Reflections in the River

We hiked into Indian Falls the other day, the last of the better known waterfalls in the area that I haven't been to see since retiring here.  My memory of it was of a smaller falls, but it was twice as big as I remembered (from 40 years ago), and flowing very full after all our rain - more of that tomorrow. But along the side of the river we also saw some interesting reflections.

The river was flowing far too fast for reflections, but in this little eddy where the ripples were gently washing in around the corner, there were interesting wiggly tree trunk reflections!

This is Indian Falls, our destination.  It's the classic example of a waterfalls over the lower two layers of the Niagara Escarpment bedrock.  Tell you more tomorrow.

But we had to walk 20 minutes up the trail beside the river to get there, and at this spot there was a bit of a quiet eddy beside the fast-flowing stream.

This was the reflection we first noticed, in that eddy beside the river.

But these are the two interesting photos for me.  I always keep a filter on the front of my camera lens to protect the lens, and as usual I had my polarizing filter on.  This was the first shot.

And this was the second shot, exactly the same shot, but turning the front of the polarizing filter 90°, to cut out the glare and show the bottom through the water, almost eliminating the reflection.  This was just an experiment, but you learn something new every day.  Different settings for different purposes.

One more shot of the wiggly tree reflection.

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Sunset

This sunset was nearly a month ago, but it seems so appropriate as fall disappears and the bare month of November nears.  We don't often get sunsets here, as there's a hill to the west of our house, but I was out driving around taking pictures of barns, and noticed this sunset behind me, up on the crest of a farm field.  Hope you like it.

This is the view I noticed first, a gentle slope on this field leaving an almost flat horizon in the distance.

It quickly went from a bluish sky to orange above the horizon.

And in a remarkably short time the sun dropped behind the trees.

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Cuckoo Valley Overlook

To finish yesterday's post, we walked through the woods, then followed the trail uphill beside the stream, and then we turned toward the lookout.  It wasn't far, and the valley opened up in front of us; the colours were spectacular!  (Remember, this was two weeks ago).

This is looking toward Cuckoo Valley itself.  Cuckoo Valley is a small cleft in the east side of the much larger Beaver Valley, where the Beaver River flows over Eugenia Falls, tumbles down the rocky ravine, and is joined by the Boyne River to continue north toward Georgian Bay.  Eugenia Falls is just out of sight on the left, beyond the open limestone cliffs you can see in the distance.

Sorry, I don't have a fall picture of Eugenia Falls.  It's an interesting place - there was a gold rush there over 150 years ago; turned out to be Fool's Gold!

This series of pictures starts on the left, looking north down the valley, and moves to the right through nearly 180° of fall colour!  You should be able to spot something on the right of each picture that shows up on the left of the next picture.  We just stood and gazed at the view for several minutes before turning back and heading home.  Probably my best fall colour views this year.

The smaller grey trees in some of the pictures are mostly Hawthorn, which lose their leaves very early.  Probably 90% of what you're seeing are Sugar Maples.  Even though it was a grey day and the atmosphere was moisture laden from recent rain, the colour turned out quite well.

Slowpoke Walk

Just a couple of weeks ago I led a 'slowpoke walk' for the local Bruce Trail Club, which took us through a beautiful golden forest out past a waterfall, out to the Cuckoo Valley Overlook, a viewpoint over the upper Beaver Valley.

This part of the trail has a few great big old trees, mostly Sugar Maples, surrounded by hundreds of younger saplings.  All of it was a beautiful gold colour on this day.

We followed the Bruce Trail blazes along the side of the slope south of Johnston's Sideroad.  See the white blaze on the Beech tree?

After a while we came to the waterfall - a very difficult one to photograph.  It drops about 30 feet, but the trail just passes above it, leaving you with only a limited view through the trees.   One of my pet projects is to create a side trail that would lead you safely to a viewpoint below the falls.

 But the tumbling stream above the falls is beautiful never-the-less.

We followed it upstream for a distance, past a lot of striking yellow Beech saplings.

 And discovered that the stream had more water than I've ever seen before.  We had had a lot of rain in the previous days, and the stream was running full, tumbling over the rocks.

At this point there usually isn't any stream at all; it is simply a trickle emerging from beneath those rocks.  I love little streams like this, and could stop for hours and take pictures of small portions of it (as I once did on Roaring Fork in the Great Smokies), but as I was leading an organized hike, I didn't this time.  Maybe next year.

At the highest point of the trail I peeked around a fallen tree which was blocking the view to find the stream tumbling down from ever higher up the slope - I've never seen water at all at this point.

Tomorrow, the Cuckoo Valley Overlook, perhaps the most spectacular fall colours I saw this year.

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And the Seasons Change...

The seasons here have changed again, from fall to late fall in my mind.  There are several changes that come together and strike me as marks of a major change in our world.  And we're entering a dull grey-brown season that many people don't really enjoy, though I do.

First, the leaves have almost all fallen.

This is a typical fencerow now; two weeks ago all brilliant orange.

These are about the last trees to turn colour, a cluster of oaks across the road in the morning sun.

Second, all the summer birds are gone, and we're left with just those who will stay all winter, like these Crows.  I saw my last Turkey Vulture about a week ago, the last to leave.  The Chickadees, Nuthatches, Goldfinch, Blue Jays and Woodpeckers will stay with us.  It's a subtle change to notice, since unlike spring, when they arrive and sing their hearts out, in fall they just quietly disappear.

This Monkshood has been the last flower to bloom in the garden, weathering the frost easily.  It's a nice flash of colour in October, but is also very poisonous!

The veggie garden is all put to bed and mulched with leaves.  (The front of these two beds is already planted with several varieties of garlic, which gets planted in October - see the green plant labels?).

But I was astonished that we got a fresh small bowl of raspberries off our plants the last few days!

And a large number of other fall chores are done (that's actually what's been occupying my time).  Snow tires on, deck chairs and tables away (the shed is stuffed full), hoses drained and put away, and of course the mower deck removed and the snowblower attached to the garden tractor, ready for the first of that white stuff!  Along with the warmer jackets, tuque and gloves I'm wearing now.

Finally, a subtle change I notice when I sit with my coffee in the morning and read other blogs is the position of the morning sun.  It's moved so far south now that I have to move to a different chair so that it's not glaring in my eyes.

So that's our world in late October.

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Fern Sori

If you've followed my blog for long, you know I'm fascinated by ferns.  They're a group of plants that reproduce by spores, not seeds, and therefore have a very different life cycle.  And the spores are clumped in 'sori', usually on the back of the fern fronds, in patterns that vary by species.  These are easiest to see at this time of year.


These are the bright yellow sori of the Polypody Fern, a small fern about 10" tall usually, most often found growing in mats on the top of limestone boulders.  In this species, the spore dots (or fruitdots) appear only on the upper 2-3 inches of the frond, so that's all you're seeing here.

This is the pattern of the Male Fern.  In this and all of the remaining pictures, all you're looking at is the back of a single leaflet that I picked off the fern, and put down upside down to photograph.


Each 'sorus' or clump of spore cases ('sporangia'), contains microscopic spores, which provide for the fern's reproduction.  On the Male Fern they tend to be dark by this time of year, and very obvious.

This leaflet is from a Marginal Wood Fern, and the name comes from the fact that all the sori are found right along the margins of the sub-leaflets.  This species loves the limestone talus slopes below our Niagara Escarpment.

And this is a Woodfern leaflet.  Note the position of the sori on the sub-leaflets is similar to Male Fern, but the sori are lighter in colour and not as obvious.  And the sub-leaflets themselves are cut into deep teeth along the edge.

This is one of the most beautiful ferns, the Maidenhair Fern.  It's leaf doesn't look like a typical fern at all, the leaflets like this one being held in a circular pattern.

The sori are different too, forming lines along one side of each sub-leaflet that than dots.

And these are the sori of the Lady Fern.  They are larger and typically curved as here, making the back of the leaflets look quite dark.

Finally, this is the fertile frond of a Sensitive Fern.  This species grows an entirely separate frond with the sori or spore cases on it, in these tiny round balls, which by this time of year would be brown and dry.  They'll stand up above the snow right through the winter.

It occurs to me now that I've collected these photos that they'd be much more effective if they were paired with pictures of the entire fern fronds; maybe I'll do that someday.  In the meantime, I remain fascinated with ferns.  All these pictures except the last were taken in our yard, where I have a small fern garden along the old stone fencerow.

P.S.  To answer a question from Alain on the last post, also on ferns, here are pictures of the Green Spleenwort and the Maidenhair Spleenwort.  I haven't found a noticeable difference in size, but the first clearly has a green stem, while the second has a dark, brownish or purplish stem.

Green Spleenwort 

Maidenhair Spleenwort

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