August Woodland
Difficult to believe that August is almost past. But it's true; warblers are already gathering; at night we hear them trilling to one another, flying the dark sky above. We see flocks of Canada geese rising from outlying fields at night to gather on the Ottawa River for the night, prefacing, all too soon, their flight south in anticipation of winter.
At this time of year, the weather moves swiftly from cool and rainy to hot and humid, the earth becoming dry and cracked between rainfalls. Yesterday, on our way in to the ravine for our daily walk, we saw goldfinches in erratic flight through the trees on either side of us, their bright yellow flashes gladdening our eyes. Later, we also see a few fat robins scrabbling in the dry earth, looking for live insects, worms. Squirrels and chipmunks are becoming more visible, perhaps in-gathering what there is to be saved for the winter.
They're not stinting themselves for the present, however. We regularly pass a large tree stump, flat and round and full of an ever growing cluster of detritus; leftover bits of spruce and pine cones. The ground around the stump is similarly littered. A special dining room for squirrels. Our little dogs sniff closely and move on. As we climb the first of the long steep hills and come abreast of a fine stand of Queen Anne's lace, there is a large Black Admiral settling on one particularly-full flowerhead.
Grasshoppers leap ahead of us on the dry trail, fiddling, filling the air with their high-pitched sound, though nothing like the cicadas we're hearing more often lately. We see beside a patch of earth astride the trail where the bank dips to the creek below a thick cluster of white-white mushrooms, some 50, perhaps 80 tightly packed together. Growing, obviously, on some long-defunct tree roots.
We also see, further down the sides of the creek bank large saucer-shaped, flat yellow mushrooms. When they're young they're more cone-shaped as they push through the earth, but now they've flattened, and the colour has deepened. Some appear to have an almost pale-yellow circle around the outer perimeter of their heads. The yellow-scaly look of the heads when they're young is now gone, and they're smoothly clear, attractive to the eye.
This is clearly a mushroom sighting day, despite that the earth appears so dry. It's a time-of-year thing. At the end of an old decaying white birch there is a minuscule cluster of bright orange mushrooms. Lots of yellow and orange today. Far more appreciated than the large flat heads of those appallingly-funereal looking bluish-grey mushroom heads we've seen before, nowhere in evidence this day.
As we cross the creek for the last time, over the stout wood bridge, we note that the area teen-agers have initiated a new game. The old willow bough that hangs over the creek from its perch on the far bank, with its unnatural burden, a long rope slung successfully around its width, a stout stick tied tight, has been in fairly constant use all summer. We haven't seen it in use but for the first time it was installed, but we infer as much, seeing the rope tied from time to time to the uprights of the bridge, for easy access.
Teens are so readily bored. They had put together a roughly-notional "ladder", stuck it into the clay bank alongside the creek to enable them, if they fell into the creek while swinging on the rope from bank to bank, to clamber back out quickly. The "ladder" helped them gain purchase; without it the slither uphill on wet clay was an exercise, clearly, in mucky frustration. Obviously, something new had been added. We thought at first it was an excess of guano, as from a large bird convention, but soon realized it was something else.
There, on the far bank of the creek, lay an egg crate and beside it, bottles of beer. The exercise here obviously being that one swings vigorously to avoid being hit with the pelted eggs. The egg throwers take swigs of beer, leer and snigger, and a good time is had by all. Sigh. They'll surely be back in school in several weeks' time.
At least that too can be said for Fall.
posted by Pieface @ Sunday, August 20, 2006
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