The Flowers of Fall

The simple pleasures of  August, 

 the new green leaves,

The rein orchids, 
found above the firs,
 in high oak meadows.

 Seaside cliffs show
 the pale green of maiden-hair ferns,

with crisp white lichen,
 next to brilliant patches 
of moss and sedum.

In the coastal forest,
a single delight, Moneses.

On sandy shorelines 
the migrants come
 to join the September harvest

This year a rain brings 
blossoming fungi,

brilliant and exotic 

in their floral beauty,

Sometimes strange in form,

brilliant in colour,

Some are choice for the palate,
others for the eye.

One twilight evening
in a frost-chilled forest,

a perfect silence descends

and leads me 

to a shelf of Oyster Mushrooms,

still perfectly frozen.

Now darkness emerges
from deep green forest lairs,
where
 in silence, 
keen eyes and ears

follow my path.

Golden Girl

Her golden curls 

fall 

in soft spirals

over the meadow,

textures that grip my imagination

and tug at my heart

I see her form reclining

along the edge of fall leaves,

in the gold and red of the meadow.

She prepares a feast. 

A fascination of fungi, 
the beautiful,

the exotic

the elegant 
and the delicious.

Haunted

Her memory tugs

at my heart

like a trout not yet free.

 Even among

my favorite things,

I hear her voice

 among the ferns.

 

Surrounded by her

favorite green,

I am only then 

distracted

 from 

her memory. 

jsc 

December: "At This Time"

The cool December breezes chop the waters off Trial Island. The sea is a pewter gray and the eagles stand watch in paired comfort.

In Beacon Hill Park the male Mallards are coyly advertising their nuptial plumage to interested females and competing males. Their dances begin with a shake of the tail which propagates a circlet of expanding ripples.

The fall grasses have turned to bronze and curl like a poem and dry in the cool winter sun.

At Cattle Point my camera finds a jewel in this golden-yellow flower above a green and azure bed.

I hear the Pileated Woodpecker first and search to find her chipping away at a dead fir. She ignores my cautious approach as she is interested in finding food on this cold day.

Mary Vine Creek is a mass of ice-formed stalactites and conglomerates. Look closely and you can see the fingerprints of water etched in the icy surface.

Dormant leaves still cling to the spiny rose. The remnants of green a memory of the summer past.

Although colder in December, in Beacon Hill Park we can still enjoy Anna's Hummingbirds that perch like jewels on the bare winter branches

Joining the robins that are feasting on the last red berries is a Varied Thrush.

Filoplumes of frost erupt from a water logged branch in the hills above Durrance Lake.

November: "At This Time"

November brings cool wet days. On Mount Wells, the mist rises up and wraps the firs in wet gray cloaks.

 

The lichens that drape the Garry Oak have lost their dry brittle look and are flourishing in the moist fall air.

Along the Chain Islands migrating shorebirds dot the reefs. 
Hundreds of Dunlins accompanied by Black Turnstones, Surfbirds, and Black-bellied Plovers perch shoulder to shoulder on the rocks. Three species of cormorants, Double-crested, Brant's, and Pelagic, stand like dark sentinels among flock.

Three Short-billed Dowitchers remained for a week in Oak Bay before continuing on to their wintering grounds in Mexico.

The last scarlet leaves of the Choke Cherry are brilliant against the forests of Matheson Lake.

Hooded Mergansers and other ducks are returning from their breeding grounds to winter along the coast of Vancouver Island.

Harlequin Ducks gather along the rocky shoreline where they dive for snails, limpets and chitons.

 

 

The Red-breasted Nuthatch, the Winter Wren and the Song Sparrow are our winter companions in the Gary Oak meadows of Victoria.  

 

The tidal rush is strong past Beechy Head creating eddies and backwaters that shelter and feed the fish, the birds, sea lions, seals and orcas.

In the Sooke Hills, the forest is now wet, wet, wet. Mary Vine Creek is high and fast as water rushes over the rocks.

The Bird's Nest fungus waits for the rains of fall to release its spores. The eggs within the nest are spore packets waiting for a raindrop to splash them out.