Same Old

When you walk the same paths frequently, you meet others who do the same. Today I bumped into a man that I hadn't seen for a while, and after some small talk was exchanged, he asked me if I had seen a fox lately. I said that I had not, unfortunately, and he said he had not either. He shook his head and said, "Same old, same old". After we parted I continued to think about that statement, and wondered how many people walk this path and don't actually see it.

Here are some things that were not the "same old" today:

Not only was there a different occupant on the dead log at the edge of the river, it was doing something different; apparently this is the heron form of panting called gular fluttering which helps to cool the bird.

After a noticeable absence, cormorants were on the river today. I thought it interesting that not only are the birds all facing east towards the sun, but one of the names for a group of cormorants is a "sunning". I also read that there is an ongoing effort to gain approval for the culling of the cormorant population in Ontario. For these birds, at least,another day in the sun.

I was granted an unexpected, momentary audience with this orange sulphur butterfly. So many lovely details..

The poison ivy is turning colour., and it seemed like it would be good it it flew its three red flags all season instead of hiding with all the other green leafy things. This plant has snuck out of the forest to the edge of the path. Very sneaky. I did learn though, that when you stop and kneel to look at one thing, you sometimes see something else that is interesting. Like this..

 And this; more fungus growing on tree stumps carved by a local beaver.

 

I saw a new style of wasp nest, one with a turret. Someone decided to change the blueprint of the standard nest design. I later read that an old wive's tale suggests that the length of the nest correlates to the length of the winter. I wish those old wives would knit or something!

Today I learned that it is indeed possible to eat a nut while hanging upside down by your toes on a tree. A valuable life skill, no doubt. I admired it greatly.

I noticed that the Motherwort has gone to seed, and learned that if something has little spikes, it just might be sharp and prick an investigating finger. And, apparently "wort" is an old word which indicated a plant or herb which could be edible or medicinal. It could also be a sweet liquid that is part of the process of making malt liquor. I don't think that one applies. It seemed important to know. 

This fuzzy, black fellow was making his way up the trunk of a tree. I wondered if he was a Woolly Bear, you know, the black and orange caterpillar that predicts the severity of winter by the width of the orange band. Should that be the case we would be facing another ice age. It is more likely that this is the caterpillar form of the Giant Leopard Moth. Whew!

Flowering spurge is plentiful on sections of this path. Today I noticed a change in some of the flowers. They appeared to have sprouted little green balloons. It seems that this plant has both male and female flowers on each plant, and in the autumn the female flowers produce a little seed pod that has three sections, each containing a seed. Infinite variety.

These leaves are stunning. I was curious as to why the leaf was red and the veins were green, but in searching I got side-tracked by how many lovely plants have green leaves but red veins, like chard, sorrel and heuchera. Returning to the mystery at hand though, colours like red, yellow and brown, are already present in the leaf but chlorophyll masks them. When the presence of chlorophyll begins to dwindle in the fall, the colours begin to show, and in these leaves the chlorophyll is concentrated mostly in the nutrient pathways of the leaf. OR, woodland sprites painted them this way during the night.

As I walked back to my car I stopped again by the big tree to look down at the dead log. Why? Because the view always changes. The heron was standing out by the island and the log was now covered with sunning turtles. Not a sunning of turtles, that was cormorants. This would be a bale or nest of turtles. I do not know why.

To me a path is never the "same old", not even if I walk it every day. There is always something new if you look.

“[Walking] is the perfect way of moving if you want to see into the life of things. It is the one way of freedom. If you go to a place on anything but your own feet you are taken there too fast, and miss a thousand delicate joys that were waiting for you by the wayside.” 

Elizabeth von Arnim