Waterside Wonderfulness

As rain and cold and even some frost arrived the past few days, I'm recalling some sunny, warm, sweetly mellow days last week, visiting two of my favorite wetlands, Moreau Lake and the Hudson River.

I love weekday visits to Moreau Lake State Park this time of year, when all is quiet and just a few people are enjoying what this beautiful lake has to offer.  Here, a lone fisherman casts his line into the water, while only two canoes carry their silent paddlers around the lake.

I enjoy walking along this sun-warmed, pine-scented trail that passes between the main lake and the lake's back bay, offering glimpses of blue water to either side. Both White Pines and Pitch Pines line the trail.

The vividly colored leaves of a Shadblow tree (Amelanchier sp.) cast a warming glow as I passed beneath its branches.

The sunlight beaming on these shoreline shrubs made their leaves glow like embers.

 

What shoreline shrub could rival the intensely scarlet color of Highbush Blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum)?

Here's a closer look at super-saturated red of those Highbush Blueberry leaves:

Due to the past summer's lack of rainfall, the shore along the north end of the lake presents a wide stretch of sandy beach, which felt quite summer-warm this day, thanks to abundant sunshine.

I was happy to find on this sandy shore a few plants of the quite-tiny Small-flowered Dwarf Bulrush (Cyperus subsquarrosus) still looking quite healthy, with its chubby spikelets still intact. A hard frost will cause the plants to wither and disappear until spring. Because these particular plants (an Endangered species in New York State) grow quite high up on this beach, they avoid being covered by higher water in wetter years, so I can count on finding them every year.   This year, due to drought, on another stretch of Moreau Lake's shoreline, many thousands of plants have re-emerged from several years of inundation, looking hardly the worse for their several years of biding their time under the water.

Further up on this sandy shore, a thick hedge of Black Huckleberry shrubs (Gaylussacia baccata) was displaying its gorgeous autumn color.

As I turned to leave, I lingered for some time enjoying the glittering wavelets that sparkled and danced on the lake.

On my way home, I took Spier Falls Road, which closely follows the Hudson River.  Along this stretch of the river, forested mountains fall to the water's edge, and virtually all of the land you can see here on both sides of the river is part of Moreau Lake State Park. The Spier Falls hydroelectric dam can be seen spanning the river far off in the distance.

Because of a raging fire that damaged part of the Spier Falls Dam last year, the water upstream of the dam has been lowered significantly, so that work may proceed on repairing those damages. Consequently, much of the river bottom here has been exposed for over a year, and a fascinating variety of plants has sprung up, now that sunlight and air is available to them.

I confess that I sidled around some "No Trespassing" signs to make my way out to the water's edge to see what I might find springing up from what was once river bottom. The most obvious plants were abundant clusters of deep-pink leaves and scarlet seed pods, belonging to Dwarf St. John's Wort (Hypericum mutilum). A tiny sprout of Red Maple leaves added a rosy accent to this patch of rock- and snail shell-strewn mud.

The sprawling stems of Water Purslane (Ludwigia palustris) formed carpets of rosy red, punctuated by slender green spiky growths. I bet those spiky, curving green growths are some new plants of Slender Milfoil (Myriophyllum tenellum).

When I first visited this drawdown of the river, almost exactly one year ago, the only plants I could see covering this muddy stretch were vast masses of Slender Milfoil, as this year-old photo reveals:

Here's a closer look at those newly uncovered plants of Slender Milfoil:

It amazed me how different this same patch of exposed riverbottom had changed in just one year. No flowering plants poked up from amid those milfoil stems a year ago, while many had by now.  Most were quite small, like the Dwarf St. John's Wort and the Water Plantain. But this solitary stem of Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale) was quite the showy exception!

A wonderful day on the waterways!  And the roadsides on the way home were pretty spectacular, too.

Grandma Goes to Essex

Did I have a great reason to drive a hundred miles north from Saratoga Springs to Essex, New York, last Saturday?  Oh, I sure did, because my darling granddaughter, Natalie Balter, had arranged to meet me there.  Natalie is in graduate school at the University of Vermont in Burlington, an easy half-hour drive to the ferry in Charlotte, Vermont, a ferry that carried her across Lake Champlain to meet me in Essex, one of the most charming villages on the shore of this beautiful lake.  Here she is, near the Essex ferry dock on one of the most pleasant days of the month.

We were lucky we'd planned to meet at 11:30 am on Saturday, for if we'd waited to meet until later that day, I'd probably have had to park quite a distance away from the ferry dock, because this was the biggest traffic day of the year for this tiny village.  It was the annual Haunted Hamlet festival, with many kinds of festive events drawing hundreds of participants from miles around.  (I took this photo of what would soon be the thronged main street later this day, as I was about to leave for home.)

The Halloween theme was already evident earlier in the day, as these little witches roaming the streets made clear.

Lucky for Natalie and me, we were early enough to not have to wait for a lunch-time table at this charming little cafe.  I have been visiting Essex for more than 25 years, and this was the first time I've found a dining spot open in town this late in the season, long after the summer residents and visitors  have left. And here's some great news: I learned that the proprietors of this cafe now plan to stay open and serve food all year around (except for a few days in November). This is a wonderful PLUS for year-round visitors to this delightfully scenic village, with its gorgeous old homes, lovely waterfront, and spectacular views across Lake Champlain. (P.S.: the ferry here runs all year, too.)

A featured item at this cafe are the delicious hand pies, filled with a variety of tasty meats and vegetarian offerings within a flaky crust.  I opted for one with a perfectly seasoned beef filling, accompanied by a generous mug of homemade squash soup. Natalie chose the same soup with a wonderfully flaky cheese scone.  

The desserts are terrific, too. Yum!!

On most visits to Essex, I like to walk around the village, admiring the splendid old brick and greystone homes, many built by wealthy shipping magnates during the 19th Century, when Lake Champlain was a major shipping route and Essex a major port.  When the railroads assumed much of that traffic and the prosperity of the village collapsed, sudden poverty prevented most of the residents in the following years from renovating these homes, so they remained in their original elegance.  Of course, they are now occupied and maintained by folks with adequate funds to maintain them in their original grandeur.

But Natalie and I had other plans today.  Natalie has trained and had substantial experience as an experiential nature educator, leading nature explorations across the U.S. for young people from toddlers to teens. Her work as a graduate student at University of Vermont is to obtain the credentials to teach in schools as well as in extramural programs. So of course, we wanted to explore the remarkable natural offerings along this stretch of Lake Champlain shore. And the perfect place to do that was just a few miles north of the village of Essex, at Noblewood Park, a natural area where the Boquet River runs into  Lake Champlain. This 69-acre forested property is owned by the Town of Willsboro and protected by a conservation easement held by The Nature Conservancy’s Adirondack Chapter.  The photo below shows  where the river joins the lake.  The view of Vermont's Green Mountains across the lake is spectacular from here!

 Among Noblewood's attractions is a beach on the lake, parts of it sandy, other parts very rocky. Natalie is shown here happily standing on the rocky stretch of the shore.

When we first arrived at this spot, we were amazed to see the masses of tiny striped mussel shells washed up on shore.  I fear, though, that these could be the shells of the very invasive Zebra Mussels infesting many of our northern lakes.  Our native lake mussels are quite a bit larger. At least these mussels were dead.

A much more welcome sight along the sandy stretches here were the rows of different colored sands.

Higher up on shore where the sand was dry, we found sparkly black sand, composed of magnetite, a magnetic form of iron ore.  The most likely source of this remarkable sand is the presence of iron mines in this region of New York.

Closer to the water we found stretches of dark-red sand, composed of pounded garnet. Large garnet mines also occur in this region, and some are still mined to provide grit for sandpaper.

I first noticed these multicolored sands on a visit to this shore four years ago. Intrigued, I searched  the internet for information that might explain the colors of these sands.  That's how I came across excerpts from Peter Kalm's account of his explorations of Lake Champlain in 1749. (Kalm was a protege of the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who sent him to North America to collect botanical specimens.) Kalm determined that the black sand contained iron and was attracted to magnets, while the red sand was composed of pounded garnets.  Here's a link to the site where I found Kalm's account. It amazes me that I was possibly standing on the exact same spot where this famous botanist was puzzled by the same colors of sand, over 275 years ago.

We had to pick our way carefully along this rocky shore, which was lined by trees in the glorious colors of autumn, as well as by willow shrubs of vivid gold.

I wish I could find another link to a site that might tell me what could be the source of all these white threads that cover many of the rocks along this shore. Some kind of very slender waterplant or algae, whitened by dryness and sunbaking?  Many of the rocks looked like this:

At least I did know the name of this prolific leafy plant popping up amid the rocks and out in the sand.  It is Silverweed (Potentilla anserina), distinguished by the silvery color of the backs of its leaves. It will have a pretty yellow flower in the summer.  I have read that this native plant, common on sandy shores like this, has numerous culinary and medicinal uses, although I can not vouch for any of those uses myself. It is said that the root tastes like sweet potato, so maybe I should give it a try. I'd have to find another spot to harvest Silverweed though, since no plants may be removed from Nature Conservancy sites like this one.

Too soon, it was time for Natalie to catch the ferry back to Vermont. Graduate students always have studies to do.   I was sad to say good-bye, but I'm glad this was such a convenient way to visit my dear granddaughter, since the ferry takes only a half-hour to cross the lake, and crossings in either direction are offered every half hour. What a fine day we had together!

And the drive back to Saratoga was mighty nice as well, passing by grassy green meadows backed by hills displaying all of the crazy-quilt colors of autumn.

I'm Still Alive! But Distracted.

Hello, dear readers, it's been quite a while since I've posted, but I hope to return to this blog very soon.  My blog has been invaded by robots, some canceling the indexing feature for dozens and dozens of past posts, and others flooding recent posts with robotic hits mounting up into the thousands that could not have been from genuine readers. (My usual readership rarely exceeds 200 for each post.) I've gone into the Google Blog settings, hoping to find a remedy, but I still haven't accomplished it. My next step will be to try to find a professional computer person to help me solve the problem. In the meantime, I have been hesitant to post a new blog that robots could invade.

But there's another issue that has got me profoundly distressed and has distracted me from tending this blog. It involves my backyard property line, defined for every year we have lived here since 1971 by the vine-covered fence pictured below.

A new home is being built on the vacant lot behind our property, and this new neighbor claims that my rear fence intrudes on his property and I will have to remove it, even though our fence has been in place since before we purchased our property in 1971, and no previous owners of the lot behind ours has ever contested its placement all these years. I am old (83) and with an ailment (emphysema) that could shorten my life. I don't want to spend even a minute of the life that remains for me, fighting with a new neighbor over some damned fence. I'm trying not to give a damn, but the issue is currently clouding my days and nights,  distracting me from thinking about posting a new blog.

I have been outdoors, anyway, and I've taken a few photos. So just to keep up the nature theme of this blog, I'm posting a few photos from where I have been and what pleasing things I have found.

Driving to Essex, NY, on Lake Champlain, the Adirondack high peaks rising along the way:

We took the ferry across Lake Champlain to visit our friends in Vermont. There were splendid mountain views both ways, Greens to the east, Adirondacks to the west.

A powerline follows the rolling hills at the base of the Palmertown Mountains that line the Hudson:

Acres of goldenrods thrive beneath this powerline, their puffy seedheads still beautiful: 

This lovely pond is in Moreau Lake State Park's newest addition, called Big Bend Preserve:

Along a Big Bend trail, my Thursday Naturalist friends and I were delighted to find this tiny orchid called Autumn Coralroot:

Small islands dot the Hudson River below the Spier Falls Dam:

In a quiet cove along the Hudson's shore, Witch Hazel's golden leaves are reflected in still water:

Witch Hazel's long ribbony petals unfurl when the weather is warm, curl up tight on colder days: 

Surprising autumn brilliance, down near the ground:

Baby Chestnut Oaks often bear leaves containing all the colors of autumn.

Some non-floral finds from two different sites:

At Woods Hollow Nature Preserve's sandplain habitat, the mushroom Sandy Laccaria sure looks sandy!

But see what vividly purple gills hide beneath those sand-colored caps! (Laccaria trullisata)

In the woods around Lake Bonita, this colorful slime mold called Wolf's Milk decorated a rotting log.