Under gray skies and light drizzle, I made my way down Piney Woods Church Road this morning. I noticed quite a few leaves, and small pine branches, that had fallen overnight, including this stunning sassafras leaf. It reminds me that autumn is approaching, although a heat wave is due to strike us first, with temperatures in the mid-90s for the next week or so. I much prefer the crisp blue-sky days of mid-fall.
After a busy day in Atlanta, I dashed off to Piney Woods Church Road in the early evening. Thunder was already rumbling in the distance, and the air was amazingly muggy — akin to my experiences walking through tropical greenhouses at botanical gardens. As I continued on my way, the sunlight was dampened by approaching dark clouds. I took a few photos, including this one, then high-tailed it home again. There has been thunder nearly continuously since my return, though we have yet to experience the brunt of a storm.
So far this year, I had not found myself on Piney Woods Church Road shortly before a storm. It is not that I hadn’t hoped for this; rather, my dislike for lightning is greater than my desire for a dramatic image. Today, though, I was walking with a neighbor down the road, feeling uninspired, when the dark sky of an impending storm practically demanded to be photographed. The result is this pastoral scene, complete with blooming crepe myrtle, just a couple of minutes before the storm hit. (I had just enough time to race home along a neighbor’s pasture fence and through the woods.)
I was up early today, walking Piney Woods Church Road prior to opening the local artists’ gallery at the Serenbe Institute Community Center from 10 am to noon (where 17 of my images are currently on display). I am an infrequent morning visitor to the road, and I found myself captivated, yet again, by how sunlight selectively illuminated vines, shrubs, and trees while leaving surrounding areas still dark. The result is this photograph.
Over the past few weeks, I have occasionally observed black (female) Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterflies (Pterourus glaucus) winging their way along or across Piney Woods Church Road. Invariably, they seemed bound for somewhere else, across a field or into the woods. They steadfastly refused to pause long enough to be photographed. Now, at last, Hoary Mountainmint (Pycnanthemum incanum) is in bloom, attracting varied pollinators, including solitary wasps (mentioned in an earlier post) and butterflies. The males, and some females, are bright yellow and black. But some females are a black and blue color variant, instead — like the ones I photographed earlier this afternoon. (I saw two or three different ones, and did not bother to record which one I was photographing at a particular moment). Considering all the butterflies my backyard butterfly bush has attracted, I have seen precious few along Piney Woods Church Road, probably mostly due to the absence of flowers to pollinate. For all that the Mountain Mint is rather nondescript (apart from the upper sides of its topmost leaves, which look they have been spray-painted with white), its blossoms have brought new presences to my daily pilgrimage, and I am most grateful.
This morning, my peripatetic brother sent me a slide show of alpine and subalpine wildflowers he saw on a series of hikes high in the Wasatch Mountains east of Salt Lake City, Utah. Across my screen flashed showy flower heads in a dazzling array of colors, from violet and magenta to brilliant blues and yellows, bearing bold names like Elephant’s Head and Sky Pilot.
There is nothing like that blooming along Piney Woods Church Road right now, and I can’t help from feeling a bit envious. There are still a few bedraggled Daisy Fleabanes, and a scattering of tired Horse Nettles. And then there is the lowly Partridge Pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata), a plant with leaves evocative of the Mimosa tree that bears tiny yellow flowers a few millimeters across, which blossom out of its axils (the angle where the leaf meets the main stem) — roughly akin to humans sprouting flowers out of their armpits. The tiny flower hides itself well, and I had to get down on the dirt and gravel just to photograph one. What this plant loses in showiness, though, I suppose it makes up in sheer variety of common names: sleeping plant, prairie partridge pea, showy partridge pea, prairie senna, large-flowered sensitive-pea, dwarf cassia, partridge pea senna, locust weed, and golden cassia. Plus, according to the USDA, it bears a seed crop that is eaten by many wild animals, from bobwhites to mallard ducks. The plant also provides nectar (from glands at the base of each leaf, not from the flower) that provides a food source for bees in places where other flowering plants may be scarce. And the Common Sulfur Butterfly lays its eggs on the Partridge Pea’s leaves, so that the caterpillar larvae can feed on them. Partridge Pea is often planted for erosion control or as an ornamental. And since the plant is a legume, it also helps improve soil fertility by fixing nitrogen that other plants need.
Maybe it isn’t so lowly, after all.
Today I learned another weedy species that calls Piney Woods Church Road home: the Yellow Nutsedge (Cyperus esculentus). Native to North America and Eurasia, it is now found on all continents. This sun-loving perennial is widely despised by farmers as among the five worst agricultural weed plants in the entire world. Nevertheless, it is actually grown for its nut-like tubers in southern Europe, western Asia, and much of Africa. The tubers evidently taste like almonds, and can be eaten raw or cooked, crushed to make a cold drink, ground into flour, or even roasted and ground to make a caffeine-free substitute for coffee. Since the Yellow Nutsedge is a perennial that tolerates a variety of soil types, it seems like an excellent agricultural crop. Maybe we are calling the wrong plants “weeds”….
Walking Piney Woods Church Road late this afternoon, I noticed several new orb webs, glowing in the sunlight. I crouched down to get underneath one of them, placing myself between the web and the steep edge of the roadbank. The result was this photograph of a lovely spider, one that turned out to be a new (to me) species from a familiar genus. Earlier this year, I photographed a Spiny Micrathena (Micrathena gracilis). This one, though, is the White Micrathena (Micrathena mitrata). It is a common late-summer orb-weaving spider of the Southeastern Piedmont.
The humidity of the past few days had vanished, replaced with clear blue sky and a delightful breeze. I ventured out to Piney Woods Church Road this evening to take a few photographs in that wonderful hour before sunset. These two are my favorites from the outing.
It has been a challenging week for me — for many of us — as we collectively mourn the untimely passing of Robin Williams. His humor brought joy to the lives of many. These images remind me that even in dark times — especially in dark times — we need to keep letting the light shine through.
Thank you, Robin, and good night.
It was another incredibly muggy, rather gray afternoon in the midst of the August dog days, and I languidly and drippingly made my way down Piney Woods Church Road. I was not expecting drama or excitement, but was hoping not to fall back on another image of a leaf illuminated by the Sun (assuming sufficient sunlight in the first place) or a second day photographing a caterpillar that looks like bird poop. I was delighted to find a black winged insect with a yellow-and-black striped body dashing about, pollinating a nondescript low shrub with clusters of small white flowers along the roadside. (The shrubby plant was later identified as Pycnanthemum incanum, Hoary Mountainmint or White Horsemint.) I enthusiastically took many photographs, settling on the three below as I fell short of “the perfect photo” of the creature. Having guessed a few weeks ago that an insect was a wasp only to find out it was, in fact, a hover fly (see “Party Time at the Cleyera” for that story), I naturally assumed it was a hover fly again. Someone at Facebook’s Bug Guide kindly set me right. This time, I had a pair of solitary wasps in my sights: Monobia quadridens, a species of potter’s wasp that feeds on a mixed diet of caterpillars and pollen (top photo); and Scolia bicincta, the Double-Banded Scoliid Wasp (bottom two photos, which feeds on nectar and lays its eggs on immobilized scarab beetle grubs.
