Checkered Skipper and Sycamore Bark

Nice morning for a walk - 59 degrees and breezy. It felt quite cool heading downhill, into the wind, in the shade. It felt much warmer walking back because we were heading steeply uphill, with the wind at my back, and in the warming sun. There were many small butterflies in the sun flitting about the numerous asters and goldenrods that nodded in the wind, including this Common Checkered Skipper. He's a small butterfly, not much more than an inch wingspread, and he's a new one to me... I've never seen it before! The turquoise hairs on his body reminded me of the Long-tailed Skipper I see down at the coast, so when I got home I looked under skippers in my butterfly book, and voila! There he was, one of the spread-wing skippers.

Daisy and I poked around down by Meetinghouse Creek for a bit, me trying to find a way to get through a briar patch to reach a mulberry tree with huge, yellowing leaves,until I saw that Daisy found a much easier route and waited for me under said tree. After several scratches from the briers I copied her and soon found myself under a huge Sycamore tree where large pieces of shed bark littered the ground. I picked up the only small piece I saw to draw in my journal. Kept going to the Mulberry tree but was unable to reach high enough to get to the leaves.

Red Leaf and Helenium (Sneezeweed)

Took an early walk today and enjoyed the long morning shadows and wind in my hair. Tuesday's silence had disappeared. Instead, I heard traffic from Pine Street (we live at least 2 miles away from Pine St.) a lawn mower, a dog barking across the river, as well as the dog's owner yelling, "Shut UP!" It's amazing how noisy some days are! Along the way I found half of a bird egg, a tiny puffball that poofed its brown smoke when I poked it, and the seed pods of a sensitive brier. Fyi: if you ever see a seedpod on a sensitive brier vine, do not touch it or you'll get a handful of invisible splinters. They are so tiny it's hard to get them out. I had about ten in my hand even though I was very careful when I picked it to draw, and then dropped it immediately.

While I was picking prickles from my hand, I noticed the beautiful crimson leaf on the ground. A much safer choice for today's journal entry. I though the red contrasted nicely with the yellow of the Sneezeweed (Helenium).

Maple-leaf Viburnum

This is yesterday's post, but it could just as well be today's. With clear blue skies, leaves falling in the cool breeze, and fall crickets trilling here and there - both were perfect afternoons for a hike with the dogs and a little journaling.

The patch of small Maple-leaf Viburnums have been in our back woods from the time we built our house, twenty years ago. They don't seem any taller, wider, or thicker than when I first saw them but this might be because they grow in deep shade on the side of a dry hill. There is another large patch of these viburnums (possibly?) in the front woods that are twice (maybe even thrice) as large. They grow in a damper spot that gets a little more sun, but they have no fruit and have barely begun to change color... as I write this I wonder if perhaps they are another kind of Viburnum...hmm.

Anyway, when I first noticed this small cluster of trees it was about this time of year, and you couldn't miss the mass of pink leaves in deep shade. They glowed! and for a few years I thought they were just small maple trees. Then, somewhere along the way I read about viburnums and things began clicking - my eyes took in more. The flowers in the spring, for instance - Maple-leaf Viburnums have clusters of small white ones. After reading that I walked into the woods to look, and there they were. How could I ever have missed the flowers? And the tidy pairs of leaves.

Now I admire my Maple-leaf Viburnums every time I walk past them. Not only that, I've also learned to identify other viburnums, such as Arrow-wood, and Rusty Blackhaw. Who knows what will be next!

If you have any interest in shrubs, you might look for the fascinating book written by Donald Stokes in 1981, called The Natural History of Wild Shrubs and Vines (Eastern and Central NA), Illustrations by Deborah Prince Smith. My copy came from the Friends of the Library book sale, so I don't know if it's still available new, but used books are easy to come by these days.