The End of Summer

By the end of August we already saw changes in the woods. The briar leaves had turned yellow and had started to fall. There were even some spots of color where tree leaves were starting to change. The end of summer here and the beginning of fall were extremely dry, hardly any rain at all.

Even though there had been very little rain, mushrooms were still starting to appear. These mushrooms popped up on the dirt road to our house.

There were still flowers like these tiny delicate wildflowers.

A summer storm brought down three trees across roads on our property. There was a nice sized red oak on the rocks road. A large dead pine fell across the county line road near our home. A large red oak fell across the county line road near our southern border. I cleared a pathway through the roads first and then went back and cut up the red oaks for firewood. This photo shows the large red oak that fell across the county line road being cut and split. The tree where it crossed the road was about 20 inches in diameter. A big tree—there’s now more than a month’s worth of firewood stacked by the road for next winter.

We came across this large caterpillar in our yard. If you look closely at the head, there are horns. The horns and spikes make it seem formidable. The insect was about 2 inches long.

December 1, 2022