Frozen Again

Re-freezing has caused lovely frost this morning, with crystals coating plants and trees in sparkly white. 

Chill in the Air

This photo from this morning shows two important things... first, notice the frost.  We've had frosts before (as noted) but this weekend was the first real deep freeze, where things on my deck (which is protected and therefore often escapes the ravages of a patchy frost) were good and truly frozen.  This morning's was quite lovely; as the sun rose, everything sparkled and glittered in the side-ways light.  It looked rather wintry, though.  (I will note... by lunch time, it was in the 50s, and I saw both grasshoppers and a yellow butterfly... so it didn't kill everything!)

The other thing to note in the above photo is that its of a recently burned area.  The fall controlled burn season started late last week (that was the first time I saw anyone burning, at least).  Despite the frost, walking through this area smelled like a fire. 

This pretty tree is a Callery pear.  Though they aren't native, they don't have any invasive qualities and I think they're really nice looking in landscaping... especially this time of year.  Some cultivars are deeper red, some are more like this one, with red-orange-yellow mixed together.  But they all seem to hold onto their leaves quite long, coming to peak color in November after most everything else is way past.  Every autumn I admire them.  (It is sad, though, that nothing seems to eat their blueberry-sized pears.  They're really cute but I guess not too tasty!)

Frost

That's some frost...

Cold Spell

A frosty morning... like a little "ha! ha!" to all the people who planted things outside for Mother's Day!  Last frost of 2013 spring = May 12-13???

Already Nipping?

This morning, we had our first patchy frost.  It covered the rooftops, but I only saw it in a few places on the grass.  It seems that the garden plants, at least in my garden, were spared... there will be basil and tomatoes for another day!

The frost followed a pretty crazy day of temperature fluctuations.  Monday it got up to 80 degrees, and then a storm came briefly through and the temperatures dropped like a lead balloon.  Tuesday's predicted high was around 65, but I don't think it even approached that.  I was cold all day with a sweater on, for the first time since... at least May.  Then last night, the low was a record-breaking 35 degrees F... followed by a lovely, mild (but windy), 70 degree daytime.

Winter coats and gloves at breakfast, shirt sleeves at lunch!  How do we prepare for that?  

Nipping at my Nose

After some early threats in September, our first hard frost hit last night.  I kinda feel a little bit sad for the monarch butterfly we saw yesterday while on our tree-checking route.  I suspect it had a rough night... but that's how nature works!

Already as the sun peeks over the horizon this morning, the frost is disappearing... sublimating into a low fog that covers the fields, and collecting in pregnant drops at the tips of remaining leaves until, heavy, the drops fall to the ground.

A pool collects in an indent on a remaining sumac leaflet. 

Yikes!

What that is, there on that rooftop, is frost.  It was a patchy frost -- really patchy... in fact, the rooftops at school seem to be about the only frost I see, but still, it's frost.

Last year's first patchy frost was Oct. 4.  In 2009, it was Oct 1.
It's Sept 15... It was in the 30's when I woke up.  Wow...

Brrrr.

A beautiful frost on another c-c-cold morning.

Oh, What a Beautiful Morning

This morning I left home before sunrise (which is not unusual during the school year, especially as we get closer and closer to solstice) and I was rewarded with a lovely sunrise... of course, I watched the sun cast its glow on the bands of clouds from behind a car windshield, and with roads and powerlines in view... but there were these moments when I saw it across open agricultural fields, sprawling bur oaks peeking from the low hanging mist in the background... when it just seemed like proof that every ordinary day has extraordinary moments, and that mundane places are still kissed by the glory of nature.

By the time I got to work, the ever-changing colors of the sunrise had given way to the sideways morning light. (I suppose that happened during the approximately 30 seconds when I was driving east and looking straight into the orange orb in front of me, nearly being blinded despite sunglasses, and feeling lucky not to have crashed.) Anyhow, things were still lovely as the morning's frost accentuated the plants' shapes and forms, and played with the sunlight in a really beautiful way...

... and then melted (it got up to nearly 70 degrees today, at least a 25 degree difference between day and night)...

A short while later, we encountered deer -- one antlered fellow and seven companions. I kept thinking they would eventually get scared of us, given that we were hammering things into the ground, disturbing the peace and bird-song quite thoroughly, but they did not. In face, they got closer and closer, unafraid, challenging. (Well, we got not actual hoofing of the ground or anything...) These are clearly suburban deer, unfamiliar with gun and bow alike. (I took about 20 pictures, thinking each time that this surely would be the last, they would run away now, but eventually I gave up the photographing, and it was us that left before them. Smartly, they had left before we returned with students.)

And speaking of student-deer interactions... (Fivecrows, you may want to stop reading now. Consider yourself warned.) Later in the morning, one kid found a young deer's leg -- not just the bones, but flesh and all -- stuck in the fence that surrounds a property neighboring the one we were at. No photos, thanks. I actually was with a different group and didn't see it. But I can just imagine that animal's fate, tangled and suffering and waiting... although, the rest of it was no where to be found, so maybe it was quickly preyed upon. Happy thoughts (relatively speaking)!
I also took a picture of a big fat toad with a permanently grumpy facial expression.

Not photographed: wooly bear (sign of fall!)

ps -- Those of you who were wondering, in my yard the basil is still fine. The frost seemed to spare sheltered areas, and my yard has homes, trees, fences, etc. So we're still waiting on the "big one" in our garden.

First...

FROST. Well, sort of. We had a patchy frost last night that seemed to mostly affect rooftops and vehicles. The basil in my yard, which I think of as very sensitive and the first thing to brown up in a frost, was verdant. It got down to about 41 degrees last night...

Up North

I spent the week in the north woods, where a first frost -- presumably weeks ahead of ours -- has already started turning the maples red and orange and yellow. On cloudy days, their brightness popped against the grey of rain, and on sunny days the blue of the sky contrasted starkly with the autumnal oranges... it really was beautiful. I wrote in my nature journal, during one of our reflection times, that I think I must have nature ADHD... this after a sentence about mergansers, then one about autumn colors, one about the sound of the lapping of the water on the shore, and one about the shape of the dead log, already harboring a small oasis of new life, jutting into the water. But upon looking at my photographs, I have determined that I am surprisingly mycology-minded.

And, if you think that this is overkill with the fungus photos, I would like to state, for the record, that a) I edited a lot out of these, and b) I would have taken a LOT more pictures of fungi if I hadn't had 58 lbs of canoe on my head for a lot of the time, which seriously diminishes the ease of... and desire to... take pictures.

We saw mushrooms in every color but blue and green. The first one here, though the photo doesn't capture it that well, was light purple!

I think the eyelash cups are so cute, don't you?

That last one was very crazy... about 4 inches in diameter, covered in dark purple-grey powder above and below, and curved up. Students noted that it looked like the empty paper of a Reese's peanut butter cup.

You made it this far? Here were a few non-fungal discoveries...

a brightly-colored leopard frog

This moth LOVED me, sat on my hand and probed my skin with its proboscis, and came back several times even after I got tired of not being able to write and brushed it off. It landed on my head for a while, where its wings buzzed by my ears like a tiny helicopter, and spent time on both of my hands. Eventually, it tired of me and decided that a yellow flower was more to its liking.

Such pretty colors in this hawkweed.

No More Water

The first few flowers have opened on the Virginia waterleaf, although, as I noted in illegible handwriting, the watermarks for which they are named have disappeared by this time in the year. A month ago, they were prominent and noticeable, but today it is the flowers -- what few are open -- that catch the eye. While guidebooks and websites don't seem to mention the tendency for the waterspot markings to fade, I have found a few references to it. Not shown in the picture -- every little sepal, and every leaf, is edged in delicate white hairs.

When I was a kid, I thought these flowers resembled little white crowns. The way the stamen rose up, for some reason, made me think of a 5-pointed fairy-tale crown, with jewels on each tip (thus the drawing). In fact, the way the flowers grow in clusters, I used to imagine something like the many-headed mouse king from the Nutcracker (but benign). Looking at it now, I suppose they more closely resemble a jester caps than princess head wear, but still, I think of crowns.

In other news, we may have had our last frost last night... after a windy, cold, rain-spitting day, weather stations were predicting widespread frost in the Chicago region after 1 am. I was up late and didn't wake as early as usual, but by the time I looked, I didn't see evidence of said frost. But it was sunny and warming, and the frost may have occurred earlier. Either way, today is a world different from yesterday -- calm, bright, sunny, not hot but pleasant...

Morning Snapshot

A brutally cold, but beautifully frosty morning. Chickadee calls resound through the still, crisp-to the-point-of-cracking air (as they do on most mornings when I arrive to work. 7 am seems to be prime chickadee talking time around here).

Photo by Chris.

One-Sided Beauty

I awoke to a thick fog this morning -- whiteness outside the bedroom window. It left behind this lovely hoarfrost as the vapor in the air hit and froze upon whatever it ran into.