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