End Of Summer

It’s not over yet, but nature is beginning to bear witness to the change of season…

One thing I like about the rose hip bush is that it sometimes has fruit and new fresh flower buds going at the same time.

What really speaks of the turn of season is the Rowan berries turning red:

 
28 July

 
17 August

The Trees Are Happy Again

Do you remember my “ghost trees” from a month ago? If you want to refresh your memory, click on the link. The post was about Bird Cherry Ermine caterpillars eating all the leaves of the Bird Cherry trees and spinning weird-looking webs all over the place to protect themselves, leaving the trees all grey and ghostlike. I felt shudders down my back every time I passed – so I have been avoiding that path for a while.

Until today. By now I did suspect that the caterpillars would be gone – turned into new little moths. What I had not expected was that at first sight no one would believe there had been anything at all going on here only a few weeks ago!!! The trees have all grown new fresh green leaves; and the berries are turning black (see the picture in the bottom left hand corner of the collage), bearing witness that we are going towards the maturity of the autumn season soon. (Seems the caterpillars don’t eat the fruits, only the leaves?) Only on close inspection could I detect a few remnants of old deserted webs here and there (see the picture to the right.)

I gave the opinion in the previous post that “Some things In Nature are just Strange”. Have to add now that not only is Nature strange, but it also hides (and sometimes reveals) amazing abilities to repair itself!

---

²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that^[i] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

From Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 8

       You will go out in joy
       and be led forth in peace;
       the mountains and hills
       will burst into song before you,
       and all the trees of the field
       will clap their hands.

    Isaiah 55:12

Uno’s Animals: It’s a Wild Life

 

 

Uno often went out into the woods and just sat there observing things; and animals would come up to him and let him get close to them.

His attitude to his own art was that he just “released” the animal shapes that were already there in the pieces of wood he found. He would study the piece of wood and see what was “hidden” in it.

Ghost Trees

Some trees this summer are not happy. First impression is that they’re all dead, because all the leaves are gone.

On closer inspection, it seems that some of the smaller and creepier of God’s creations are VERY happy this year: The Bird Cherry Ermine caterpillars.

Because the caterpillars make weblike nests, they can eat a whole tree bare unhindered.

“Yucky” warning for the following pictures
(I can’t believe I even took them):

 
Nest of caterpillars

When they’ve finished off one tree, they move on to the next by using the old rope trick … There were lots of these “ropes” of caterpillars hanging on to each other, swinging from the branches of the bare tree.

But they are choosy little buggers. Apparently they only eat Bird Cherry trees; nothing else is to their taste.

I pass these Bird Cherry trees on one of my usual walks. I never actually knew what kind of trees they were until just recently when they started to appear ghost-like. Now I get a creepy feeling every time. I catch myself kind of huddling as I pass - as if that would help!

Here’s a picture of Mummy (or perhaps Daddy?) Bird Cherry Ermine Moth, from the Wikipedia article. Judging from the number of caterpillars in those trees, I guess later in the summer we should have like a gazillion of these flying around…? The wingspan according to Wiki is 16-25 mm so quite small. And harmless except to this one kind of tree. Apparently though, even though all the leaves may get eaten, the tree does not actually die from the attack.

I was trying to come up with some kind of parallel to human life from all this but I fail. Some things in Nature are just Strange!

Swedish name of the tree: Hägg.
Insect: Häggspinnmal.

Endless Tree Views

I'm just having too much fun with the Tourist View of Sweden (see the two previous posts) to quite let go of it yet. So I thought that before I go on to other things, I'll finish off this mini-series with some pictures to show there is actually some variation even in the tree views.



I do have some sympathy with the writers of that Travel Guide, though, because there really is A LOT of just this along some roads... Spruce and fir, and nothing else in sight, for miles and miles and miles... Especially when you go up north; but also in some areas further south.



However, we also do have decidious forests (dropping their leaves over the winter):



Beech forests are more common in the south.



Birch forests you can find both in the south and far up in the north.



Mixed kinds of forest vegetation.

I do not go travelling very far or wide any more, and the pictures in these three posts are all from the area around where I live, in the province of Västergötland. (Link to Wikipedia article.)

A Sunny Snowy Countryside Walk (2)

Behind the Mill, a path goes on over a small island, embraced by two different arms of the river. We continued our walk across it to the next bridge. The area is a nature reserve. In the summer, the island is a sort of meadow, with quite a few rare plants. This winter, it is a vast white field.

Hopefully the information on this signpost was not too important.

Half way across the island.

The other arm of the river.
This turned out to have its own set of ice formations.

On the other side of the river, the path leads on into the wood.

We did not go further this time, but turned around...

... and walked back towards the Mill.

Leisure

Earlier this week, GB at Eagleton Notes had a post about making time to "stop and stare". He also referred back to an earlier post in which he included in full the poem from which that expression comes - Leisure, by W H Davies. I liked that poem so much that I printed it out. I'd also like to repeat it here:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.


No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.


No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.


No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.


No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.


No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.


A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

This morning, I went for a walk. My plan was to go for a stroll first, and on the way back pop in at the supermarket to pick up a few things. I'm a town girl, and going to the supermarket on a Sunday doesn't usually bother me, if it happens to be practical...

But today, Nature overwhelmed me with the most spectacular show I think I ever saw. I had to stop and stare!!! I'll pay my respects to the supermarket another day. Today, by the time I got as far as that place on my walk, I could no longer bring myself to break the atmosphere of tranquility and beauty by going in there. It would actually have felt like a sacrilege...

First, there was the morning mist on the river, lifting gently...





... revealing the whole bridge railing full of spiderwebs, a long row of them, one after the other, dew drops making them look like jewellery in the low morning sunlight...








So I passed the supermarket, without going in.

Instead I turned around, and went back again along the river...

Then, under the high alder trees, suddenly there was the song and dance of hundreds of birds, high up among the branches and leaves...



They were much too high up to let me identify them properly, or catch them with the camera... They were quite small. The ones I caught a glimpse of looked like great tits. This surprised me though, because those usually stay here for the winter. At least we see some of them then, too. But I've never, at any time of the year, seen like a hundred or more of them together before, behaving like this.The overwhelming impression was a concert of praise and excitement, like a last gathering and rejoicing over the autumn colours, before leaving to go south for the winter. I have never seen anything like it. I have never heard anything like it. They were fluttering about all the time. At the same time, leaves were dropping from the trees. Sometimes, you could not distinguish whether that yellowish thing headed towards the ground was a leaf or a bird.

Again, I stopped for a long, long time and just stared!
Finally I went home, because my feet were getting cold from all the standing still...



At home, I looked up the great tit  (Parus major) in my bird book. It says most of them stay here over winter. But some do leave, "especially certain years"... because of lack of food. Made me wonder if it was that slush-attack the day before yesterday that made them decide to leave! Or if they can sense in other ways that it is going to be a bad winter...? Anyway, it was a really impressive farewell-concert...

More pictures from today's walk in my Picture Book. I took I-know-not-how-many photos of the spider webs, because it was hard to determine how they would actually come out...! More might be coming up in future posts...

For everything there is a season

We've had a week of sunny early autumn here. The summer colours are fading out and autumn slowly creeping in. Flowers are withering and the trees have started dropping a few leaves, but the green is still dominating the picture. We've had chilly mornings, but sunny and warm afternoons - with lots of butterflies still fluttering about in the town parks! (see yesterday's post)

The sunny weather is probably coming to an end - it started to rain this afternoon. But just a couple of hours earlier, while the sun was still shining, my brother and I (and my brother's dog!) managed to 'squeeze in' a walk in the countryside and woods near where our dad lives. (And I had my camera with me!)

Between sunny walks, it has been a busy week with some "heavy" things to do. I finally got myself together to order the headstone for my mother's grave - one of those things I've kept putting off. I did that on Friday, still without having visited her grave since the funeral, which was over three months ago now. I can't get there by myself; and those short weekends that my brother has been here (at my dad's) in between, there have been a thousand things to do. (P has been to the grave but without me.) Today, however, we finally managed to fit that in as well.

Since mum's funeral in June, only one more grave has been added to that row, quite recently... There were lots of flowers, candles and a photograph at the temporary cross on that grave. It was a bit of a shock when we realized this must be the grave of a teenage girl whose tragic death was in the papers recently - she was murdered by a boy her own age (which really makes it a double tragedy).

Mum got to be 79. She is missed, and her death was kind of sudden, but not a tragedy: She had come to the end of her life. But that young girl's life was brutally taken from her, and much too soon... How her friends and family are dealing with that, I can't even begin to imagine!

 
On our walk later in the day, we passed a Neolithic cist tomb from c. 1800-1500 b.C. That again gives some perspective... It's been a strange day, with a lot of mixed feelings!
 
 

 

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8