Last Hike of the Summer

Even though I was really busy this weekend, getting ready to go down to Vassar College on Sunday to attend our granddaughter's graduation, I'm glad I made the time Saturday to go walking at Moreau Lake State Park with my friend Sue.  Turns out, this will be the last hike I take for quite some time, since I fell on slippery pavement at Vassar and broke my kneecap.  I'm scheduled for surgery to repair my knee next week, followed by a long recovery time that will certainly curtail my hiking and paddling for most of the rest of the summer.  Yep.  A real bummer!  But at least the rain that made that pavement slick has started to fill some of our ponds, like Mud Pond pictured above.  Sue and I had never seen the water fallen so low.

Low water meant broad beaches around Moreau Lake, where we found evidence of many turtle nests. Unfortunately, many turtle predators also had found those nests and had made a meal of the eggs.  As Sue explained to me (Sue knows quite a bit about turtles), only about one out of every hundred baby turtles survives into adulthood.  As we well know, all critters gotta eat!

Because of sustained drought conditions through most of May, there were very few wildflowers along the shore.  We did find some Indian Hemp starting to bloom, but not much else.

I take that back.  There were LOTS of Small Forget-me-nots, our native species of this pretty blue flower, scattered across the damp sand.  But you had to look close to see them, they are so very tiny.

It was a fine day for finding critters, though, including this gorgeously colored Garter Snake stretched out across the top of a beaver lodge.

Usually, a walk around the lake starts hundreds of frogs to leaping away from our footfalls, but we saw nary a one on Saturday.  We did see one little American Toad, though, and a really cute one, at that.

Dragonflies were zooming everywhere, and occasionally coming to rest.  This fallen log provided a very attractive spot for masses of Chalk-fronted Corporals to take a break.

Ah, but the prize of our lakeside walk was this gorgeous butterfly that landed right beneath our feet to sip on something it craved within the damp sand.  Although it is called a White Admiral, this is really one of two color phases of the Red-spotted Purple Butterfly (Limenitis arthemis).

The underside of this butterfly's wings reveal the red spots that are typical of both color phases of Limenitis arthemis.  I was not able to take a clear photo of the underwings, but my friend Sue sure did.  You can see her fine photos of this butterfly (and more!) on her wonderful nature blog called Water-lily (watrlily.blogspot.com).

Not so pretty as that butterfly, but here's my red-spotted purple knee.  One of these days it will be back to normal, and I will return to the woods and waterways again.  For the next couple of months, however, I doubt I will be able to do much but hobble about stiff-legged while the kneecap knits back together.   No hiking or paddling in my near future, which means I will have to think of some other ways to post my blog.  In the meantime, though, I encourage my loyal readers to revisit old posts, where they can discover what's in bloom where and approximately on what dates.  There's more than six years' worth of archives here, so happy hunting, dear friends!