Well,
November has proclaimed its arrival under the peculiar disguise of 70-degree weather. Still, the fall is ever present in my phenology spot through sights, sounds, and smells.
I arrived at my spot on the afternoon of the 5th: a warm, overcast day with a breeze that made me regret forgetting a hair tie. With sweat on my back and hair in my mouth, I sat at the center of my spot with a bag of pistachios and began to soak up the sights and sounds of November. The most prominent change I noticed was the lack of deciduous foliage. Only a month prior, my spot had been full of color and greenery. Now, the silver maple was desperately hanging on to the last of her leaves, and the green ash was completely bare. The only green that remained was from the surrounding Northern White Cedars and some Coltsfoot. Although the brilliant yellow of the Indian Hemp is long gone, it has been replaced with the buttery yellow of a Black Locust plant.
As I sat in my spot, I also noticed some signs of human interference. There were visible remains of a fire (where a sleepy ladybug was resting), and some logs that had been recently chopped down.
In terms of sounds and smells, the fallen foliage had left a final gift of a delicious fall smell, (you know the one) and Lake Champlain was sounding particularly tempestuous against the shoreline.
