Fog Magic

 The weather that just keeps on giving.

I feel like the past week has been full of beautiful surprises.  

A snowstorm, an ice storm, extreme cold, and now intense fog, which will be followed by rain. A lot of rain.

That means the dry runs will fill with water and run over the boulders into the valleys.

This guy/gal stopped by for an hour or so. I've been seeing Baldies this week. This one perched close to the house so I kept Charlie inside mostly because he is no bigger than a cat.

It looks like this Eagle had been doing some scavenging, his/her head feathers were pretty dirty.

The fog promised to hang around all day so I decided to go out and see the forest and perhaps I'd get lucky and see something interesting.

The fog was like a light mist. Enough to think about, but not enough to avoid. The water droplets on tree branches at the edge of the forest were beautiful.

I found these tiny fruits on a sapling scrub apple tree.

And then I stood still and listened. I heard birds, but couldn't really tell where they were. Once I spotted them I was so pleased. I didn't have my good zoom lens on so I walked a bit closer and stood still.

They were feasting on Honeysuckle berries. I used arrows for them because they are so hard to see. There were more of them, but I couldn't get them all in frame.

I did manage to get just a tiny bit closer without scaring them off. Finally, one little bird! And I don't know if anyone can see it, but he has a berry in his mouth.

I don't know what it is about fog that makes me smile. Maybe it is the hush it seems to bring over the forest or perhaps it is because no one likes to go out in it because it is dull and yucky looking.

I don't thing it truly is. Fog is one of Nature's Ways of creating Art. 

Maybe we just have to be able to see it to appreciate it.

Blistering Hot & Spiders!

This was Sunday's view from the ridgetop. I usually can get a decent shot from different parts of the ridge, but this year, no one on this ridge is growing soy beans. My choices to see the sun rise this year are slim. I have to walk a mile to get an open view of the sky without corn blocking my views.

Our hollow doesn't see the sun for about an hour or so after sunrise. The sun has to come up over the trees on the ridge to shine down on us. In a way I miss places I used to live where I had a fairly clear sight of the horizon. But I'm used to it now after 29 years [this coming weekend].

The humidity and fog are intense in the valleys in the morning. The shot below is from when I drove down to the gas station in Readstown for some milk. It was taken in Infrared that was the camera I had with me. The valley fog from the river was dissipating but it still makes me stop and admire it after all of these years.

Infrared Shot

Before the sun gets into our hollow, I get the chores done and make sure the tanks for the ladies have fresh water. The mules are spending a lot of time down in the Buckthorn Forest where the sun doesn't shine and there always seems to be a bit of air movement.

Our mornings have been like this muggy, foggy, and a very high dew point ---> that leads to the discomfort of being outside. If one's sweat doesn't evaporate, one does not cool off.

I did the smart thing on the hottest of days. I organized and re-organized my files regarding our financial paperwork. I need to get together with my daughter in law and have her teach [or reteach me how to do a spreadsheet]. I could do this at one time, but can't remember how to do it now. I learned over 30 years ago.

I did stuff I normally don't do until the first day of fall. I organized my 'junk' room and cleaned it up again. So I can make another mess.

My early morning walk this morning to check fences revealed that one of the critters was in a spot she wasn't supposed to be in. Tsk, tsk. After some chasing, I got her settled back with the others and moved on to go into the neighbor's large and wild meadow.

This was the view.... 

A huge meadow filled with spider webs from Orb Weavers or Orb Spiders. 

I saw it the day before when I didn't have a camera with me. I couldn't resist climbing through the fence [I'm allowed to hike there whenever I please] and explore.

I found lots of empty webs, and quite a few occupied webs.

The spiders don't bother you if you bump into their web, they just scuttle off into the grasses or bush they built on.

Imagine that they remake or build a new web each day -- or night? How industrious is that?

I used to be so afraid of spiders until I met a 9 year old girl who wanted to become an entomologist. She and I would go around and look at spiders and any other insect we could find together. I started photographing them with her and of course, I found a new and exciting subject to 'shoot'.

This stunning beauty is in one of my wilder flower gardens. I won't go in and pull weeds or anything until she is done for the season. 

I'm going to go out early again tomorrow morning and each morning to try and get glimpses of these beautiful creatures. At least until they are done for the season. 

I find them to be so amazing and so oddly beautiful.

Meanwhile...

It is August and that means the daylight each day changes quickly. 

August through November are the three months of the year where I can't seem to sit still. The weather is changing, the hours of daylight are changing.

I begin to chase the changes in the forest like I do with early spring. 

As the heavy growth of gooseberry bushes begin to drop leaves and other plants in the undergrowth begin to drop seeds and wilt, I find moving through parts of the forest easier.

This morning I got a fog notice on the weather app. I knew it would be foggy in the valleys because it cooled off so much overnight. I hoped the fog would drift up through the forest.

Off I went as soon as the sun began to peek through the trees. It was humid but not really foggy.

Our busy road:

On the way back home I took a different way and...

.... found some Indian Pipes 
aka Ghost Plants or the Scientific name:
Monotropa Uniflora .

I think these are some of the coolest plants that can be found in a forest.

Boy was I pleased to see that the high humidity, even though the fog dissipated quickly. It provided a beautiful morning atmosphere.

My favorite maple tree in the woods northeast of us.

The sights were pretty amazing as was the light.

I also stopped and took an opportunity to do something that has been on my mind since I got those little dragons.

An idea came to mind when I was looking at my collection of rocks. My son gave me a really cool rock years ago.  To me it looked liked a petrified egg.

I'm pretty sure ... well, this has to be...

I mean...

what else could it be...

but 

a Dragon Egg?

However....

I think someone else must be interested in it!

I spotted two Rock Monsters!

Glaciator and Sulfrix to be exact! 

Oh No!

Silly me. How I do love to play.

I think I should keep an eye out for Princess Sara and her Knight to see if they will come to the rescue in the Big Wild Forest.

😉

Wow...

Monday was such an incredible day. I woke up just before dawn. As is my routine, I go out to check the fence lines.

I've been trying to ID grasses so this bejeweled grass head caught my eye.

I don't know what grass type it is. I have to admit that I am horrible at ID'ing common grasses.

I spent about 10 minutes or so just trying to get a good shot of the droplets of dew. In the left side of the photo there is a mosquito that has had a meal sitting on the grass!

You might have to click on the photo to see it. This skeeter probably is the same one that was chewing on my forehead while I was trying to manually focus on the droplets.

I don't know what kind of bee this could be. I looked up 'tiny green bees' and ended up with an answer that ID'd it as a sweat bee. Apparently they also love nectar from flowers. I learned from an Entomology site that hunting for insects is best done in the early -- early mornings. Look for insects waiting on plants where the morning sun will shine and warm them up.
 

When Charlie and I got back from checking the forest fence, the sun was breaking up the fog over the neighbor's meadow. This is the view across the fence from us to the east. That tree was heavy last year with apples. 

This is one of my favorite wild apple trees.

Looks like I'll have lots of apples again this August to pick and juice up for jelly!

Another view through the fence line to the east. Monday was going to be hot and humid.

Not only did Monday feel hot and humid, it felt like ... as my Grandmother would say:

It is going to storm.

As is happened, the storm did edge around us and dump on a town about 10 miles away with heavy rain, wind, and hail.

We lucked out.

It was Tuesday that it was so 'stupid' hot, that I stayed inside and read a book.

Thursday specials...

What a sunrise!

Or should I say...Wow, what a non sunrise!

In fact, there was absolutely no sun orb in the sky at the time of sunrise. My weather app said haze, poor air quality, and some fog.

This is what I saw:

[Taken with my Olympus camera]

However, all was not lost:

An hour later the sun shone through briefly in an odd color:

I went back to the ridge to check the mail and saw this after sunrise. It looks like some scene out of a Science Fiction Movie doesn't it?

This field was corn last year and it should be rotated to soybeans, but I'm not sure. It was sprayed and planted, but it doesn't look too great. The fog/haze finally got some orangish color to it.

The air quality lifted somewhat so I went out and worked at the forest 'pasture'. The forest is deceiving in that there actually is a lot for the mules to graze on. This section is not used in the fall and winter. It is too far out for me to check on everyone easily.

All summer I take a daily walk to check the fencing. The deer don't seem to knock things off the insulators much during the summer.

Mule/Deer trail:

Oyster Mushrooms near the creek in a dry run which has moist air flowing through it. The red arrows point to the delicious fungi.

The girls moving about in the summer meadow after they'd explored the steep woods.

Unless we get some good rain, our black berries in the woods won't be very plentiful.

I am happy to report that A. Corn finally met Fern. 

A. Corn was a bit shy, so he ... well... did this --->

Fern pulled a wild strawberry out of her shoulder bag and ... well... it was a nice date.

I think they will be a pretty happy couple. Neither one of them look lonely any more.

The year changed

I used to get really excited about staying up until midnight and watching Dick Clark's count down. 

I don't anymore. The new year is another way of starting January all over. I know that sounds pretty dumb and stupid. But for some people, the holidays are bummers. The expectations that on January 1st things are suddenly going to change is well,

stupid.

January can be a contentious month for winter weather. It can be awful or fun depending on where you live and how you like or dislike winter.  

I woke up early and thought to self. Hey Self, have a cuppa coffee and walk to the ridge with Charlie. It isn't too wickedly cold and perhaps the sunrise will be beautiful for the first day of 2023.

And we did.

I walked across the cropland to the eastern edge where the land is highest and waited. Charlie wandered around the corn stubble smelling deer and searching for mice or voles.

Maybe there wasn't much that was incredible about changing a number from 22 to 23. But the feeling of standing there in the still morning air watching the light change felt pretty incredible.

As it rose the predicted fog/haze from the high humidity of the previous day started to work its magic on the land.

I stayed longer than I intended too. Rich's coffee was made and I hadn't left a note but I figured he'd know that I walked up to the ridge as it is my usual routine.

I stayed a bit longer. I like this little tree. In the summer it gets lost with all the weeds and crops growing up on each side of it.

I walked home.

2023 officially had begun.

Let the adventures begin...

Waking up early

 

I haven't always been an early riser, but now I am. It is frustrating to have your eyeballs blast open while it is still dark outside and your body tells you "Get UP"!

I even try for a few moments to lull myself back to sleep. But it doesn't come.

So I decided to make good use of my early wake up time. I made some decafe coffee [yeah, decafe...but I am used to it now] and decided to go watch the sunrise over the ponds at Kickapoo Valley Reserve. 

The skies were brilliantly clear and beautiful with stars twinkling merrily.

Yeah.

Until I got into the river valley, that is.

Then.

Fog.

Dense fog.

But that was fine too. Not what I planned but not unexpected for this area especially near the Kickapoo River. 

I parked by the dam site and got out to look up. I guess I wasn't going to see a brilliant sunrise with the colors and clouds reflecting off the ponds as planned. It was murky and dark. I thought about getting back in the 'Ru and driving to another spot where I could climb a bluff. But tossed that aside.

After all, the dense fog was a challenge. What could I do with it?

The first thing I wanted to try was to catch the 'essence' of the predawn morning with a photo of Bridge 18. I had to use my headlamp to light up the bridge. But with a timed exposure, it didn't look very dark!

This is one of the things with fog, it throws the camera sensors into a frenzy of confusion. After an 8 second exposure it looked as if I'd just taken it on a cloudy day.

I tried a shot of the river but it looked weirdly bluish and strange. This was a 77 second shot.

I was tickled with the outcome though, because it was so strange looking and at least you could see how thick the fog was.

I walked down to the ponds and the fog got even more intense. 

In one photography class I'd taken, I was criticized for not planning far enough ahead. I was told that I should never depend on serendipity for a good photo. But here I was just having a fun time playing in the fog when I hadn't meant to.

I couldn't help myself but to be enchanted by the terrible conditions. So I thought Minimalism! How could I do that?

Easy, Nature was showing me how to do it. 
I didn't achieve true Minimalism though until I shot the middle of the pond like this:

Full version of the same scene:

I spent some time waiting to see if the sun would penetrate the fog. 

It felt weird to be this close to the Visitor Center and not see another soul. However it was still before 6AM, so I guess I was the weird one.

So I walked around the other little ponds to see if I could come up with something interesting. The western pond that has the blind in it was totally obscured by river fog. 

Eventually the fog started to brighten up and I decided to head home.

Parting shot of Bridge 18:

I didn't get out of fog until I got home. I had to leave the river valley. 

So I think .... hmmm, next time get up on the bluff and look down on the fog and gaze at the sky!

I was home before hubby woke up and all was good.

Whew. 

Guess I'll go to bed early again tonight!

Daze of Summer

We are so lucky to live in such a beautiful area. I have to drive or walk to the ridge to see a sunrise view like this. I can also see a more limited view in the meadow north of our house.

We had a dense fog warning on Wednesday and I thought it might provide me with an interesting landscape.

It was pretty neat. As the sun rose, the fog got more intense. I wished I was on the bluff watching this, but I knew the drive to there would have been horrible with the low river valley fog of the Kickapoo. Driving in semi darkness in thick fog is no fun.

There was the sun...and then...it got very thick!

One of the cool things that occurs where I live is that I can go to the highest ridge point and watch the sun rise up. Then drive a quarter of a mile and watch it rise again. When it is done on the ridge, I can go home and watch for it to come over the trees. 

Thursday morning I noted that there were supposed to be some clouds in the sky early. I took the 'Ru and headed towards the end of the dead end. This spot is generally pretty nice for sunrises in July and through early October.

I am thrilled to say that this year the fields to the North and East are planted with soybeans. That means I can watch sunrises unobscured by 9 foot or taller field corn.

The gnats were absolutely vicious even with the gusty winds. I was able to jump into the car to avoid them and then jump back out to take a shot.

Finally I decided enough was enough and headed back home. I stopped just before I left the ridge and as always, was pleasantly surprised.

The swallows had awakened and were getting down to business!

I rarely go up to the ridge any more in the evenings which I used to do when I rode every night with my mule Badger. 
I miss those summer nights of me sitting on my big mule and watching the sun go down.

I do however, enjoy those mornings when I get out and enjoy the world as it wakes up.

There is nothing quite like a new sunrise to raise the spirits.