Changes in season lead to changes in the landscape. The days are cooler and nights are longer. It has been rainy and grey with almost no sun. The pine stand in centennial woods has undergone changes since last time I visited. The ferns are all a yellow grey color and shriveled up, although the mushrooms still grow in abundance. The white pine trees are still lush with green pine needles because they are evergreens and don’t shed their foliage. But the deciduous trees in the stand are almost all bare like the yellow birch and red maple. The American beech however, are marcescence trees which means their leaves die in the winter but the tree does not drop the dead trees. The old dry leaves of the American beech color the forest’s midstory.

I visited my site on Sunday November 4, a sunny yet cold and windy day. The sun shone through the branched but the sun came from a lower point. We changed the clocks back, moving into winter, which means the sun is lower in the sky and we won’t be seeing much of it. My visit was quiet except for the chickadees and occasional blue jay screech. The ground was moist and the forest was filled with the smell of decomposing organic matter.