guards halts my progress – Canadian geese escorting their gray goslings from one pond to another.

Raising young is time consuming, which is why the vast majority of organisms don’t bother. They compensate by creating vast numbers of offspring which the world will winnow out. Most of the mass of frog eggs won’t make it to a reproductively mature adult, though wood frogs are a common species. Even with parental support, many song birds don’t make it to reproductive age. Migrants have come here specifically to breed but they face many obstacles. Back in June I watched the phoebes catching bugs at a frenzied pace to bring to a changeling. A brown headed cowbird had laid an egg in their nest which grew to a burly chick that bullied its nest-mates. As I watched, the nestling opened its wings angrily, knocking its adopted parent off to find yet more food. Fortunately, phoebes arrive so early that they can often renest, and the young fledglings from this second brood are still hanging around the house. Despite all the challenges, parenting succeeds often enough that we’re all here.

Berries of summer

Blue cohosh, developing its color.


Raspberries growing in the bits of sun along the driveway.


Jack-in-the-pulpit berries emerging from the remains of the flower.


A fertile frond of a sensitive fern. These structures dry and stick out from the snow all winter.