Fall Has Arrived

I was wrong in my last post when I said sweater weather wouldn't be here till November. It's been in the 50's every morning this week and I just went in to put on socks and a sweatshirt because I was chilly sitting here at the desk. Of course it doesn't help that I keep leaving the windows open at night and they are open now, the cool breeze rippling the curtains and sounding the wind chimes in the yard.

I can't help it- I want to feel that cool dry air. All I can really say about it is Woo Hoo!!

I love fall almost as much as I love spring. The changing angle of the light, shortening of the days, slow shutting down of plants and trees. Soon all will be a blaze of color as the trees begin to turn and then the light will change again and as it drops to the southern horizon it will beam through the house in the morning- tempting me to relax on the couch with a book and another cup of coffee.

BABY CRAWDAD

We did our quarterly streamwatch snap shot last Sunday. Our contribution to citizen science for the Haw River Assembly. The water levels are back down after the big flood but the debris left behind shows just how high the water went.

The stream bed was literally scoured, I haven't seen it so clean in years. And so there were fewer critters in the rocks and riffles. We still scored an excellent water quality rating for the diversity of macro invertebrates that we found. Translucent crawdads just a half an inch long, tiny brown salamanders with their gills still on, damselflies, the most delicate of all the critters we see in the creek, long legs hiked up to their sides like war of the world spiders and long feathery triple tails that float up in the water behind them like a scorpions' stinger.

The skeeters were ferocious and took a bit of the pleasure out of being down there. The water was 64 degrees, the air 68. My feet were numb after standing in it for a couple of hours and when I got home, I went straight to the shower where I let the warm water run over my puppies to thaw them out before slipping into some long pants and cozy socks.

In a bit I'll head out to water the fall seedlings, things sprouted well and are growing slowly, with the cool weather we might not get the long fall growing season that we've grown accustomed to. But I gotta say, the tender salads of mixed lettuces and arugula we've been eating are making me pretty glad to be alive.