Out in Autumn

We are enjoying an uncommonly mild Autumn. Everybody is kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but we're enjoying it until then! When we were out the other day, the first thing we noticed that, although it was mid-morning, there was a lot of water (dew?) on the plants. 

Each little hair on the Mullein was decorated with its own tiny drop. 

The pictures don't really do it justice. And that was just one of the lovely things we saw. 

The kids were all about the quarry area of the park this time. We stacked rocks with the Littles for quite a while while the Bigs played in the bushes.

While we sat and played with the rocks, we found these cool leaves with deep groves in the veins. I don't know what kind of tree they came from, but the looked really cool. 

The goldenrod seeds were beautiful, though my phone struggles to do them justice. 

There were a lot of beautiful little things that it would be so easy to walk by. I love that our Nature Study days help me slow down an see some of this stuff. 

Hero had a chat with a naturalist the other day for a Webelo project, and one of the things the naturalist told us is that nests of sticks tend to be birds' nests; squirrels build with leaves, and they most prefer oak leaves because they break down much more slowly than other types. So I was excited to find a squirrel nest while we were out. 

I was amazed to find these still blooming; I guess the mild weather hasn't been cold enough to put them to sleep, even though we've had several good frosts now. 

When I was a kid, I used to think Autumn was ugly. Dull brown and nothing at all to see. Looking around now, I'm amazed at all the things I was blind to. I'm glad I've learned better; Autumn is lovely.