But rest assured, it's not autumn yet! Time for a once a year Grist for the Mill post!
We still hike...
View of Watson Pond from Sanders Loop trail in the Kennebec Highlands, Maine. A small, pleasant hike up and back down, with a sweet payoff view. In early July there are blueberries. Now a few leaves are just beginning to change from summer green to autumn red.
I walked a golf course in Bath with my golfer husband early one morning (he woke me up at 5:45- it's 48 degrees F? Already?) with camera in hand. It warms up quickly.
The flowers, seen on the fringe of the course, remind me of home when I was small. I knew this flower before I knew the names of plants. I still don't know its name. I'd better find out.
And rudbeckia, black-eyed Susans, showing a bit of wear as summer nears its end.
And, in the way that nothing stands unaffected by time and weather, a polished granite marker stands coated with lichen.
It reminds me (I AM a potter, after all) of lichen glazes on pottery, a specialized sort of thing. As an aside, here are two vessels by Canadian potter Tony Clennell that the lichen above makes me think of:
(I found this on Tony's blog at http://smokieclennell.blogspot.com/2010/08/lichens-lizards-and-leopards.html. Go there!)
It's been great weather for hiking. Favorite fellow took my picture. Hazy day, threatening rain, but in Maine, "ya gotta believe." Silly hat, tuna sandwich. The view is of Great Pond, also in the Kennebec Highlands.
Turned my hat backwards so I could see the trail better as we went up. Didn't need my eyes shaded on this cloudy day.
This spectacular bouquet of fungi was about 20" in diameter. I should get a jigsaw puzzle made of this image, with as many pieces as possible. It would be nice and difficult. Putting it at the end of the to-do list.
But my favorite thing is still getting out in the kayak. There was little wind on the water, and a bald eagle (yes, the classic all-American white headed bird,) was hanging out on a pile of mud, a first in all my years of heading out onto this lake. I could only shoot long distance fuzzy photos, but I'm going to include one for authenticity here. Getting a telephoto lens camera is now also on the end of my to-do list:
I wondered if the eagle was the instrument of death for a Canada goose, whose feathers were scattered for ten yards in every direction on the surface of the water.
The swallows are gone the way of August and its teeming waterbugs, and the crows are here now. They pose for a silhouette against the sky very handsomely. As raucous as crows can be, they are surprisingly quiet; the air is emptied of so many birds, so much quieter than it was in July.
Photographing the oh so fleeting sunrise next-to-the-last morning of our stay, I hear geese baying and wait for them to come across the lake sky. It is just one noisy pair, far away, but so brash and loud.
There will be new young cattails when we return again at the beginning of summer.