By the time I had a chance to photograph the hawthorn berries this year, they were a bit past their prime. You can see some of my photos of the hawthorn tree from last year.
My main goal for this year was to get a shot of the thorns. Do you see the sharp thorns?
For more nature notes or signs of the season, visit Rambling Woods:
Most all the leaves are now brown. Above is a multi-colored branch from East Jersey Olde Towne in Piscataway, taken two weeks ago.
My oak hydrangea (photographed last week) is even redder than it was a few weeks ago. What color.
For more photos with red, visit Ruby Tuesday:
Here’s a leaf of my bald cypress, photo taken this November.
The same bald cypress tree was photographed in July, with a gray catbird enjoying the branches.
My oak leaf hydrangea is almost all red.
It was much greener in October.
One neighbor’s tall maple was displaying yellow leaves in October.
Here’s the same tree, back in January 2009. I looked an hour ago, and the tree is almost bare again, soon to look as it did in January.
For more Nature Notes or Signs of the Times, visit Rambling Woods.
Is this azalea confused? Doesn’t it know it’s fall, not spring?
Just in time for cold autumn weather, we have one vibrant nasturtium flower. Our groundhogs ate our nasturtium in July, so we did not have the pleasure of nasturtium in salad this past summer. But we caught two ground hogs mid-summer and set in them loose in Johnson Park; we also installed two molar pest repellers, which seem to have discouraged more nasturtium-eaters from our garden. So by late August the flowers grew back, but not in time for a bountiful summer crop.
Happy are the sedum in my garden!
Here is information from Michelle, our Nature Notes host, about fall foliage:
The major factor influencing autumn leaf color change is the lack of water. Not a lack of water to the entire tree, but a purposeful weaning of water from each leaf. Lack of water to each leaf causes a very important chemical reaction to stop.
Photosynthesis, or the food-producing combination of sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, is eliminated. Chlorophyll must be renewed (by photosynthesis) or be taken in by the tree along with photosynthetic sugar. Thus chlorophyll disappears from the leaves.
The variation in foliage — the shades of red, purple, bronze, yellow and orange — is all about pigment and what type each tree carries.
Carotene (the pigment found in carrots and corn) causes maples, birches, and poplars to turn yellow.
The brilliant reds and oranges in this fall landscape are due to anthocyanins.
Tannins give the oak a distinctively brown color.
The best colors show up when we have cool nights, bright sunny days and low humidity.
My neighbor’s burning bush: I get such a kick out of the name of this plant.
For more nature notes, visit:
Nothing marks early fall more than my maroon chrysanthemum in bloom.
I played detective to determine what kind of tree this is that grows in my neighbor’s front yard. I had photographed it last June when it had all those white floppy petals. Now it has these orange hanging balls.
I typed “white flowers petals orange balls” and “big petals white flowers tree” into Google. That second search brought me to a forum of plant identification, and someone suggested “cornus kousa.” The rest was easy; I put that phrase in Google images, and up came both my petals and my orange bally “fruit.”
To learn what is going on in nature in other neighborhoods, visit Rambling Woods:
This is probably a greater black-backed gull. Thursday Challenge theme is FLIGHT (Birds, Insects, Kites, Helicopters, Jets, Boomerang,…). Nature Notes is brought to us by Michelle of Rambling Woods. I didn’t include the nature note button this week because the colors conflicted with the photo and upset the mood.
We visited the Cape May Migratory Bird Refuge this morning. My kids basically rushed through the whole trail walk, eager to be finish what their mom looked forward to viewing the most on our little vacation. But at least they were good sports about it. I would have enjoyed having you, my blog readers, there, so you could help me with photography tips and identifying the birds and the flowers. And just generally enjoying looking. Lots of beautiful scenery.
So, please raise your hand if you know what kind of butterfly this is. Please raise it even higher if you can name the pretty purple wildflower (to me it looks like purple ageratum). Stomp your feet on the ground if you like looking for butterflies. Or photographing wildflowers.
For more Nature Notes, please visit:
And now for a bit of Lewis Carroll (whole poem is here):
The sparrows on my block are quite a joy, both in sight and in sound.
A critter I do not love: my daughter and her friend said this was a beaver, but I believe it is a groundhog. We still have one living in our backyard. I installed a “solar pest repeller” (I’ll have to take a picture of the this gadget), but yesterday I discovered my marigolds had been newly chomped despite the new repeller. Next step is a havahart trap, in which we trap it, and my husband promises to drop it off at Johnson Park on his way to work. New meaning to carpooling?
Echnicacea, rudbeckia (those are in front of my home), and white hydrangea are in bloom on my block, all in front of different homes.
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My block is full of beautiful summer flowers: these echinacea are in the front of my neighbor’s house (two doors down), and the yellow “splotches” you see in the photo are the many rudbeckia (black-eyed susans) blooming in front of my home. I had echinacea growing in my backyard, but they were chewed up, either by deer or by our resident ground hog. Yesterday morning I yelled “get out of here” at the ground hog. I just bought a solar mole chaser. We might buy a love trap. My neighbor down the block caught 11 last year. What can I say, the ground hogs love living in Highland Park.
For more Summer Stock Sunday posts, visit Robin at Around the Island.
Call me impulsive. Or a creative gardener. A risk-taking lawn owner?
I’m sick of grass. I don’t much care for weeds, either. So I pulled up some of my grass in early spring and planted some chamomile seeds on my front lawn. The seeds took a while to germinate, and now I have these pretty, leafy green plants (pictured on right side of photo, under the rudbeckia leaves), but no chamomile flowers yet. While playing with my daughter in the front I pulled up some more weeds. After a while, I had more space to plant in front. My intention was to plant flowers, ideally perennials that would grow back each year. I put in a few, such as creeping phlox, speedwell and Mexican primrose (at left in photo). But there was still room for more. If you recall from an earlier post, I had planted a lot of basil seeds. So I had a lot of basil plants. Since the groundhog or the deer had eaten my dill and chomped at my marigolds and nasturtium in the backyard, I thought my front lawn might be a safer place for my basil. I now have little basil plants in both my backyard and the front yard. And some parsley, too. A few oregano seedlings.
What’s going on naturally where you are? Visit Michelle’s Nature Notes:
