Off the Couch, Back Outdoors!

When I woke up yesterday morning, it was as if a cloud had moved away from the sun.  I actually felt pretty good, after 10 days of upper-respiratory misery that was threatening to move down lower into my lungs. But it seems to have stopped. I didn't yet feel ready to climb a mountain, but I did feel well enough to take an easy walk along that same rolling powerline height I had featured in my last post. I wondered if it would appear as spectacularly gorgeous as it had on that October day 10 years ago.  

Well, not quite. (Check the same view in my previous post.) But gorgeous enough, even if the foliage is not as brilliant this fall.  But the rolling hills, surrounding mountains, and multicolor landscape sure offered a more pleasing sight than the four walls of my sick rooms.

 

The Hay-scented Ferns were as lovely as ever, even in their decline, with curving fronds of lime green, golden yellow, and cinnamon brown.

The summer flowers may be but a memory now, but their seed-holding remnants offered nearly as much of beauty as their flowers had when in bloom.  In fact, if I did not know that these pretty tufts of Pearly Everlasting held seeds instead of disc florets, I would have assumed I was still looking at flowers instead of  seedheads.

These arching flowerheads of Rough Goldenrod still graced the landscape, even after trading their yellow florets for tufts of fluffy seeds.

Virgin's Bower vines had long-ago dropped their demure white flowers to make way for these voluminous puffs of silky down,  each delicate golden fiber shining in the sun.

Okay, I will grant that the cardboard-brown chambered domes of Wild Bergamot's seedheads could not compete for loveliness with the puffs of pale-purple, arching florets their stiff slender stems once held. But they still displayed a sturdy and handsome presence, standing tall above the green and gold grasses of this high meadow. Extremely minty-smelling, too, if you pinch one and breathe in its scent.

From up here, I could see across the trees that lined the Hudson River below, all the way to the tops of the Luzerne Mountains that rise from the far riverbanks. It sure looked as if there will be lots more colorful foliage to come, judging from all the green.

 

I could also see patches of bright blue shining through breaks in the branches of the trees directly below.  Time to make my way down these hills to the shore of the river.

Ah, my beautiful Hudson, winding among forested mountains, its waters studded with tiny islands, some big enough to be home to tall pines, others offering just enough space for a ruddy patch of Marsh St. John's Wort to find a home.

An American Hornbeam arched its boughs over the water, each twig adorned with dangling clusters of coral-colored seedpods swaying with the breeze.

I have described these American Hornbeam seed clusters as "stacks of angel wings" that adorn their branches as prettily as any ornament on a Christmas tree.

As I walked back to my car, I glimpsed this wild Asparagus plant along Spier Falls Road, with feathery green leaves and bright-red berries.

Here's a closer look at that beautiful Asparagus fruit. Too bad the shiny red balls won't persist until Christmas. I have read that birds love to eat them.

Seeing tons of invasive Oriental Bittersweet climbing the trees along Spier Falls Road reminded me to go visit a small patch of our native American Climbing Bittersweet that grows sprawled on the ground under a powerline that runs just north of Mud Pond, so that's where I went next.  I saw a nice patch of its bright-orange fruit almost as soon as I stepped from my car.  The orange husks will soon split and peel back to reveal shiny scarlet berries within. This native bittersweet grows rarer and rarer as the invasive non-native encroaches on its habitat. I feel very lucky to know where this grows.

Growing along a powerline trail near the bittersweet, these shiny blue-black fruits on hot-pink pedicels looked especially beautiful, backed by the mottled-rose and lime-green leaves of Maple-leaved Viburnum. The green on the leaves will eventually yield to an intense coral-rose, a unique color that distinguishes this forest shrub from all other colorful shrubs in the autumn woods.

In search of even more colorful leaves, I ventured further along this powerline trail to see if I could find some clumps of baby oaks, which are noted for producing leaves that possess every color of autumn in each single leaf.  Sadly, lots of rain this past summer encouraged lots of fungi and molds that have disfigured many tree leaves.  Most of the baby oaks I found were quite unlovely, but this little clump was less disfigured than others, and its leaves displayed something of that multicolored magnificence I remembered.

What pretty golden puffs atop this plant! Since the stalks were bare of leaves, I had little evidence for parsing out its species, but I did recall that earlier this year I found many plants of our native Rough Hawkweed growing here at this same site.  So I bet that's what this plant is. Most other species of hawkweed bear seedheads that are not so yellow.

Then, what a surprise, to find nearby some Rough Hawkweed plants still bearing leaves and still producing flowers!

It was no surprise, though, to find a nearby Witch Hazel shrub in full bloom. This is probably our latest flowering shrub to open its flowers, by October at its earliest, usually.  I have even found it still in bloom in December.  On cold days, when frost might damage its flowers, those long ribbon-like petals curl up tight, only to unfurl again on balmier sun-warmed days. Having freshly opened, the flowers still bore their delightful faint scent, as fresh as the smell of clean laundry dried in the sun and breeze.

I was so grateful my respiratory infection had cleared by now, so that I could breathe in deeply the refreshing scent of Witch Hazel. And wander high rolling hills again, and gaze with delight at our most beautiful woodsy, watery world, so far from so many worlds entrenched in war. Or ravaged by earthquakes, wildfires, or raging floods. I sure do feel awfully lucky.