The Urban Pantheist

Oak leaves, from both red and white oaks, on the wet zoo greeting.


Hackberry leaf with hackberry nipple galls, caused by aphid-like insect, Pachypsylla sp.


For whatever reason this buckthorn leaf is flying the pan-African colors.

Children's Zoo main barnyard.


Trying out a macro with the pns camera.

I am indebted to my friend Ale (pronounced Allie) for suggesting the Cedar Grove Cemetery for our October Urban Nature Walk. It's large, beautiful, and unique. It borders the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester on one side and the Neponset River on the other. It is well-planted with sugar maples and other plants that are aglow with autumn colors (including the Boston ivy shown here).( Read more... )

I never get over the loveliness of a carpet of sugar maple leaves.

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A little staghorn sumac grows among the bamboo. It was invisible until it put on its autumn fireworks display.


The needles of the larch, one of the relatively few deciduous conifers, turn orange before dropping off for the winter.


Sugar maples flank the "Giraffe Entrance" of the zoo.

I went to Allston with the intention of setting up my 3:00 snapshot to be a picture of Ron Jeremy, who was making an in-store appearance promoting his brand of rum. (Why does this sound like I'm describing a dream? This really happened.) There was a very short wait to meet him, so it all happened rather early. I headed home and at five minutes until three went to Turtle Pond and set up this self-timer photo.




I pulled over again, just at the turn to my street. This swampy meadow is actually drainage ditch. I wanted to show how pretty it is even in mundane spots like this. I was going to get a photo of the roadside, but just as I got out of my car, a fire engine and a police cruiser pulled over; there was a lady walking along the road and the firefighters and cops went over to talk to her. Maybe she had something happen and called 911? I ducked back toward the drainage ditch because I didn't want the emergency personnel to think I was trying to photograph the situation.

On our way to the Urban Nature Walk at Malibu Beach I saw Turtle Pond and made a snap decision to pull over. The red maples are changing color and it's starting to look pretty amazing.


Along one edge you can see the smaller understory trees yellowing up too.


But for beautiful fall color I only had to look at the top of a wooden post, where British soldier lichens matched the nearby shrubs red for red.

Maggie and Jim had school last Sunday in the Forest Hills Cemetery, and Charlie and I came along too, since it was such a nice day and it had been a while since I'd been there. This fall is turning out to be one of the best in recent memory. Amazing foliage, some but not too much rain, and no freezing cold temperatures yet.

Virginia creeper Parthenocissus quinquefolia

People with tidy property will not tolerate Virginia creeper. It climbs up fences and walls and even spreads across insufficiently mowed lawns. But it's a good native New England plant that provides berries for birds to eat in the winter, and a dazzling fall display for humans in the fall. I've been carefully tolerating it in various locations of the yard in order to ensure its survival, while diligently removing oriental bittersweet and poison ivy. Virginia creeper appeared in the fall of 2006 as 365 urban species #264.


This vine is crawling up the fence between our little side yard and the front yard.

And with the change of the seasons, the fans are put back on the shelf.