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.

Early Autumn Beauty at Lens Lake

I usually wait until the second week of October to re-visit Lens Lake in autumn.  That's when the mountains and forests and shoreline surrounding this southern Adirondack lake are most likely to reach their peak of colorful splendor. But this year, our friend Ruth Brooks will be leaving unusually early for her winter home in Florida, and she wanted to experience at least the beginnings of this splendor before she goes.  So our mutual friend Sue Pierce and I accompanied Ruth last week to paddle this quiet lake studded with acres of Sphagnum-carpeted bogmats.

The spectacle of colorful leaves was just beginning, with Red Maples offering the opening act of the extravaganza yet to reach its peak.

While Sue and Ruth hugged the edges of the bogmats searching for some unusual mosses and liverworts they remembered thriving there in the past,  I hugged the rock-bound forested shore, enjoying the bursts of vivid color the shoreline shrubs and forest-floor plants put forth.

 

Although most of the flowering plants had retired for the winter by now, this trio of bright-yellow Grass-leaved Goldenrod (Euthamia graminifolia) still bloomed atop a fallen log, their pom-pom-like  flowerheads and slender stalks waving in the brisk wind.

The textures and colors along the shore were exquisite, punctuated by the vividly colorful fading fronds of Cinnamon Fern (Osmundastrum cinnamomeum).

The shrubs of Labrador Tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum) also looked quite colorful, with a few of their evergreen leaves turned orange, as if to match the furry orange stems of their flower stalks.

Here's a closer look at the furry orange undersides of the otherwise evergreen leaves of Labrador Tea. Not only are these leaves quite colorful, they are also quite fragrant when crushed to breathe in their scent, a fresh piney smell that I think of as the signature fragrance of bogs and fens.

Each flowering stem of the Labrador Tea was tipped with these pretty pink winter buds, which will open in spring to release clusters of small white flowers.

Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) is another shoreline shrub with evergreen leaves and twigs that  already hold the buds of next spring's flowers.  Other twigs on the same shrub held the small apple-shaped fruits produced by this year's flowers.

Here's a closer look at those small round Leatherleaf seedpods.

Sheep Laurel (Kalmia angustifolia) is one of the most abundant shrubs along the lakeshore. I could detect the remains of the spent flower clusters surmounted by terminal leaves.  And I also could find a few new flower buds atop the leafy twigs.  It always amazes me that this native shrub that normally blooms in early summer, also produces occasional flowers in the fall, but this time in clusters atop the leaves, not surmounted by them.

Here's a photo of fall-blooming Sheep Laurel flowers surmounting the leaves, which I took in mid-October at Lens Lake a year ago:

Close to shore, I encountered many remains of old tree stumps, now covered with vegetation as colorful as this vivid Sphagnum Moss, offering a blast of gorgeous color in miniature.

One of the most interesting organisms I find in the shallow waters close to shore are these masses of transparent greenish jelly.  They are formed by the colonial microscopic single-celled protozoan called Ophrydium versatile.  The individual cells line up side-by-side in the "blob"and attach themselves to a jelly-like substance they secrete.  They are symbiotic with microscopic Chlorella algae that live inside the Ophrydium cells and give the blob its green color.  Over the years of paddling on Lens Lake, I have found masses of it as small as a golfball and as large as a bathtub. The largest blob in this group was about the size of a soccer ball.

Having explored the shore for a while, I ventured out to join my friends along the edges of the bog mats. This lake is one of the most interesting I have ever paddled because of the presence of the bog mats. They stretch for acres, many of them covered with large populations of Tawny Cottongrass (Eriophorum virginicum). On this breezy day, each individual cottongrass stalk appeared to be swaying and dancing to a music all its own.

The Sphagnum mosses that cover the bogmats are vividly colorful in hues of scarlet (above) and gold (below) and also share their space with many other colorful plants. The bristly yellow spikes emerging from this bed of Sphagnum are the spore stalks of Bog Lycopodium (Lycopodiella inundata), rising above its green leaves snaking across the Sphagnum mound.

Although the flowers of Purple Pitcher Plants (Sarracenia purpurea) are fading by now, their vase-like, insect-drowning leaves remain as colorful as ever,  a vibrant scarlet lined with red-veined orange.  Note how the red and gold Sphagnums intermix, resembling the vivid colors and patterns of Persian carpets.

I missed seeing the pretty pink flowers of Marsh St. John's Wort (Hypericum virginicum) this summer, but their rosy-coral autumn leaves and deep-scarlet seedpods are just as beautiful as the flowers were.

White puffy dots of Pipewort flowers (Eriocaulon aquaticum) and the sparkly crimson leaves of Spatulate Sundew (Drosera intermedia) added beauty and interest to a muddy patch of bogmat.

As we paddled past what seemed to be an abandoned beaver lodge, I noticed many small plants had made this woody mound their home.

I have never seen the stems and leaves of the plant called Swamp Candles (Lysimachia terrestris) massed in a heap like this, but I know of no other plant that bears such red chili-pepper-shaped bulbils in the leaf axils. These bulbils will eventually fall off and sprout in the underlying mud to produce clones of the original plants. The massed leaves and bulbils looked quite beautiful atop this old beaver lodge.

Another once-flowering plant spread across the surface of the old beaver lodge, and I recognized the small size, red seedpods, and opposite oval leaves of Dwarf St. John's Wort (Hypericum mutilum). When in bloom, each of those tiny red pods was a tiny bright-yellow flower.  Considering how abundant this plant was growing here, that must have been lovely to see. But not any lovelier than the sight of its autumn-colored abundance now.

I do want to post a photo of the full crazy-quilt splendor of autumn color at Lens Lake, just in case I don't return to this special lake again this year.  (This photo was taken in mid-October a few years ago.) Pretty spectacular, I would say! But I hope our earlier paddle here gave Ruth plenty of memories of its already-vivid beauty to please her as she heads south.