Summer Solstice Pictures

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We celebrated Summer Solstice last weekend by taking the dogs into the woods around West Roxbury Quarry.  Since this isn't officially public land, we figured we wouldn't bump into other dogs there.  The sun was celebrating, too, blazing high in the sky; the plants roared with green, devouring the sunshine.  It seemed impossibly lush and overgrown.

The abandoned cars are beginning to disappear into the forest.  A few more decades of rain and they'll be iron-rich spots in the soil.


Does chromium ever decompose--will it oxidize or form other compounds eventually, or will these bumpers be shiny fossils waiting for future paleontologists?






A sassafras sapling has decided to grow in the engine compartment.


Did I mention that the sun was BLAZING?  Up on these old quarried cliffs there was a bit of a breeze.


The dogs still found it almost unbearable.  But relief would come a few pictures later.


Up on the rocks we found flattened beer cans, plastic slag from 'campfires', and an unfamiliar wildflower.  As it turns out, Corydalis sempervirens is a pioneer plant that specializes in recently burned open rocky habitat.  I love that after almost 4 decades of life in New England, there are still new life forms to encounter.


Down a little lower on the rocks, the thick root of a birch shows how plants can grow on bare stone.  Lichen grows on rock and root alike.


The triumph of photosynthesis is complete!  Yellow waterlilies use the surface of a water-filled quarry hole as a platform for their life-building.  Charlie finds the swimming to be rife with entanglements.


On our way out we pass the derelict building we saw last time.  Somehow on the way in, I utterly missed seeing it in the enveloping green.
Click the West Roxbury Quarry link up above to see what it looked like 8 weeks previous.  It seems important to state what may be obvious:  These pictures were all taken in the City of Boston.