time lapse, but you can’t stop time: happy new year!

A bit of slow-motion time lapse photography for you today.

A hosta leaf just outside our front door, October 21.

Eleven days later, those last bits of color have faded away.

 

Here’s looking upstream from the bridge, October 18. This is a white ash.

Same view on October 29.

Yep, all the leaves are drying up and crumbling away. There’s a sad poignance to the process. We move from complete vibrance, as is the case with the the unanimously anonymous Euonymous outside the kitchen window, October 19…

…to bland gray twigs, as we see today, November 1.

But those bright red berries hold the promise of something new, do they not?

Yesterday, on my long run of the week (seven miles), it felt for the first time, like the first part of fall was over and done with. Which makes sense, given that we are halfway between the equinox and solstice. In Celtic witchy terms, we are at the new year. That’s right – just as we head into the darkest part of the year, we also acknowledge that it’s in the dark, that dreams of beginnings begin. Which works for me, as it’s my birthday tomorrow (All Souls Day) and a perfectly good time to be thinking ahead for the year. Happy birthday, world!

In celebration of new things, let’s visit the buds! Now that all those pesky leaves are out of the way, we can get a close look at the dreams our tree buddies have for the coming year:

Let’s start off where we always do – the driveway. Here’s Syringa vulgaris – lilac. Double buds. Cute, no? Lilacs are opposite – their leaves are paired, as you can see from the two twigs above. (As opposed to alternating.)

Here’s another opposite guy – Fraxinus america, or white ash. Same type as we just saw in the stream, above, but this one is right next to the lilac. Yeah, it’s a single bud at the end (a “terminal” bud) but you can see the pair of buds on either side, too.

The very first class I took at Antioch was “New England Flora”. We’d bundle up in super-cold weather and tromp around, first thing Thursday mornings, and learn how to identify all of central New England’s native tree species in winter conditions.

Here’s what the best field guide in the world – “Winter Keys to Woody Plants of Maine” has to say about our ash friend, above:

Lateral buds laterally compressed, the first pair adjacent to terminal bud; inner layer of epidermis purple or cinnamon-colored; wing not completely surrounding seed body of samara; medium to large trees of uplands or margins of water; bar of trunk with regularly anastomosing, non-corky ridges. Terminal bud dome-shaped; leaf scars deeply notched at apex; twigs glabrous, purple, especially when growing in the open; inner layer of epidermis purple; uplands.

Argh! Yeah, that was a fun semester, learning all these obscure words – “glabrous”, “glaucous”, “sessile”, etc. etc. etc. Let’s move on.

Ulmus america – Elm. This bud, poor guy, it thinks it’s at the end of the twig – but botanists, cruel folk that they are, have defined this as “pseudoterminal”. Have they no heart? This elm tree is just a straggly thing on the side of the road; nothing like the beautiful vase-shaped trees of yore. Damn you, Dutch elm disease!

 

Populus balsamifera - Balsam poplar. Look at the size of that bud! Apparently this bud would smell scrumptious were I to smoosh it, but I haven’t the heart.

Let’s take a break from nature and visit a neighbor’s barn. No cows remain at this former dairy. Instead, this is where you take your classic MG to be rebuilt.

 

Back to nature. Here we have a staghorn sumac, Rhus typhina.

 

Can you see this is a bird’s nest? It’s really obvious in person, but somehow it doesn’t jump out in closeup.

 

And finally, here we have some leaf – no idea what it is, or what happened to it. Some kind of little creature just tunneled its way around. I think it’s lovely.

In other news, I am re-learning how to read sheet music. Remember how I joined the concert choir?

Here’s what we’re learning:

A mass. In Portuguese and Latin. Filled with impossible rhythms for this former player of Bach two-part inventions to sight-read.

Crikey.

Fortunately, I found a website that lets you basically enter in the notes – you select from little icons of quarter notes, dotted quarter notes, eighth notes, dotted eighth notes, and so on – and then it plays the sound of that rhythm back to you. I’ve said it before: I love the internet.

Speaking of crazy-ass rhythms, here’s what we’re listening to as I type this. Go listen to it. It will blow your mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc34Uj8wlmE

It’s Dave Brubeck, “Blue Rondo a la Turk”. According to Wikipedia,

Brubeck heard the unusual "1-2 1-2 1-2 1-2-3" rhythm being performed by Turkish musicians on the street. Upon asking the musicians where they got the rhythm from, one of them replied "This rhythm is to us, what the blues is to you"

And here I must laugh at the coincidences – at my one friend, who is in love with Brazil, and my other friend, who is in love with Turkey. Coincidences? Naw. No such thing. Not at this time of year!