Seasons – Splattered Brains

Spring Is In The Air

it was good to get back to normal Spring weather during the walk last Sunday after the frigid temperatures and snow of the previous weekend. Indeed, the day of our first joint walk along the canal this year was also the day of the Spring Equinox. There were signs of the changes that were to come.

Spring Beauty flowers were in the process of opening up in some spaces.

This is the first Virginia Bluebell that I have noticed this year.

This part of the towpath, between Sycamore Landing and Edwards Ferry, draws me in during the Winter and early Spring. The woods and trees have a certain character that comes out especially with the early morning sun behind our backs.

Our retreat into the woods last weekend was marred by an unfortunate discovery that we made as we were walking along the shore of the river near Edwards Ferry. A group of individuals had trashed the space after an evening of partying around a fire next to a river.They did not bother to pick up their garbage. How irresponsible and out-of-touch does one have to be to not care about the damage you are doing? Why would you deliberately attempt to destroy the nature that you have just immersed yourself in and enjoyed? How self-centered do you have to be to only think about yourself and not the people who are coming after you?

By sheer coincidence, we did see some members of a volunteer cleanup crew who were going through the area looking for trash. We did alert them to the location of the garbage. We tried to do our little part in helping, by collecting a few of the empty cans that had been strewn all over the area into one location.

It looks like it is the time for the peak blooms for the Cherry Blossoms in the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC. The two cherry blossom trees in our yard are still changing.

On The Streets Where We Live

People may have been wondering about the mad man driving up and down their streets, pulling up to the curb at seemingly random moments in time, and getting out of the car with camera in hand. No worries! It was only your friendly neighborhood photographer searching for locations with “optimum” lighting to take pictures from. Weather conditions and the time of day played into my efforts to capture the colors of autumn in the lighting that I thought was best.

In my opinion, our streets are the prettiest during the later part of the annual autumnal event of the turning of the leaves. Interestingly enough, none of these trees have appeared in our neighborhood naturally. They were all planted.

Here are some sample pictures.

You may have noticed that a few of the pictures have been taken with some element of back lighting. The trees actually looked quite different, and perhaps not as noteworthy, when seen from other angles. The impact of a tree’s colors often change as you walk past it. In fact, seeing the trees from other perspectives may even lead to unhappy thoughts for a homeowner. It might serve as a reminder of the seemingly unending task of the raking and removal of the fallen leaves, another noteworthy activity for this time of year.

This is my song for today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kX3PZ_ynss

The Storm Arrives

It was snowing steadily when we woke up on Sunday. I had gotten up with the faint hope of still being able to go the river and the towpath for our usual weekend walk. I had actually been thinking about the unique opportunity to get pictures in the park during the snowfall. I gave up the idea quickly, primarily because of the risk of getting stuck in the snow on one of the narrow roads leading to a trailhead. There was no way that these secondary roads were going to be plowed that soon, especially during a snowstorm.

I used to get excited about taking pictures around our home, and even around our neighborhood, when it snowed. For some reason, I did not feel that way this time. Nevertheless, I did try taking a few pictures at home. Most of them did not look interesting to me. All I saw was whiteness. Here are a few of these pictures. At least a couple of these pictures were inspired simply by how I felt when looking at particular objects. They may not mean anything to you.

I am hoping that there will be better opportunities for picture-taking the next time we go to the canal.

The Late Burst of Color

I have been observing the autumnal shedding of the leaves by the crape myrtle tree in our backyard for many years. It happens a little later in the season than for most other trees in our neck of the woods. The burst of colors when it happens is phenomenal. It gets your immediate attention. I do not think I have focused on this phenomenon as an object of photographic record-keeping in the past. I thought I would shares some of these pictures this year.

This is a view of the tree from one of the bedrooms at the peak of the colors.

This is a short sequence of pictures showing the change in the appearance of the tree during this turn of the season.

Here is a picture of the tree taken at sunset. The sky was a shade of purple when I took the picture. The color of the sky changed immediately after that – here one moment, and gone the next!
Soon, it will all be gone.

My Continuing Search for Autumn Colors

The weather turned wet on Sunday after an extended period of sunshine, a period of time that had left me wondering whether the solar panel system on our roof would end up generating a record amount of energy for the month. I now do not think this will happen. There is a concept called the law of averages that will probably even things out over the the month. (Note that the law of averages more of a common sense statement rather than a mathematical statement of probability. But that is a discussion of another day!)

Anyway, it was a sunny morning last Thursday when I did a bike ride, heading towards Washington, DC. The experience of this bike ride left me with the feeling that I could be reaching the tail-end of the riding season – or that my strategy of starting a bike ride early in the morning – in order to ensure that I was back home at a reasonable time – was not going to work for the rest of the year. It was much too cold! It was cold enough that I went off-trail to visit the fully-equipped restroom at Great Falls after about eight miles of riding – to turn on the dryer in the facility in order to warm my hands and get sensation back to my fingers. It being early in the morning, I was riding in the shadows of the woods, and I could not even depend on the touch of the sun to warm me up.

I was still feeling the cold when I got to the end point of the ride, a spot beside the trail between the mile 7 and 8 markers of the towpath, just beyond the footbridge across the canal.In order to keep myself warm (while I refreshed myself with a Clif bar and some water), I parked the bike next to a bench that happened to be in the sun.

It had warmed up nicely by the time I started making my way back to Rileys Lock, to the extent that I encountered many more riders headed the other way during this stretch of pedaling.

As you can see from the pictures above, and also from the pictures below that I took at the start of the ride at Rileys Lock, the leaves on the trees were still generally green that day,but there were also signs that they had begun to drop!

I did not feel too tired at the end of this ride. I am sure the outside temperature had something to do with it.

We went for a walk on the towpath last Sunday starting at Pennyfield Lock and heading north towards Rileys Lock. Because of the threat of rain later in the day hanging over us, we decided to get a very early start. We did not even have breakfast before heading out!

You observe more things around you when walking than when biking. There were the early signs of the coming change to the foliage, and there was at least one point at which we also got a glimpse of how extraordinary the Autumn view can become as the season progresses towards its peak.

In any case, a walk along the canal is beautiful and therapeutic in so many different ways.

Unfortunately, we were also reminded of how busy, and sometimes unpleasant, this section of the trail can get during the weekends, with hordes of inexperienced bikers and walkers taking over the towpath. We had to be on our toes and aware of traffic in both directions while walking. We encountered large groups of people who were unfamiliar with the protocols and courtesies of the trail, people who created a danger to themselves and others. What to do? I made the mistake of trying to let people know in one instance even though I am not good in situations like this.

From Spring into Summer

I am resolved to get this blog out expeditiously. If not, my current state of mind, which has to do with the weekly visit to the C&O Canal towpath yesterday, will begin to dissipate quickly. If that happens, the resulting blog could take a darker and perhaps more negative turn. The balance will be lost!

The thermostat indicated that it was 63° F outside when we woke up on Sunday morning. It felt very nice for a change. This being the tail end of the Spring season, the temperatures outside are trending towards the hotter side. We have even had some days when the use of the air-conditioner was needed. I was even forced to run indoors on the treadmill instead of outside last week because it was too hot. This Sunday was not one of those days. We opened up the windows early in the morning to let some cool air in. We left home early for our weekly walk on the canal, to try to get there before the crowds descended, and to also hopefully get to walk under cooler conditions. It turned into a very nice morning on the trail.

The flowers of Spring are mostly gone. There is thick green vegetation all around, including lots of tall grasses. Some mowing and clearing-out of the spaces next to the trail would be useful, but nobody knows when that can happen. Normal park services have not yet resumed completely. undefined

There were plenty of wild strawberries beside the trail! We talked about whether these could be poisonous. Wild strawberries and mock strawberries look very much alike, and can be distinguished by the color of their flowers. There were no flowers to be seen! undefined

There were different kinds of butterflies flying around. Here are a couple of pictures. A few of these butterflies would hang around you for a little while while you were walking.

The dragonflies and damselflies have also reappeared.

There were other, less-familiar, insects around. I suspect that if we had come later in day, we might have even been attacked by the gnats that are plentiful in these parts in summer. And after all, summer is officially only a couple of weeks away.

There were a lot of birds making a lot of noise. We thought we encountered call-and-response situations on at least one or two occasions. But I could not get a single picture of the birds, probably because of the dense foliage. Even the egret whose picture we thought we had gotten a few weeks earlier flew away from us.

The parking lot at Edwards Ferry was full. So was the one at Sycamore Landing when we returned after our walk. According to the C&O Canal Trust, there has been an about 50 percent increase in the number of people coming to the park in recent times. We saw both walkers and runners, bikers, a few dogs (running free), and a couple of horses (with people on them). undefined

There were also people in their boats on the river. Some of them were talking quite loudly. We could hear them all the way from the trail, and you could have clearly made out the details of their conversation if you were so inclined. undefined

All in all, we had a good day out in the park.

There has been a lot going on on the political front in our neck of the woods recently. The news from Washington, DC, is even worse than before. The president has finally built his wall, not on the border, but around his fortress (or bunker), a fortress whose boundaries seem to be ever expanding. We have a tinpot dictator doing his worst. Other, cowardly, politicians have willingly abandoned their responsibilities. The protests taking place in the streets of Washington, DC, and in other cities, still continue. It seems like the youth are not going away. We need to find a way to show solidarity, and to help make positive changes happen.

Beyond Our Species

Even though I know that all of this will go away eventually, with or without my presence, I get more and more discouraged with time as the scourge of the coronavirus continues to keep us in its stranglehold.

Even as we see acts of humanity and kindness, of cooperation, of people coming together, of heroism, in our midst, I find that, as a race, we are extremely discordant in our collective approach to tackling the global issue of the pandemic that has been unleashed on us. Generally speaking, we are on our own. Led by the example by the world’s wealthiest nation, we are not interested in a common strategy to minimize the impact of this contagion. The impact on less well-off people and nations with less resources is not for us to worry about. And some leaders – some political strongmen – are even taking advantage of the situation carry out other destructive agendas of their own, in other ways, while all of this is going on. Many of our leaders have blood on their hands for sure.

But, as is very obvious to me, life is still also going on outside of our selfishness and incompetence. I only have to look around my neighborhood. Spring is here! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The deer seem to enjoy the spring growth that falls to the ground from the maple trees.The cherry blossom tree in our backyard has blossomed.We encountered this little snake while walking in the neighborhood. It appeared to be basking on the pavement. I think that it is a juvenile that has not yet gotten its markings. (You can see the beginnings of some markings on the face.) The snake did not seem to know enough to get out of the way of the walkers on the pavement. I had to gently encourage it to get off the pathway. Whether one has really helped, one never knows.And then, the Sunday walk in the park only served to further confirm to me our own insignificance in the scheme of things. Life and death can go on in its own way without our interference, and this is very obvious in Spring. There is no need for human intelligence to get in the way.

You can make out the green beginning to reappear on the trees on the towpath. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The Common Starling in the picture below was dancing in front of a hole in the trunk of a tree in a very odd way. It could have been the location of a nest. This is the time for many birds to mate. We saw two bald eagles flying around on the Virginia side of the Potomac. There could have been a nest in this area. Then, there was the Canada Goose that had parked itself on the trail. I was worried that there was a nest close by that the bird was protecting. Fortunately, the bird was not aggressive, and simply went into canal as we approached. I had a stick in my hand – just in case! OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA The early morning reflections in the ever-so-still waters of the canal were uplifting.Other curious and noisy birds were everywhere.The Virginia Bluebells were in full bloom.This is one of the many different kinds of woodpeckers in the park.I did not expect to see as many turtles are we did. This section of the canal contains water that is somewhat warm because of the runoff from the Dickerson Power Plant that is next to it. That might have been the reason.

These turtles seemed to be lining up to climb to the top of the branch that had fallen in the canal. To the eyes of this human, it looked like they were trying to conquer a peak. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA This turtle simply watched me as I took its picture. Many others slid into the waters at our approach.We even saw butterflies, including this swallowtail. It is a little early in the season for them.The Spring Beauty flowers had actually opened out to face the sun. Last week they were all folded up because of the cloudy weather. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Life goes on!

Getting back to the ways of the rest of us residents of this planet, a wise man who shall remain anonymous came up with the following prayer:

Dear God,
Trump and corona at the same time on Earth???
Why???
Let me know if you need advice on timing your challenges for us in the future….
Just saying…..
Peace be with you,
Amen

I think we all have to find our own way to keep the faith. Humor helps!

It was the first day of Spring!

Not exactly the type of weather one was hoping to experience. It is still cold outside! Brrr…. OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Signs of Winter

Winter does not officially start until later this month, but it certainly did not feel that way today. It was quite cold this morning, below freezing, when we went out to Rileys Lock for a Sunday walk. Another sure sign of the coming of winter is the arrival of the kinds of ducks that visit us only during that time of year. The purchase of the new camera was motivation for me to go out looking for these birds once again after many years. I wanted to try the new equipment out. Unfortunately, new and improved equipment does not necessarily make one a better photographer. I got mixed results. One major problem is that the birds are generally quite skittish and move away when they sense that somebody is around. Here is what I managed to see and capture.

Ring necked ducks.Buffleheads.

I believe these are American Wigeons.And we even got some snow today, for the first time this season.

I am looking forward to more experiments with my new camera.

The Further Pleasures of Spring On The Towpath

It turns out that the wildflowers that I had posted pictures of from our travels on the C&O canal towpath earlier this Spring were only a fraction of what there was to be seen and enjoyed. Here are pictures of more flowers taken from our more recent visits.