Dawn Redwood Tree

 

This is a dawn redwood tree. Isn't it pretty? It has an interesting history. In 1941, a tree genus was described from fossils that were around 5 million years old. A few years later, small populations of that fossil tree were found alive in central China. It was not extinct, just very rare. People call it a living fossil. Its common name, dawn redwood, refers to its early fossil record.

In 1951, dawn redwoods became commercially available in the United States. They have since been planted widely. There are two on my suburban New Jersey street. I noticed this one in a nearby park.

The tree has male and female cones. These are female, or seed-bearing cones.

These are male, pollen-bearing cones. Click to enlarge.

Although the dawn redwood is a conifer with needles and cones, it is not an evergreen. It sheds its needles in autumn and grows new ones in spring. So, yes, it has a nice Christmas tree shape, but it won't be green for the holidays.

Christmas Nutcrackers

Just nutcrackers today. Click to enlarge.

Do you know what goes Oh Oh Oh?

Um, no. 

Santa Claus walking backwards!

Resting nutcracker face.

Santa Claus is coming anyway.

Leftovers!

 

The annual feast of holiday lawn pumpkins is on!

Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Autumn decorations... all tasty.

These are for me, right? Click to enlarge.

Well, maybe just a nibble.

And they have seeds inside! Gotta love the holidays!

Have a Great Thanksgiving!

 

Here's to a fun week of preparations for the feast. Some of New Jersey's wild turkeys, above, are slipping quietly into the woods. They can disappear remarkably fast for such big birds.

But this guy... a member of the flock that lives in my little suburban town, was showing off during breeding season last year. They look different when they want to be seen. Click to enlarge.

National Homemade Bread Day

 

Today is National Homemade Bread Day! Guess how I spent the morning.

Click on this sentence for a good basic white bread recipe from King Arthur Flour. Here's my ball of dough.

Here are the two loaves that ball of dough made. I covered them and let them rise for an hour. I  sprinkled corn meal on the pan for a crispy bottom crust.

One hour later -- risen, floured, scored and ready to bake.

After baking! The house smells wonderful.

This is the more beautiful of the two. Looks good, doesn't it?

Perfect inside. The whole thing took about 2 and half hours from gathering the ingredients to this. Click to enlarge.

Buttered while still warm.

Second slice with homemade peach jam. And that is how one celebrates National Homemade Bread Day. Try it!

November

November Night, by Adelaide Crapsey

Listen...

With faint dry sound, 

Like steps of passing ghosts,

The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees

And fall. 

I remember collecting autumn leaves when I was a child, head down, looking for the most interesting, the most beautiful. I'm still doing it, but with photos now. Love this red and purple one. Click to enlarge. A few more...

"How beautifully the leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days." John Burroughs

Daylight Savings Time Ends Today

Daylight Savings Time ends today. Check your clocks. Set them back an hour if they have not already done it themselves. Prepare for darkness at dinnertime.

And, as the sun sets over Philadelphia at 4:55, ask yourself this question from 

Dr. Seuss: 

"How did it get so late so soon? 

It's night before it's afternoon. 

December is here before it's June. 

My goodness how the time has flewn. 

How did it get so late so soon?"

Four Days Until Halloween!

 

Behold, dead Atlantic white cedar trees standing in the shallow water of an abandoned cranberry bog in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. This place is sometimes called a "ghost forest." The smoke on the left is coming from a distant forest fire. Click to enlarge. Does it give you a spooky feeling?

You are now ready for Halloween. Go forth and get candy!

Autumn

 

Song for Autumn, by Mary Oliver 

Don't you imagine the leaves dream now

how comfortable it will be to touch

the earth instead of the 

nothingness of wind? And don't you think 

the trees, especially those with

mossy hollows, are beginning to look for

the birds that will come -- six, a dozen -- to sleep

inside their bodies? And don't you hear 

the goldenrod whispering goodbye,

the everlasting being crowned with the first 

tuffets of snow? The pond

stiffens and the white field over which

the fox runs so quickly brings out

its long blue shadows. The wind wags

its many tails. And in the evening

the piled firewood shifts a little, 

longing to be on its way. 

Best Insects in My Mint Garden

I have five kinds of mint in my little backyard garden. Behold, above, a glass of Mediterranean style lemonade with mint, garnished with a dried lemon slice and fresh mint sprigs. As an added benefit, throughout the summer, whenever I went to pick mint for drinks or tea or decoration, there were insects busy at the flowers. I watched, judged, and photographed.

Here at the end of the growing season, I am bestowing the first ever annual Best-Insect-in-the-Mint-Garden award. This little eastern tailed blue butterfly is the winner! The best mint insect of the summer of 2024! It was a delight to see several of them, none much bigger than an inch across with wings wide open, all flitting from flower to flower at once. Click to enlarge.

In the event that the eastern tailed blue butterfly cannot fulfill its duties, the runner-up, shown here, will step in. Let's hear it for the two-spotted scoliid wasp. Yay!

Here's a photo with different lighting on different flowers. See where it gets its common name?

And an honorable mention goes to this European honey bee for maintaining a dramatic pose while I hovered nearby with my camera pointed at her. Well done, bee, and congratulations to all of this year's mint visitors.

Halloween is Coming!

 

How about a few humerus jokes? What, for instance, is half the diameter of a skeletal circle?

The radius! Click to enlarge.

And these guys. Looks like they know how to eat, drink, and be scary. I'll bet the food at that place is served on bone china. Do you suppose they'll pay the bill with cryptocurrency? Bone appétit!

No bones about it, though, spider skeletons are the scariest. Because spiders don't have bones inside, they are supported by standard invertebrate exoskeletons. It's not only scary, it's a grave mistake...

Do you know what a spider with 20 eyes is called? A spiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiider.

And do you know what spiders eat in Paris? French flies!

Finally, and perhaps not soon enough -- do you know what the last skeleton on Earth would be called? The end-o-skeleton. :-)