The Changing Landscape

I am constantly amazed how much the landscape can change, especially at the turning of a season, if I walk somewhere else for just a few days, and then return to the bog. I had to check out some new conservation areas to take my walking group to this week, a wonderfully pleasant task, but when I returned to the bog yesterday, I was struck by how much had altered. It was as if fall, “fell” last weekend. Which I suppose it usually does. We are all glorious color through October, then, if a wild wind and rain event happen right before Halloween, which it did, the color is transferred from trees to ground.

When I walked the bog last week, in one section of the woods, the trail was still surrounded with the bright yellow, practically glowing, leaves of the Wild Sarsaparilla. Now those leaves are curled up and browning and many plants are already lying on the forest floor well on their way to becoming mulch.

The Sweet Pepperbush also was a curtain of yellow. This common shrub from the White Alder family spreads by runners and so it lines the edge of an overgrown bog, and also either side of a small trail I sometimes take. Now, it too, was stripped of leaves making the trail seem no longer hedged-in but more expansive.

On the ground, the white bacteria that spreads over the oak leaves and looks like frost was much in evidence. This will help to break down those tough oak fibers returning nutrients back for the trees to recycle into new growth next spring. See if you notice it on your walks.

On the bog itself, the now harvested and combed looking cranberry plants have changed from that olive drab green of summer into the deep maroon that will remain all the way until next May or June. It has always struck me, and others no doubt, that the fall colors on Cape Cod are more reminiscent of an Oriental rug, than the brilliant splash of day-glow that Vermont trees can be. The combination of the deep red of the cranberry bogs, the green of the pitch pine, the russet and scarlet of the oaks, will be colors that linger for perhaps another month, before one needs to find beauty in shades of gray.

Around the pond, the Tupelos are bare, and now, if you haven’t looked closely at them before, you can see how their branches go at right angles to the tree and tend to be all twisted at the top like a Japanese Bonsai. I love their shape. They were the first to bring on the bright red leaves of fall but they are also the first to go. Red Maples also have shed their leaves, and now the color around the pond is restricted to the High blush blueberry, whose red is still reflected in the water.

But all these bare branches are great at uncovering secrets too. Those sneaky crows that skulked through the trees to their nests, that built fake nests to throw us off, now, those nests are out for all to see. But which one was the real one still is a bit of a mystery. One really large nest is right on that path where the Sarsaparilla grew. By its size I would have to think someone used it, most likely the crows. If it was, I can be pretty embarrassed that I walked under it so often and knew nothing. Chalk another victory up for what is inarguably our smartest bird.

The calendar then has flipped to November- the world alters itself again. Admission is free to this show; you just have to step out your door to take a front row seat. Ok, maybe, if you live in a city, you have to go beyond your front door, but wherever there are plants, the show is on.