Indian Summer Idyll

It was short but sweet, this stretch of balmy weather, with soft warm air and an autumn sun pouring down its slanting golden light.  The forecasts call for blustery rain tomorrow, more bluster for Friday with maybe some snow, so I'm glad I dropped everything to spend the past few days outdoors, either on foot or afloat.  Monday's paddle on the Hudson was followed on Tuesday afternoon by a walk around Moreau Lake, its silvery water still as glass, reflecting the mountains and sky.

Although a thin cloud cover filled the sky by the time I reached the far shore of the lake,  the richly red blueberry bushes glowed as if lit by a light of their own.

Wouldn't they make a beautiful wallpaper pattern?

To complement that wallpaper, perhaps a sofa upholstered in green velvet the same shade as that on this fungus.

I don't know any other insect this beautiful baby blue color with such a fluffy little fanny.  This is the winged form of those Wooly Alder Aphids I found clustered on an alder twig along the river.

The sky was as blue as that aphid's back when I slipped my canoe into the Hudson today, entering the water behind a sheltering island, where the breeze that ruffled the open river never touched the glassy surface back here.

My little boat moved as silently as a snake, as I wound my way around rocky promontories and into the quiet coves that form the shoreline along this part of the river.

I found the same stand of coppery understory beeches I photographed some years ago, and try as I might, I could not reproduce that photograph (shown below).   The sunlight today created too many stark shadows, so I couldn't achieve the same diffuse glow of my original photo, which remains one of my very favorites.

I found these speckled Red Oak leaves enchanting, as they floated over sky-blue water and above some pretty little underwater plants with green leaves and tiny pink flowers.

What plant could this be, that blooms underwater?  It sure looks like some kind of Smartweed, but I don't know of any Smartweed species that flowers while actually submerged under several inches of water.  Water Smartweed blooms can be inundated in times of flood, but mostly their flowers protrude above the surface.  These were growing quite happily down under the water, and they were not evident in this cove during the summer.

This rocky promontory I call Picnic Point, since several of its boulders have nice flat surfaces for holding a picnic lunch.  Also, those two blazing red shrubs provide handfuls of juicy sweet blueberries during the summer.

I was curious to see if I could find the seed pods of Great St. Johnswort, a rather unusual flower that  grows on one of the islands along this stretch, and nowhere else that I know of.  Sure enough, there they were, right where I found the blooming flowers last summer.  The fat pods had split open already, so I'm guessing the seeds have been spilled.  Let's hope they find a congenial spot to sprout.  I did pick one pod that still had some tiny flecks inside, and I plan to give it to someone who might cultivate the seeds and perhaps increase the population of this beautiful and increasingly rare flower.  (To see a photo of this flower in bloom, click here to go to my post for July 25.)