The period of unhurried color change in the leaves has come to an end. In the last few days, the leaves have swiftly transformed from the greens of summer to the yellows, oranges, and reds of fall. As the local climate has changed, so have the colors. We now have much more red in the fall colors than ever before. The demographics of the local tree species have shifted notably. Birch trees are being replaced by trees that used to be limited to shrub size and species that were not previously able to survive this far north.
The hedge our the lot across the street has not had a good trim in two years. Since the forecast calls for early snow, I undertook the pruning early in the season. Normally, it is better to do the trimming after the leaves fall because that gives the trees more opportunity to extract nutrients from the leaves, in preparation for winter. However, because the limbs have extended farther than usual, an early snowfall on leafy branches could result in a great deal of breakage, which could easily be more detrimental to the trees than an early pruning.
I encountered surprising difficulty while attempting to document the trimming of the hedge. In photographs taken from any vantage point that allowed for a pleasing composition, the leaves of the hedge blend into the background foliage so well that my hard work is scarcely visible.
In the image, only careful scrutiny of the middle will reveal that the top edge of the hedge has been trimmed to a quite unnecessarily level line.
In the back yard, we saw one of the hares fattening up on some of the clover by the flower bed. We haven’t seen much of them during the summer so there is no certainty that this hare is one of our winter guests our readers are familiar with.
This hare is sporting summer colors and will probably continue to do so for quite some time. Their color change is controlled by the strength of the sunlight, rather than the temperature or weather conditions.
Behind the garage a remarkable scene has unfolded. One of the squirrels is preparing for winter by setting out mushrooms to dry. There is a long board sitting across a pile of (potentially) useful project supplies.
The squirrel has collected 10-12 mushrooms and positioned them as you see in the image. This is the first time I have seen this behavior and I am quite impressed by the forethought it shows. At some level, the squirrel seems to know that this type of preparation is required before it moves the mushrooms to its cache.
When I saw him doing it, it reminded me of a program on PBS about traditional food preservation techniques. In the program, they explained how mushrooms dried in the Sun develop vitamin D, which is lacking in most foods available in the cold climates during the winter. Perhaps the squirrel was watching along with me, with his paws pressed against the window.
Melissa and I are increasing our donation to KUAC, our local PBS station, now that the federal government has cut the funding. We’ll gladly risk being exposed to politically-biased discussions about the vitamin content of sun-dried mushrooms.
Love it! So very informative, with excellent explanations, too.
While I can see your necessary pruning and applaud your efforts in that regard and was delighted with the sight of what we call “a pink” (or another named flower) my father especially favored, it is absolutely remarkable that you happened upon the squirrel’s use of space for drying mushrooms for winter use.
It is such a privilege to observe animal nature this way.
My favorite image, however, is the mental one you provided of the intellectual squirrel watching the television program with you – paws on the window glass.