What’s Up Today

Posted on 11/07/2021 by chick
  • I despise DST, but I have to admit that the time change worked in my favor today. I had slept late this morning. Then I set the clock back by an hour, and suddenly it was as if I’d gotten up at exactly the right time.
  • I will be going out later today, first to the library to drop off and pick up books, then to J.C. Penney to grab the items that I ordered online, and then to BJs and/or Stop & Shop to buy some miscellaneous groceries. Before leaving, I should clean out the fridge, make a shopping list, and do some laundry. At some point today I also need to read the research that I printed out for work, so that I’ll be ready to write the blurb that I really don’t want to write but have to (ugh–writing those things is the part of my job that I dislike the most). I’d also like to take a walk in the woods today, if I can find the time for it.
  • Have I mentioned how posh the front door of my house is looking these days? My husband recently repainted it. It used to be red, and now it’s black. Far from paying homage to the Rolling Stones, we were never happy with the old shade of red. The new black matches the window shutters, and it helps to distinguish our house from the neighbor’s (she recently painted her door red). Our new family joke is that black doors are “posh doors.” Now, whenever we see a black door, we say, “Oooh, that’s a posh door.” To make our posh door even more posh, we wanted to add a brass hook on which to hang a wreath. As it turns out, nobody wants to sell me the perfect hook for wreath hanging. All I could find were plastic stick-on hooks and those over-the-door hooks, neither of which we wanted. So yesterday I ordered a brass doorknocker to use as a wreath hanger. It’s shaped like a dragonfly. I hope it will work out, because I spent a pretty penny on it and, since it’s shipping from the UK, I won’t be able to return it. Fingers crossed. May the Posh be with us.
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Saturday Thoughts

Posted on 11/06/2021 by chick
  • There’s a salamander living under our toilet. At least there was. My husband took the old toilet out so that he could put the new one in, and underneath it he found a salamander. Creepy, but sort of cool, too. Our lucky toilet salamander. Not everyone has one of those. We are special.
  • I begged my husband to end my misery and upgrade our Hulu to the ad-free version. The ads were so incredibly repetitive that they were driving me mad. Finally he fixed it and, as part of the deal, he got us a subscription to Disney+. Now I have far more television than I can or should watch. The Disney stuff is overwhelming, because there’s so much of it that I haven’t seen yet. I started slowly, with one episode of The Mandalorian, which was surprisingly good, and one episode of Loki, which was surprisingly meh.
  • Marshall has been wearing shorts every day even though it’s fall. For weeks I’ve been trying to convince him that it’s time to switch to pants. The temperature had been hovering just above freezing in the morning, but still he wanted to wear shorts. Thursday, though, it was literally below freezing, so I forced him to go upstairs and change into pants before leaving for school. I totally get that he’s a boy and made out of radioactive materials. He doesn’t feel the cold the way I do. And because he’s over twelve years old, I’m willing to let him make his own mistakes and suffer some consequences, especially minor consequences, such as feeling cold. But on Friday he made a big stink about switching to pants, so I told him that I’m going to take all of his shorts away come next Monday. If that’s what it takes, so be it. Mama gotta draw a line, and the line is 32 degrees Fahrenheit.
  • The foliage has been very pretty. There are still enough leaves on the maples to provide some color as the oaks get started on their big change. TBH, it’s not the best foliage year, because something caused the maple leaves to turn spotty before they changed color, but it’s so much better than previous years, when the trees had been stripped by insects. Today, as Marshall and I walked on the driveway, we picked up leaves to be contenders in the Prettiest Leaf of the Forest Competition. I feel certain that we have a winner. I’m just not sure which one it is. Maybe all of them.
  • As I’m writing this post, my husband and daughter are out. Livia is getting her first Covid vaccine today (woo-hoo!). They will be bringing home dinner with them. I can’t wait to see my girl and give her a hug for being brave and getting her shot. I’m also looking forward to dinner, and I hope they get back soon.
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Thoughts on Halloween

Posted on 11/05/2021 by chick
  • We took the kids trick-or-treating on Halloween. As an outdoor activity, it seemed safe enough Covid-wise. Marshall wore a taco costume, and Livia dressed as a wolf. It was a relatively subdued night compared to previous years. There were fewer kids and fewer people handing out candy, which wasn’t surprising given the circumstances. Everyone was maskless (sort of ironic, given that it was Halloween) and a couple of times I sensed an undercurrent of feeling from other people, as if we were all in the same group, a group that doesn’t believe in the Pandemic or in wearing masks. Except I’m not in that group, and I don’t want to be in that group or even associated with it. That was a tiny source of irritation on an otherwise pleasant evening.
  • My brother-in-law pointed out that more people decorate lavishly for Halloween than did when we were kids, but that fewer hand out candy. My husband and I agreed. That does seem to be a trend, one that began long before Covid. Trick-or-treating has been dwindling in popularity over the years, and Mischief Night has disappeared entirely. As for the decorations, they’re mostly cheap plastic garbage, which is sad. At this time of year, we’re supposed to honor the natural world, not the junk destroying it.
  • My fingernails are painted black, a leftover from the holiday. I don’t often paint my nails, so I’ve been enjoying the novelty. Livia’s nails are even more Halloweeny than mine. The day before Halloween she decided to do jack-o’-lantern designs on her nails, but they turned into a mess, because she hasn’t mastered the thin coats required for layering or the patience to wait while they dry. Fortunately, I had some patience handy that day, so I removed the polish, repainted the base coats, then blow-dried them until they were set. I haven’t really mastered these skills either, but I did my best. It took a while, but it was bonding time for us and therefore well spent.
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Ramblings

Posted on 11/03/2021 by chick
  • A whole month elapsed between the time I took the first photo of beechdrops (9/26) and the last photo (10/28). If you’d asked me how long it was, I would have said maybe two weeks. I only seem to understand time on the small scale–minutes, hours, and days. I sense the steady tick-tock of minutes, the light of the day brightening and dimming, the temperature rising and falling. On this scale time is knowable. On the larger scale–weeks, months, years, decades–I am lost. It was just summer, and now it is fall. The children were just toddlers, and now they are nearly teenagers. I just started my job, and now I’m a 25-year veteran. It’s confusing. Perhaps this is why I like to focus on small things such as wildflowers. Flowers are to Nature as minutes are to Time.
  • While researching beechdrops, I found this blog post from the New York Botanical Garden that talks about pyrola, which turns out to have a parasitic evil twin. It says, “American wintergreen (Pyrola americana) is seen most often in its autotrophic variety, a sun-loving plant with amiable green leaves and shy flowers blooming in pinks or creams; the Cherokee would sometimes place the leaves on cuts to aid healing. But on the other side of the coin is a darker variety of wintergreen, chlorophyll-free and boasting red leaves, if any at all. And as a myco-heterotroph, it can only grow when parasitically attached to another organism…; in this case, ‘myco’ refers to its sweet tooth for feeding on underground fungi, the same mycorrhizal fungus that forms a symbiotic relationship with trees…. Pyrola is one of only a few plant groups to produce species in both autotrophic and parasitic varieties, something that pushes the evolutionary envelope as we currently know it.” Is that cool or what?
  • When I looked up more information about the purple mushrooms that I spotted in the woods recently, my search string brought up articles mentioning that the spotted lanternfly had been found in Rhode Island. It was only one individual insect, but where there is one there are likely more. I refuse to think too much about it, though. I’m already sad enough seeing the damage that the winter and gypsy moths have done and anticipating the damage that the emerald ash borer will do. The spotted lanternfly is just too much for me.
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Fall Sun-Catcher

Posted on 11/02/2021 by chick
Sun-Catching Grass
Nature Trail 10/18/2017
At the Scenic Overlook
10/21/2021
Seeds Against Sky
10/21/2021

This is a plant that I’ve found at all of the rocky clearings in the woods, as well as the meadowy area near the power-line corridor. I’ve identified it as little bluestem, a native grass. “Little bluestem” seems almost like a misnomer for such a tall, red-toned grass, but during the spring and summer, it’s smaller and bluer. Or so I’m told. Honestly, I never notice it until the fall, when it suddenly reaches up to capture the sun with its coppery stems and feathery seeds. Because it’s so attractive in the fall, little bluestem is often used as an ornamental, and there are many cultivars available. It’s also low-maintenance, drought-resistant, and has a deep root system, making it a good plant for erosion control. Best of all, it’s a source of food and shelter for birds, insects, and other woodland creatures. Little bluestem is an all-around winner.

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A Plant for Halloween

Posted on 10/31/2021 by chick

Halloween deserves a creepy plant, and I have just the one.

Creepy Plant Budding
9/26/2021
Closeup of the Buds
Creepy Plant Flowering
10/6/2021
Closeup of the Flowers
Creepy Plant Seeding in the Company of a Large Fungus 10/28/2021
In the background of this picture you can see the smooth, silvery bark of beech trees, a hint at the identity of this plant.

This plant is called beechdrops. I’m not the only person to think that it looks creepy. As the writer at one wildflower website put it, “From a distance, this plant looks like it is dead, even when it is in bloom, resembling an elongated skeletal hand that has poked up from the ground.” I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but the plant does look eerie both in the skeletal whiteness of its youth and the gangly brownness of its old age.

But beechdrops doesn’t just look creepy, it is creepy. It’s a parasite. Like a ghostly leech, it survives by sucking energy from its host plant, the American beech. This parasitic relationship is referenced in the flower’s scientific name, Epifagus virginiana (“epifagus” means “upon beech”). The beechdrops plant taps into the tree’s roots using a structure called a haustorium. This doesn’t hurt the host beech, though. According to Wikipedia, beechdrops is actually an indicator of forest health (“the lack of its presence is a sign that forest health is declining”). I would say that forest health is declining here, but not enough to have scared the creepy plant away, and I’ll take that as a win.

What else is interesting to know about beechdrops? Like Indian pipe and pinesap (a.k.a. false beechdrops) this plant has no chlorophyll, which explains its coloring. Like several of the other plants I’ve investigated, including violets, jewelweed, and Venus’s looking glass, beechdrops has both regular and cleistogamous (self-pollinating) flowers. It’s pollinated by winter ants, and its seeds are dispersed by rain.

Beechdrops is a plant that’s easy to overlook, because it tends to blend in with the background. Let it be a reminder to us to stop every now and again along our way and take a closer look at the things around us. We might be surprised at what we find. Today is Halloween, and who knows what other creepy things we might see if we really look…

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Autumn’s Pinks and Purples

Posted on 10/30/2021 by chick
Pink Leafhopper
Insect identification is not my bag, but I think there’s a good chance that this pink cutie is Gyponana gladia. It has the right appearance, and I found it at the right time of year (September-November) and in the right kind of place (near hardwood forest). But, right or wrong, the scientific name is a mouthful, so let’s just call this bug a “pink leafhopper.”
Pink Leaves
I love bright fall colors–flaming yellows and rampant reds–but this subdued pink is lovely, too.
Autumn-Purpled Beggar-Ticks
This newcomer to my yard looks much like a plant I spotted along the nature trail back in 2019. Bidens frondosa (devil’s beggar-ticks) seemed like a good guess at that particular plant’s identity, and it seems like an equally good guess for this one.
Purple Mushrooms
The year 2021 might not have been great for some things, but it has certainly been a good year for fungus. The kids and I went hiking a few weeks ago and there were mushrooms everywhere. Mushroom identification is another thing I have no expertise in, and there are quite a few more purple mushrooms than I would have thought, but my best guess is Cortinarius iodes.
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Charmer

Posted on 10/26/2021 by chick

It’s a good thing I was hunting so carefully for interesting things in the woods last week or I might have walked right past this charming wildflower.

Charming Wildflower
Closeup of the Flowers
More Flowers
Look at those long seed pods!
The foliage is eye-catching, like a giant, green snowflake.

Isn’t this plant lovely? My field guide calls it “tall cordyalis,” but many sources refer to it as “rock harlequin,” including this webpage. I like that name better, so rock harlequin it is. My field guide says that rock harlequin’s habitat is rocky clearings, and that’s consistent with the two places that I found it growing (in all but one of the pictures above you can see rock behind or under the plant). I found quite a few of these plants once I starting looking specifically for them. Most weren’t in bloom, perhaps because rock harlequin doesn’t bloom until its second summer. Also, the bloom time is supposed to be April-September, but it’s late October now, so maybe these particular specimens were just outliers. The flowers, though beautiful and brightly-colored, are small, so the leaves are in their own way more of an attention-grabber. But, whichever part of it makes you take a closer look, you’ll be glad that you did.

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An Abundance of Wildflowers

Posted on 10/25/2021 by chick

It’s usually difficult to identify wildflowers when they aren’t in bloom, but sometimes they have such distinctive foliage that you can figure out what they are, even if you’ve never seen their flowers. Such was the case with the round-leaved pyrola that I found growing near my driveway and wrote about earlier this year. The appearance of its leaves (shape, markings, and texture) was enough for me to feel confident in identifying it. When the plant finally bloomed, it looked exactly as expected. If I was wrong about what it was, I was not far wrong. It was definitely a type of pyrola. I had promised that I would post a picture of it in bloom, and here it is.

Round-Leaved Pyrola in Bloom
6/20/2021

Spotted wintergreen is another plant that I identified without seeing its flowers. I have since seen in blooming, at night!

Spotted Wintergreen in Bloom
7/5/2021

Round-leaved pyrola and spotted wintergreen are similar. They enjoy the same growing conditions, and even sometimes grow together.

Spotted Wintergreen and Round-Leaved Pyrola Growing Together
10/6/2021

But there is yet another plant that grows in the same area and that has dark green foliage marked with lighter veins.

Another Plant With Distinctive Leaves
10/6/2021
Browning Flower Stalk
10/6/2021

The foliage and flower stalk are distinctive enough for me to feel safe making a guess about the identity of this plant. I believe that it’s downy rattlesnake plantain. Rattlesnake plantain is not related to the plantains that grow in my yard or to the pyrola and wintergreen. It is actually an orchid. Though common, it’s picky about where it grows, because it needs to be around certain types of fungi. If you’re interested in that, you can read more in this Smithsonian article about the relationship between orchids and fungi.

I hope to see rattlesnake plantain in bloom someday. In order to do so, I’ll have to go into the woods during the hottest, buggiest time of year (July-September), which is something I generally avoid doing. But, I found the rattlesnake plantains growing close to the edges of my property, so I wouldn’t have to trek far into the woods to hunt for the flowers.

I used to feel like my woods were lacking in wildflowers. That idea seems laughable now, as I’m sitting here writing my umpteenth blog post about local flowers. Looking back, I realize that I had several biases. The first was that I wasn’t counting the most common flowers, like goldenrod. Sure, goldenrod is common, but it’s still a wildflower, and it’s not just goldenrod–there are many varieties of goldenrod, each special in its own way. Another bias was that I was disappointed not to see certain flowers that I remembered from childhood, such as bloodroot, trillium, and Dutchman’s breeches. Those plants don’t grow here (as far as I know), but that doesn’t mean that we have any dearth of wildflowers. My third and most obvious bias was my reluctance to hike in the woods during the summer. Summer is the time when many wildflowers bloom, obviously. So I feel foolish for having thought that my woods were lacking, but grateful to have since found some many interesting flowers–orchids, even–growing here in my very own woods.

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Look at It Go

Posted on 10/24/2021 by chick

The job of all the senses is to pick up clues from the outside world in various forms: lightwaves, changes in air pressure, chemical signals. That information is translated into millions of tiny electrical pulses. Your brain reads these electrical pulses, in effect, like a computer reads code. It uses that code to actively construct your reality, fooling you into believing this controlled hallucination is real. Then it uses its senses as fact-checkers, rapidly tweaking what it’s showing you whenever it detects something unexpected.

It’s because of this process that we sometimes “see” things that aren’t actually there. Say it’s dusk and you think you’ve seen a strange, stooping man with a top hat and a cane loitering by a gate, but you soon realise it’s just a tree stump and a bramble. You say to your companion, “I thought I saw a weird guy over there.” You did see that weird guy over there. Your brain thought he was there so it put him there. Then when you approached and new, more accurate, information was detected, it rapidly redrew the scene, and your hallucination was updated.

from The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr

These paragraphs stood out to me as I was reading The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. They reminded me particularly of a scene in my novel where a character is developing new senses and has to learn to distinguish between things such as light waves and sound waves. The two paragraphs also interested me because, like other people, I sometimes see things that aren’t there. For example, my husband and I used to have a Ghost Cat. We’d see something out of the corner of our eye, and it would assume the shape of a cat, until we turned to look more closely and realized that there was nothing there.

Now that we don’t have real cats, we don’t see the Ghost Cat anymore. This suggests that the brain needs to be primed in some way to see a “phantom.” That is, the brain can easily conjure up the phantom of a man next to a gate or a scurrying cat, because those are reasonable things to see. It’s unlikely to conjure up the image of a squid near a gate, though. But, perhaps it could see a monster if you were scared, or an angel if you wished desperately to see one, or any number of otherworldly images created from your greatest hopes, fears, and expectations.

As I was walking in the woods the other day, I saw a phantom. It was not a thing I expected to see in the woods, but it was something that existed in my surface thoughts–a school bus. I took a picture of it.

The Phantom School Bus

In reality it was just a patch of yellow leaves, but for a fraction of a second it was a school bus driving through the woods. Even now, knowing that it’s just leaves, I can still see the vague outlines of the bus. The image is blurred because the bus is moving fast and far away. Look at it go!

The Phantom School Bus was the oddest thing that I saw in the woods that day, odder even than the October blueberries. But, the woods were full of interesting things, and I have many pictures yet to share. More posts to come soon.

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