blueberry – In the Woods

how to take a walk

9.16.22 ~ Connecticut College Arboretum
waning gibbous moon

bee inspecting a hole in a trumpet vine blossom

We enjoyed a lovely long walk around the pond at the arboretum on Friday. I was in my sweatshirt and enjoying the fresh cool air. The trees are still green for the most part and we wondered what kind of fall color is in store for us in the wake of the drought. There were still some summer tints lingering side by side with hints of autumn hues.

Few men know how to take a walk. The qualifications of a professor are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much. If a man tells me that he has an intense love of nature, I know, of course, that he has none. Good observers have the manners of trees and animals, their patient good sense, and if they add words, ’tis only when words are better than silence.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
(The Later Lectures of Ralph Waldo Emerson: 1843-1871)

We also took a side path to the Glenn Dreyer Bog which was illuminated with spots of bright sunshine. The light near the equinoxes is amazing, as I often say.

The woods were full of gray catbird calls and we heard them rustling around in the tree branches. Occasionally we spotted one but they were diligently avoiding my camera. This was the summer of the catbird. Not only did we have one singing in our river birch outside our kitchen window, we saw them on almost every walk we took. Back in June, though, they were out in the open and more amenable to being photographed.

How much of beauty — of color, as well as form — on which our eyes daily rest goes unperceived by us!
~ Henry David Thoreau
(Journal, August 1, 1860)

Today the humidity is creeping back with higher temperatures but it shouldn’t last for too many days. We plan to go see an outdoor Ibsen play, Peer Gynt, in the park tonight and will bring blankets to keep warm. This was supposed to happen in June but covid got the theater group and they had to postpone. We got our new bivalent booster shots last week but still plan to exercise caution as we try to move forward.

autumn images

10.29.21 ~ Connecticut College Arboretum
poison ivy climbing a flowering dogwood

Our peak fall foliage dates are supposed to be October 24-November 6 so as soon as we got a chance between rainstorms we squeezed in this autumn walk. We enjoyed the colors but there is still a lot of green. Climate change, I suppose. We’ve been getting a lot of rain and our temperatures have been running about 10°F above normal. Sigh…

The energy from this huge American beech resonated with me. I think it might qualify as a wolf tree! It was too wide to get in one photograph! We lingered under its branches for quite a while.

Tim contemplating a glacial erratic he might have climbed in his younger years

glacial erratic overlooking the amphitheater and pond

glacial erratic in pond supporting all kinds of life and a blueberry bush

A new bird for me! When I was taking the picture above I spotted some white “circles” moving in the distance, way across the pond. We followed the path around the pond and they swam in the opposite direction. So I tried my best with the zoom lens. When we retraced our steps, they swam back to where we were. Clever little things. They are a lot smaller than mallards.

Hooded Merganser Lophodytes cucullatus: Year-round resident; fairly common to common migrant in March and from October to November; and fairly common in winter on fresh or brackish water on the coast or larger rivers. Uncommon and very local cavity-nesting breeder in secluded wooded swamps, beaver ponds with open water, mostly in the northwest hills and lower Connecticut River.
~ Frank Gallo
(Birding in Connecticut)

the red leaves are a reflection in the water,
the green leaves are hanging over the water

view of pond through the underside of leaves

It was a refreshing, wonderful autumn walk!

shades of scarlet, saffron, and russet

10.24.20 ~ Connecticut College Arboretum
New London, Connecticut

Autumn that year painted the countryside in vivid shades of scarlet, saffron, and russet, and the days were clear and crisp under the harvest skies.
~ Sharon Kay Penman
(Time & Chance)

The Connecticut College Arboretum Facebook page invited us over to check out the fall colors in all their glory. We were not disappointed! I had been reluctant to visit because New London was a designated coronavirus “red alert town” but now that Groton is, too, we decided we didn’t have much to lose.

One very nice feature of an arboretum is that many of the trees have identification tags on them.

In June, the above fringe tree has spectacular white fringe-like blossoms. (Janet may remember them!) To see a picture scroll down to the last few pictures on this post: late spring in the woods.

But autumn leaves have another than their natural history — like autumn sunshine they have merits that concern the rambler, who cares not a fig for their botanical significance — what may be called their sentimental history.
~ Charles Conrad Abbott
(Days Out of Doors)

evidence of the severe drought in the pond

blueberry growing out of glacial erratic in the middle of the pond

(probably) ruby slippers hydrangea spent blossoms

(probably) ruby slippers hydrangea leaves
thanks to Melissa for help with identification

This might be my favorite tree in the whole arboretum. It is so tall there is no way I could get a picture of all of it. The texture of the bark is a pleasure to behold. The trunk splits in two and the view between them is spectacular. I love its energy. I have a dwarf river birch in my garden. It’s not nearly as tall.

We had walked for over an hour and I came home finally feeling satisfied that I hadn’t missed anything this autumn had to offer. 🙂

green space

“The Younger Brother” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones — inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones — rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms.
~ Mary Oliver
(Upstream: Selected Essays)

much ado about nothing

Connecticut College Arboretum ~ 7.17.10 ~ New London, Connecticut

Last night Janet brought a good portion of her scrumptious blueberry harvest to the Connecticut College Arboretum, where we all enjoyed Shakespeare-under-the-Stars with our niece Bonnie and her children, Kia and Khari. We had a delightful evening watching and laughing at the abundant witticisms in the dialog of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Flock Theatre put on an entertaining performance, with Anne Flemmang’s portrayal of Beatrice particularly winning. The humidity had been oppressive all day, but evening brought a refreshing cool breeze across the arboretum’s pond, and the bats and dragonflies flitting about were keeping the mosquito population well under control.

As we left we were given another container of blueberries! Thank you, Janet! So for breakfast this morning Tim whipped up some blueberry pancakes which we all loved, and we can now recommend Cherrybrook Kitchen Gluten Free Dreams Pancake & Waffle Mix whole-heartedly as a good choice for those of us allergic to wheat. We brought out the pure maple syrup we got at the Hebron Maple Festival in March. Yummy…

We also learned that Kia and Khari are proud members of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Both are very informed about the big cats and which ones do well and breed well in captivity and which ones conservationists are having more trouble helping. They are also very familiar with Shakespeare’s plays. We had such a good time getting to know them a little more and we may be seeing them again for The Tempest in August!

For future reference I’m listing all the plays we’ve seen put on by Flock Theatre (Artistic Director, Derron Wood) at Connecticut College Arboretum:

2002 – Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
2006 – Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare
2008 – Lysistrata by Aristophanes
2009 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Shakespeare
2010 – Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare