November

 Hi everyone! It's November!Ah....November.

I LOVE November (despite the oh so annoying time change. Do we really want sunset at 3.30? Really?).
Am I the only one who loves this time of year?

(That said my marsh photos today are less than stellar. It was very windy so everything is out of focus. May be Santa will bring me a better camera this year?)

Anyway, back to the beauty of mid-autumn, blustery beautiful November. November is just about perfect here! Yes we have a few frigid nor'easters and the wind blows strong and chill. Kind of exciting? A definite change from hot sunny summer days.

Time to stay home and cook or sew. Stormy days are treasured here.

 But most days are warm-ish, with brilliant blue skies and amber sunsets; the nights are cold and perfect for sleeping deep and well. And the month includes that special-est of holidays, Thanksgiving---a day of family and friends together, with almost no commercial hype attached.

One of my best childhood memories is about November:
I was maybe seven. Every Saturday my mother would shop at a local market that had fresh produce and a traditional German butcher shop. I'd tag along---my parents weren't ones for spending the weekends shuffling us to soccer or horseback lessons, like some of my friends got to do. My brother and dad ''worked on cars'' and my mom and I did the weekly chores.

 In the butcher shop there was a rack of cheap toys: "impulse buys"--- and all fall I'd yearned for a tiny doll I found there. She was just a soft plastic or rubber doll, her face was painted on. But she had big blue eyes and  gorgeous long red chestnut ''saran'' hair, in a pony tail and she came with a tiny pearly blue brush and comb and miniature rubber bands. She was dressed in a yellow dotted swiss ''organdy'' dress and wore little white knickers; she had painted on black mary jane shoes. She hung there on that crummy rack with stupid finger puzzles and candy cigarettes, in a little plastic bag with a paper top. I even remember the paper being red and cream, once white I suppose.

Oh I loved her! I wanted her so bad. I just knew she was the perfect size---6"---for sewing tiny clothes.

Not only didn't my mom do soccer she was not one to give in to begging for special treats, even if they cost only pennies. [I bet back then that doll cost like 99 cents or less?]. We got lavish treats for Easter and Christmas and our birthdays. Period.
But that day---I don't know why---(had we gone to the dentist?) ---my mom gave in and bought me that doll. I LOVED her, and sewed for her for many years. She had a golden bangle bracelet, some sort of large washer I'd found. Yes I was a scavenger even back then !

I named her November. Because she came home with me on that brilliantly blue windy cold day, when the high clouds scudded over the prairie, followed by magical cloud shadows and masses of swirling red leaves.

I hope my mother felt vindicated, giving in just that once? Or maybe she neither knew nor cared. Maybe she was sad because I loved this penny doll even more than I loved my beautiful Madame Alexander "Cissie" and "Ginny" (though I loved them too). When you're seven you don't notice these things.



marsh mallow pods

A small thing. But special to me.

Did you have a favorite doll? Besides Barbie? Did you sew for her? Or maybe someone sewed the tiny clothes for you?

unpopped bittersweet

love

lizzy

gone to the beach....

 

Mo is cold, poor California puppy.
I had to turn the heat on for him!
Two months early, sigh.

Nature Walk - Dunes and Marshes

 

 

 

Hi! What a beautiful day it is today! The sky is pristine blue but it's windy and there's just a hint of autumn mist lying low in the hollows. Big waves! Perhaps the oddly balmy air and high surf are from  Hurricane Gonzalo even though that storm is thousands of miles away.

The air is filled with flocks of little black birds, perhaps blackbirds and starlings. For some reason they keep flying east, which is, uh, wrong, as that would eventually send them north.
One day this week all the neighborhood shrubbery was busy with yellow rumped warblers as they too head south. They're just little nervous brown birds, but distinctive because they have the single bright chartreuse spot on their backs above their tails.

The oystercatchers are still here. The peeps---piping plovers and sanderlings have disappeared, though I expect the sanderlings will reappear.
This is the roosting area of a plover flock. They dig tiny hollows as if to mark their nests for next spring:

(The large footprints are maybe OCs'.)
 No egrets in the marshes. Though they have acquired a new fancy sign!

But one night, as Mo and I took a late walk, I looked up and saw a V of big white birds, bright against the black sky. Swans or snow geese. They often migrate at night. I love seeing them on their silent journey.
Other sightings...a hawk over the marsh.

And these funny crows who come to the beach each fall.

The dunes are lush. They roll on forever, it seems. I only walk the margins now. The dunes are still fragile and rebuilding.

 

 

 

 

 

Now that the bird fencing is gone, I can discover intersting treasure, like this driftwood. (My beach doesn't get much driftwood, so I notice it.)

 

 

 

Goldenrod and beach roses are still in full bloom.

 

I find tiny weird dune mushrooms that appear in the sand after a rain.

 

 

 

 

 

By the boardwalk, little footprints, maybe a seaside sparrow, looking for dunes grass seeds. Or  perhaps a toad? The spadefoot toads roost under the boardwalk.

We had the oddest toads sighting one evening a few weeks ago. Teeny tiny toads! Everywhere! Lots of them, no bigger than your little fingernail. 3/8"?
At first I thought they were spiders. It seems local toads evolve from tadpoles to this tiny version, though I've never seen them before. And so strange that they'd hatch and---metamorphose?---in the fall instead of the spring.
Mo was fascinated, then scared, as he chased one and it leaped high in his face.
Can you find the toad?

He's in the right angle, top, of the seawall, above the black pebble.

The marsh is still quite green. Just a hint of amber in the faraway phragmite heads by the saltpond.

 

 

 

In the higher margins the tangled weeds form a medieval tapestry as the days and season go by.

 

 

Enjoy your weekend! I hope you can get out for your own nature walk. Go slow and look closely? Here at the beach we're expecting a beach day! I'll bring my Flag blocks and my tattered sandchair down to water's edge for one last time.

this week's recipe: http://civilizedcavemancooking.com/entrees/beef/bacon-beef-butternut-squash-2/  [sub ground turkey if you like?]
And it was delicious, but I forgot to take pix. Enjoy!



me! me! Yum, yum!

love

lizzy
 
gone to the beach...

Salt Meadow Prairie

Hi! I hope everyone's having a wonderful weekend!

A few days before H. Irene arrived I made a special trip to the marshside bird sanctuary, knowing the  marsh might be destroyed or damaged by the storm. (no.)

The prairie garden was beautiful, in full late summer bloom. An almost medieval tapestry of flowers, so dense and rich and colorful....

I love seeing this oddly out-of-place meadow grow each year. It includes drifts of tallgrass prairie grasses not native to my sandbar island...[the marsh is beyond the trees...]

Someone, no idea who---decided that this area should have a Midwestern grasses and wild flowers landscape.

Ecologically incorrect but so charming. Notice the diversity! Bachelor Buttons, coreopsis, black-eyed susan, pink coneflowers, queen anne's lace, Californai poppies..and more!

...and it speaks to my prairie childhood...

A thunderstorm loomed the entire time...

And lightning flashed far away over the  mainland...

The marsh itself was quiet but the osprey family was still there in its nest. At least two adults and I think three young ones, almost grown but still home with Mama.

One of the big ospreys noticed me, standing alone on the berm perhaps a half mile or more away [their eyesight must be amazing...] and he came for a look at the human intruder. Maybe a little closer-up and personal than I really want to see an osprey!

The marsh survived the various storms, as always.

And the ospreys disappeared ahead of the coming tropical winds. The grass is slowly turning amber....

...autumn awaits.

love


                 lizzy


gone to the beach