Just Another Gray Morning

Here comes another gray morning

A not-so-good morning after all

She says, "Well, what am I to do today?

Too much time, so much sorrow.

She hears the baby waking up downstairs

She hears the foghorn calling out across the sound

Repetition in the morning air

It's just too much to bear, and no one seems to care

If another day goes creepin' by

Empty and ashamed

Like an old unwanted memory no one can claim

The clouds put their heads on the ground

She's gonna have to come down.

-James Taylor, "Another Gray Morning"

Yesterday, a nondescript gray flannel day, like all the other countless nondescript gray flannel days in the Mid Ohio Valley, I was treated to GRAUPEL!!

This is graupel. It's formed when water droplets freeze around a snowflake on its way down to earth, making a foamy little ball.

You've probably seen it and thought it was just pelleted snow or freezing rain. Well, isn't it nice to have a groovy German term for it? I think so. I am fully in support of meteorological arcana like "graupel" and "derecho" and "Kelvin-Helmholtz Wave Clouds" entering common parlance, and I hereby pledge to continue to foment this trend, because the more bizarre and interesting words one can add to one's everyday speech, the better. Like my DOD said, "Keep 'em guessing."

I noticed on this gray and grumpy morning that sycamore leaves catch graupel best of all, their quilted venation making runnels and channels for the tiny dots. 

The leaves themselves are so beautiful, so huge--ten inches across! I stood outside one very dark night in November and listened to them hitting the ground all around me. It was actually scary-freaky, because they sounded like large manila folders being thrown from great height, and I couldn't see them, and feared being klonked on the head by one.

It's just the leaves, I said. Just the leaves.

Like graupel is just ice. But then again, it's more than that. It's ice, drawing leaf outlines on leaves--this one a poplar! My hike devolved into about 50 deep knee bends as I found pattern after pattern, tracing the visual music across the orchard floor. It was marvelous.

So out I went this morning, hoping for more graupel, but the leaves were clean, and the moss had no dusting of stars.

It was a good thing I had my dawg along, because he doesn't mind another gray day.

            

This is what happens when you ask Curtis if he wants to go into the woods. After years of wheedling, trying to get my husband and (younger)  kids to come into the woods with me, it's so nice to have someone who is always just thrilled to come along! His enthusiasm for life is so affirming. Going deep into the woods is his favorite thing of all. 

I'm reaping the benefits of some hard trail cutting the past few weeks. It's SO nice to be able to grab my trek stick and NOT the clippers; to just go and enjoy an open path where once there were briars and trippy sticks and logs and roots. Its so worth the hours it takes it to clear yourself a trail and the minor maintenance to then keep it open. If you're going to go into the woods, it behooves you to make it easy on yourself.

I wound my way down into the west valley, wondering if I should read the messages on fallen logs, take them to heart. There had to be some meaning there. 

 

VOWN!

MOBE

Further down the holler, some beautiful things clinging to beech trunk and rock, both hairy

and crustose. I love that word, crustose. I honestly don't even really know if these are both lichens, but the thought that they are colonies of living things, perhaps very old, thrills me. UPDATE: what a wonderful world! From the comments section, by Jame: That's a liverwort on your beech! Frullania forms beautiful dendritic patterns on tree bark.

Curtis had long since gone off on a far-ranging adventure as he is wont to do, looking for deer gutpiles and chasing rabbits and squirrels. That's par for the course--he ditches me. But then he also comes back to find me. It can't be hard; I move so slowly. It's always so nice when he picks up my trail and comes barging down through the leaves to get a hug and give me a kiss. Even though he has deer poop breath.

I stood awhile in the sacred circle where we'd had our family cookout so many winters and sleeps ago

and thought about how I never, ever would have imagined myself standing here alone so many years later, with all that happened, having happened. 

But still I was glad to be here, so glad. 

I headed straight up the steep hill out of the holler, making for a gasline cut at the top. I am enjoying my trek stick because I can stump my way up hills like that (and down them) so much faster and surer than I can without it. 

And I saw something white in the leaves, and headed over to pick it up and put it in my pocket, because litter doesn't stay on my land.

And it wasn't litter at all! It was beauty! This nondescript gray morning was a frost flower morning!

A lone pennyroyal, growing on an open slope in the woods, was festooned with frost flowers! 

You can see why, at a distance, I thought it was litter. 

I hurried up the slope to the open cut where pennyroyal grows wild. 

There I beheld the largest bloom of frost flowers I'd ever seen. Click on this picture to get an idea...there were hundreds of them! 

Frost flowers only appear on still, humid mornings when the temperature is a few degrees below freezing. I think, though I don't know, that it helps to have the perennial roots of the plant producing them be alive and still extracting water from the soil. The way I theorize it, the roots are likely still pulling water up, and the lower stem dutifully sends the water up the stem of the pennyroyal (or wingstem, or aster). But hard freezes have shattered the stem tissue, creating paper-thin cracks in the stem. That good rootwater oozes out of the cracks, freezing on contact with the air, making seashells and ribbon candy and angels and tubes. It's their midwinter bloom, I guess.

One possible  factor that might also be at play is fungus. There is a fungus that's been found in "hair ice" that extrudes from rotting wood in Germany, called Exidiopsis effusa. What a great name! Here's an article about it. http://www.sci-news.com/biology/science-hair-ice-exidiopsis-effusa-03051.html

The scientists found that using fungicide or dunking ice-producing wood in hot water--killing the fungus--stopped the production of hair ice. And they found lignin and tannin--exudates of fungus--in their hair ice samples, so they think the fungus is necessary for the weird hair ice to form. 

I tasted part of a frost flower to see if I could taste any lignins or tannins, but it was nothing but ice to my tongue.

Hair ice on beech, photo by Diana Hofmann

Now, I'm not at all sure that a fungus is at play here in my frost flowers, but it might be. New goal: to find hair ice. Thanks to my friend Charlotte --on Instagram she's @charlottes_woods_witchery

who knows so much and shares so nicely

for planting this fungus in my path.

Until I find some hair ice, I'm down on my squatters, photographing frost flowers, seashells, and caterpillars, and wondering if there's a fungus among'em. 

This one plant had a whole flock of flowers!

I loved this one, a symmetrical curl. I wondered how long it took to form. Could you set up a timelapse camera on them, or do they form in the dark? If I went out before light, would they be there? Not sure I'll find out, as I'm having an awful time getting out of bed these dark winter mornings. The covers and flannel sheets are sooo nice. 

It's enough to find frost flowers when I find them. It's a gift.

I like to say, you have to watch those gray mornings when you don't feel like getting out of bed. You can find graupel.

and flowers

bows and flows of angel hair

and a Christmas tree for fairies. 

Heres' what it feels like to find a whole field of frost flowers in bloom in December. 

                    

Finding Frost Flowers

It was a typical crisp blue morning walk, November 18, with Curtis in high spirits and me following his lead. I love how his bells give a Doppler effect as he comes tearing by like a tiger train. 

 I never know where we'll end up on beautiful mornings like this. We often end up in strange places on gray mornings, too. 

It was a rare morning with the temperature around 28 degrees in this beautiful, protracted autumn. I was drawn down a trail I've recently re-opened, one I last cut when Phoebe was in a backpack on my back! I remember swinging the boltcutter style clippers as her sweet drowsy weight shifted from side to side. I was a pack mule then, and I still work like one. I have this idea that I'm going to cut trails to all my favorite places on our land. It's rather a big job, but oh what a delight it is to be able to walk without getting whipped and snagged! I'll git 'r' dun!! The trick is taking tiny bites of the 1,000 pound pumpkin,  not trying to eat it all at once. 

We came out into a badly overgrown gasline cut and my eye was drawn to white structures in the weeds.

First I saw one

and another, and another...

and it's fitting that this one is shaped like a heart, because I love love love finding these little things on a frosty morning!

Frost flowers! FROST FLOWERS!!

blooming only when the nights dip into the 20's (Fahrenheit)

followed by bright sun (or not, as I think about it; I don't think the sun has much to do with it, except that sudden dips of temperature like that generally are followed by bright sunny mornings)

The best ones look like ribbon candy. Far as I can figure out, frost flowers form when very cold temperatures shatter the cells in a still-moist plant stem, creating thin fissures through which water and

sap ooze. The liquid freezes as it is extruded, and the plant just keeps taking up water, probably through capillary action, because at that point, like the Wicked Witch, it's not only merely dead; it's really most sincerely dead. 

Now, I've seen people claim that the only plant that makes frost flowers is wingstem Actinomeris alternifolia, and I've seen them on wingstem, but I've also seen them on asters. And these were a first for me, because they were all on pennyroyal Hedeoma pulegioides! (Update: Nope, this is American Dittany, Cunila origanoides)

This is Ditanny,  after frost, of course. It smells divine, even then. A very potent inhabitant of dry  clearings. 

My father Dale Z. called it pennyroyal, and pronounced it "PENnaroyal" and, as was his way, sought out herbal drops containing it, many decades before that was considered a cool thing to do.  He was fascinated with horehound, too! My dad, man. What a guy. So I knew the smell of "pennaroyal" somewhere in my bones, knew that's what it had to be the first time I ran into it in this clearing back in about 1993. "Huh!" I sez to meself. "That must be pennaroyal!" And I was close, but it's dittany.

 I'm so curious now, to know what makes a plant eligible to produce frost flowers. Wingstem and asters are composites, but dittany is a mint. I looked and couldn't find frost flowers on anything but pennyroyal in this clearing. More data needed. More data is always needed.

Frost flowers, to be quite honest, look at first glance like Styrofoam packing peanuts scattered in the leaf litter, and I'm sure many people don't even think twice to wonder what they are when they see them, but do please think twice, and get down and admire them before they're gone.

The best ones look like ribbon candy, spun silk. You have to get down on all fours to shoot them properly, on elbows and stomach to shoot them best

and I am happy to say that I am still vulnerable to dog bombing while trying to make photos of them.

This dog is not as liable to step on my subjects as the first one was, but like The Bacon, he seems to linger in the background longer than might be expected or even proper

and what are the chances that a photographer would end up with two dogs in a row who are terrible camera hogs

who know exactly what they're doing and even leer a bit as they zip through my careful compositions

two dogs who are shameless, deliberate photobombers

unless that first little photobomber somehow arranged to have another sent my way

or perhaps is coaching him from his pile of fleecy blankies inside a Dogburger of softness in the Great Beyond?

It's thoughts like this that flit through my mind when certain dogs do certain things that fill me with joy 

and make me wonder if somebody somewhere is pulling strings so I won't miss him so terribly on those cold crispy mornings that Chet, having practically no fur on his undercarriage, wasn't so keen on

the mornings Curtis loves like I do.

Liam is Twenty!

I went out this morning, as I always do, looking for signs. The time of your birth, 7:24 am, came and went while I was waiting for the light to rise up in the east, enough to get me out in the frozen meadow with Curtis.

While you lay sleeping in Morgantown, I surrendered to insomnia and started my day at four-something, scribbling down a page of truths that I may as well start facing. It's true, I worry about being the only anchor for you and Phoebe in this world, the source of your comfort and stability and support. I think about you two with every single thing I do: the responsibility of being It. The One. I want to be here for your forever, guiding you and talking you through everything life is throwing at you. You're both far away, but it's as if you're in the next room to me, so close do I feel to you. Your joy is my joy, and your sadness is mine, too.

 Finally, it was light enough to go out and face the morning, and I was glad it was clear and frosty.

Every single morning, I head out to your dad's grave, rain, snow, wind, sun, it doesn't matter. And every morning I wish it were otherwise, and that I could see him, give him a hug, hear his voice instead of standing mutely in a little clearing in the meadow, unanswered, staring at the blasted stems of coneflower and liatris.  I wish that for you, for me, for the world. Nothing about the way things are makes sense to me, and I know you and Phoebe are struggling with it, too. It's your twentieth birthday, and even if I did balloons, which I don't, no amount of balloons and frosting is going to cover that truth over.

Because we can't have him, we look for signs: thin consolation, but something. He is strong, and I feel him pushing through the heavy curtains of time and space, trying to get back to us. I had just gotten out the front door this morning of your birthday when I heard the pair of ravens that has been coming by intermittently of late. I feel lucky to be on their route. It's so good to have ravens around--it's been several years since I've seen them here, and this pair just popped up this month. I feel incredibly honored when they look down at me, register me, even talk back to me when they see me. About three weeks ago, when I was running out on our road, one came flapping over to me so low I could hear the silken swish of its wings. Now why would a raven stoop to that, if it hadn't been sent? In my all-too- human longing, I imagine that your dad is sending them. Why wouldn't he pick a raven as his messenger? Strong and wicked smart and funny, too. Here they are, this morning's Liam's-birthday ravens, and please forgive my hopeful honking. It's what I do to keep them around, probably chuckling at me, for a little longer. Always, I wish they would stay a little longer. 


          

Here we are. The bonsai we planted just before you left for school is turning red at last. And the little patch of white to the right of it bore further investigation.

Oh! They're dirtflowers, frost flowers, pushing up through wet clay on this 20 degree night, to greet me in the morning.

White, like your beautiful hair, and a little unruly.  Another little message? Why not?

Ah, there's our boy, looking back at me through my Dear Old Dad's icy blue eyes, and that shock of hair like frost flowers.

 

  Curtis wanted to be in the picture. 

He pose, for you.

I am so very proud of you, learning to paint, and so good at it already. Who knew that years of markers would just segue so smoothly into oils? I don't think I could pull this painting off. Always, you amaze me. Helps to have subject matter you like, doesn't it? Liam, you just light up my life with your sweet, funny, sensitive and hugely empathetic soul.

Hey, beautiful, beautiful boy. I hope you have a wonderful day. I'm sorry this isn't a light, fun hi-ho kind of birthday post, but it's what came out. It's a letter from home, with frost flowers and birthday ravens and one little dog made of sugar peanuts.  Just know that your mama is full of love and hope for you as you make your way into the world. We're going to make it together.

Curtis told me he had a little dog-skit to perform for you, for your birthday, so I just stood back and let the camera roll. He says to be happy, to run loops around it all, and go as fast as you can and try to impress everybody! Oh, and he says to smile! And wag a lot. Love you sweet Liam; you're the best son I could ever dream up. Can't wait to throw my arms around you. Enjoy your concert tonight!!

     
     

A Flower for November

 

 I woke to another dull, dark, gray November morning today. Well, they're all dark, because I wake up so blinkin' early, but then I wait, knowing better than to even look out the window hoping for stars here in the mid-Ohio valley in November.

I got suited up to take a hike and somewhere in between thinking about persimmons and cottage cheese for breakfast and filling the feeders with raw trembling hands, I lost heart. I looked at the weather forecast and decided to write a blogpost instead, and hope that the sun might show its Garboey face sometime later on this afternoon. Hope's fading, it's noon, but you never know.

November forces me to wait for better weather. And when I don't feel like waiting, it makes me go anyway, and appreciate what I'm given. I decided to write up my last hike on November 14, down my beloved Dean's Fork. It's the best example of a November hike you could come up with. It had lessons on flexibility, going with the flow, and watching for miracles.

First lesson of November hikes: Go anyway. You might be surprised. The light was awful, but this witch hazel in full bloom glowed through the darkness. As frustrating as it was to try to get a photo that conveyed its beauty, I tried, and failed.

 

OK. So we'll go for the close-up. Its lobed leaves still clung the the twigs. Its gentle, fresh mimeo-ink scent tickled my nostalgia centers, sending me back to test day in elementary school, when we all huffed the still-wet sheets of purple-blue ink that our teachers had just run off on the enormous crank-powered machine in the lounge. 

 

 

 

  This contemplation of witch hazel gave me to wonder why on earth a plant would flower at a time of year when its petals can be frozen solid, as these were. What pollinators could it be trying to attract? Clearly, with its strong, sweet, strange scent, it's after something.

It was Vermont naturalist/writer Bernd Heinrich, who as usual is walking well ahead of me down the wooded trail, who wondered the same thing. Heinrich figured out that the pollinators of witch hazel are doing their work under cover of night. They're owlet or winter moths, of the family Noctuidae, who are able to generate heat by shivering, and doing so, they get the job done. And being Bernd, he wrote it up for a scientific journal, for those of us who wonder later to find and cite.
Heinrich, Bernd. 1987a. “Thermoregulation by Winter-Flying Endothermic Moths.” Journal of Experimental Biology 127 (1): 313–32. 
My thanks to Venerable Trees blog for answering a question that popped into my head on the hike. Blogging isn't dead. It's just screaming, deep under all the Facebook water. Thanks to those of you who can still hear bloggers.

From there, I went on to visit a sycamore I've been admiring for many years. The tree, to me, is an eloquent standing metaphor.

The left side was clearly once a huge hollow tree, most of which rotted out and died. But a living sheath of bark remained. For years, the trunk it sent up put out leaves and appeared to be prospering.

 

It's the trunk to the right in this shot. It died last year, and has dropped its twigs. But never fear. The trunk to the left, which takes off from the right-hand base of the hollow part, is going for broke, even as the hollow old sheath breaks and rots.

 

 This keyhole window in the original trunk reminds me of the terrified little character in The Scream by Edvard Munch. 

And the old hollow trunk isn't dead yet. It's sending sprouts out from the base of the "dead" trunk. Which clearly isn't dead just yet. I know, it gets confusing. There are so many little deaths and rebirths in this one tree.

 

 

I love the whole thing, the whole complex mess of it--hollow sheath of old tree; dead trunk; live trunk; shoots off the "dead" half. So I keep watching. That tree just won't throw up the white flag. It keeps going, keeps living the best life it can.

To me it speaks of re-invention and rebirth after trial and tribulation. If that sycamore can keep sending up fresh shoots, what's stopping me?

Well, there's quite a bit that can stop me. I forded two rather deep crossings after all the recent rain, laughing at myself the whole time,  and shivering as water splashed through the fine filigree of my shoes, but I finally met my Dean's Fork Waterloo here at Bobcat Crossing.

No way across it without going in over my shoe tops. Even if you do it really fast you get to enjoy wet freezing feet all the way back. This happens to me every year when I try to "run" with "running shoes" down this muddy, stream-crossed road. Dang it, Zick, give up. Just put on your waterproof hiking boots and walk fast.  You'll see just as much, and you can bring the big camera, too. Duh! Kick it into winter mode already.

Forced to turn around before reaching the Ironweed Festival Grounds, I was delighted by perhaps two minutes of weak lemony November sun. Please click on this to see the creek traveling along the right side. It's one of my favorite vistas.

The trot back home was beautiful, with the light coming up at last. It wasn't going to be a sunny day, but it was brighter, and that was enough. 

I was nearing my car when I saw what I thought (please forgive me) was an expanded tampon in the leaves. Chuckling as I write. I did. I thought it was a tampon, and I didn't want to touch it, but logic and curiosity conquered my initial 21st century response to this novelty. 

Internal Science Chimp conversation: It's a tampon. No it's not. Yes it is. It's just expanded. No, you idiot, it's snow-white. Well, it got rained on. Who drops a tampon on Dean's Fork in November? And if it's a tampon, why is it attached to a plant stalk? Touch it. Ugh. No. Oh! It's brittle! It's made of ICE! Wait. So what's going on here?

With the two little Science Chimps sitting on my shoulder, one adventuresome and one not, I went from Eeew to What the Heck is That Thing? in about 2.5 seconds.

And I realized that it was a flower. A frost flower. The little green leaves are part of a recently deceased aster top. The stem has been broken and shattered, but the plant's roots keep pushing out water to a top that's no longer there.

And that water comes out the broken stem and hits the freezing air, and makes a flower for November.

The more I looked at it the more delighted I became. Would there be other frost flowers waiting for me?

Yes. But only if I looked for them.

That's November for you. She's not the nicest teacher, and she can sometimes be dull, old and gray, but if you listen to her, she'll give you the best secrets.

Speaking of flowers of November, Liam is home, and still asleep, as far as I know, in his own bed. Having my boy back for a nice WVU Thanksgiving break is divine, even though I'm already chewing on him for strewing his things around and having altogether too much hair on top. It's all I can do not to go jump on him and wake him up so I can feed him Eggos and sausage.

And Phoebe is living her best life, maybe ever, on La Gomera. She cracks me up daily, and only WhatsApp and Facetime stand between all of us and death from terminal Phoeblessness. Catch up with her at her sparkly blog,  Canary Current
 

It is, my darling. On you, it is.