Today, the cattails and water are perfectly still... but the seeds are beginning to fly off of the seedheads. 
Milkweed seed pods have not split open yet, for the most part. But some seeds were blowing past (at a very fast speed foe something with a parachute to slow it down) so at least one pod split open, either naturally or with the help of a child. 
Saw 2 woolly bears already today. These caterpillars seem to thrive in chilly weather -- I haven't seen one all summer, and now that it's cooler, here they are!
This heron spent the morning crouched down, either stalking a fish or a frog, or trying to stay warm...
Nothing is actually happening to the cattails... their seeds aren't spreading or anything. I just wanted to show how bent over they were in the wind; and note that the lilypad in the background is blowing out of the water. The lake (and this is not a big lake) actually had whitecaps this morning. 
Milkweed bugs are a fall treat with their orange and black backs. (Also perfect for finding shapes in nature, which my kindergartners were doing today.) They do not seem to enjoy being 
photographed, and would circumnavigate the plant to be on the opposite side as my camera at all times.
Today's crosshatching exercise, I sketched this sumac leaf. I sketched it nearly life-sized -- it went from the paper's edge to the spirals. (With forethought, I'd have turned the book the other way...) I noted that the leaves toward the bottom of the plants are starting to turn colors; as my students often do, I tried to show the red and orange colors of these leaves by rubbing one on the page (that being the color scribbles at the bottom) but they didn't turn out as bright as real life, so I also took a quick photo.
As the Veteran has pointed out, frogs seem to be multiplying. I'm not saying we're about to repeat biblical plague number 2, but in the past couple of days we have found 5 leopard frogs in the lawn. This doesn't count all the frogs we've seen in the pond...
This fellow, which I believe I have identified as an Amish bug, has fascinatingly fat front legs. With his flatness and his yellow/brown coloration, my first and second grade students astutely pointed out that it is camouflaged as an autumn leaf. 
This is one of 2 monarchs I saw today. 
Today's intermittent rain and sun brought forth this lovely rainbow (pictured over some not-too-lovely scenery. But when fleeting things occur, you take the picture where you are!)
I'm back... Today I learned how dependent we've become on technology. At school, we had no internet, email, copier or printing. There were a lot of things I could not do. I can still sketch, though! This sketch of a bergamot was part of an exercise students were doing on cross-hatching. Cross-hatching is not my preferred sketching style, and I tend to sacrifice good cross-hatching for good drawing... thus not really getting practice in the technique. But oh, well. Notes next to the sketch were "covered in powdery mildew; no seedhead; leaf tips turning brown (especially on lower leaves)." I also noted that cicadas -- the ones with the droning noise -- were extremely loud this afternoon. There's a sign of late summer for ya.
And here is a sign of fall. The hazels are turning orange and burgundy.
Coneflowers, both yellow and purple, are long blooming. There are still just a few hangers on of each type at this point. But most have lost their eponymous colors and dried up into seedheads, ready to propagate new plants... as seen in the photos.
This Nature Nerd is quite stressed out. With working full time, grad school stuff, feverishly preserving enough food to last the winter and avoid waste at this time of bounty, plus all those other little details that happen in life -- not to mention trying to do some enjoyable stuff once in a while... Stress. Actually, the most relaxing times of the day are when I am teaching, which is when I take most of the photos for, and do all of the drawings in, this blog. Students were quite excited to find this large bullfrog -- several times larger than yesterday's featured frog -- and deemed him very photo-worthy. So here he is! 
Soldier beetles seem to be mating. Also grasshoppers are mating, but I didn't get a photo. What a privacy invasion!
Seed pods from indigo... some have opened and spilled their seeds, some are dry, with seeds rattling around inside, and others are still closed but make no noise... why? I'm not sure, but little bugs inside may be the key to the answer.
This frog has been sitting in the exact same spot for 2 days (at least, the three times I've been there.) Today a heron was quite near to it, but flew away when my class of kids approached.
This afternoon we took what will certainly be our last trip to the Chicago Botanic Gardens of the 2009 (official) summer. Here are some of the photos... Above, a branch dons its fall colors.
Pumpkins ready in the garden. Although we use them for Halloween and Thanksgiving -- and they will store very well until then -- my experience growing pumpkins always has them ready well before that. (And a side note: today I ate the melon that we brought inside to ripen; it did ripen. It was small and not as tasty as my melons were last year, but still delicious.)
It is also apple season, with many varieties ripe for picking.
Cool tiny flowers on a tree.
Acorn cap on the path. Squirrels were eating the nuts overhead and dropping these onto the ground!
Berries on false Solomon's Seal.
Cardinal flower's brilliant red plumage.
Solomon's seal wears its fall colors, with blue berries and leaves turning to yellow, then crispy brown.
This sign, I think, represents some interesting phenological data, and proof that I'm not alone in the world of plant-bloom record keeping.
This crazy spider has a web outside my mom's house. That triangle thing is actually his abdomen!
And this orange fungus was in the neighbor's yard. From the photo you can't tell that it's about 18 inc hes across. People just moved into that house -- for me, that would be a wonderful treat in a new lawn. But I'm certain they don't see it that way. Oh, well. 
Every day for the past few weeks, 
the cool night-time temperatures have caused the early mornings to be dewey, if not completely foggy. Every morning the world is weighed down with water, heavy drops that will burn off by about 10 am. But for a while, its magical -- although it makes for wet walking. The spider webs are among the most beautiful parts; here are two from this morning, taken in front of a friend's house. Above is a crazy web that covered every part of the seed head of a foxglove; and to the right, a perfect orb web.
Gentian has gotten its purple color, making it the last new flower of 2009 (at least in my yard). I do expect the color to deepen some... I find them to be especially interesting because even when the flowers are in full bloom, they look like a bud that is getting ready to open. They never do. But they are insect pollinated, mostly by bees or other large bugs that can force their way into the closed-up petals. Later, these petals will dry up and become a pouch containing a bag-full of little seeds!
1 : the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere 2 : a period of stagnation or inactivity
(from Webster's)
Although this isn't the hottest part of the summer,* and early September has passed into mid-month, I feel like we are in the dog days -- at least by definition 2. For the past two weeks, each and every day has been the same... warm, sunny -- actually, quite perfect, weatherwise. A scant few new things have bloomed or passed out of their prime. Autumn hangs over our heads, always just around the corner, but still... it almost seems we could go on, with every day being like this, indefinitely... lethargy.
*Actually, it's pretty close to the hottest part of summer. Only because summer has been cool. But at this point, nights are becoming distinctly cool regardless of the day's high temp.
Speckled alder, with parts both male and female. The male flowering parts, the catkins, hang down in an, um, traditionally masculine way. At this point they are green and tiny, preparing for spring's early bloom. The female cones adorn the tree in both green (new) and brown (old), making it a fascinating specimen to students, who can't understand why a "pine cone" resides on a broadleaf tree...
