Before it Turns White

As far as I can tell from looking at posts on Facebook, everyone else in West Michigan got snow. It hasn't showed up here yet. Maybe tonight. Actually, they've upped the snowfall total for us for tomorrow. Whatever.

But I want to show you the last of the color around my yard. I trimmed the forsythia. It needs to be done at least every other year or it turns into a monster. It's not hugely colorful, but I like the yellow and maroonish layers.

Are you wondering if that renegade marigold ever bloomed? It tried SO hard, but it didn't quite make it. I covered it diligently every night for about two weeks, but this is the best it could do. A little yellow in the bud.

I want to show you the rock garden one more time because I am loving how deep red the elecombeanum sedum got this year. Some patches of light-colored foliage are also hanging on, so it looks quite nice for mid November.

And my maple tree? After doing practically nothing about getting autumnesque for weeks and weeks, it suddenly turned orange! I decided to verify what kind of maple it is. Back when I replanted this tiny sapling, really just a two-leaf cotyledon, I didn't know enough to really choose wisely as to the species. Now, I was afraid to learn that I've carefully nurtured a Norway maple for 35 years, and that is considered alien and invasive. I know there are some Norway maples in the cemetery in addition to the sugar maples, so... yikes!

But I checked it out. It can be difficult to tell the two apart, but there are a few "tricks." I'm pretty confident that this is a sugar maple.

Finally, and this has nothing to do with color, here's an autumn olive. On its way out! I've been working on this one large specimen with my new power pruner. Just have these remaining large trunks, and I should be able to get them cut to ground level this week. I'm treating the stumps with Tordon (a salt of 2,4-D which makes it legal- this is serious stuff), and every one that I cut and treated with this last year has not come back.

I'd like to say I made real progress on this menace in my kingdom this year, but I'll have to settle for moderate success. I cut back nearly a whole row of it by hand in the back yard, and you Can't Even Tell. But I'll keep after it. I'ts immensely easier with power tools.

There are ones by the driveway and the kitchen door that we cut every single cotton-pickin' year. Omer usually does these. We used to treat the stumps with Roundup, but that only slowed the stuff down. This Tordon seems to really work.

Almost everything I worked on today seems to have something that isn't going quite right. Just need to keep after them, and they'll get sorted out.

See The Color is Yellow

A Few More Fall Color Shots

These have been taken at various times over the past week, but there wasn't room to add them to that day's blog post.

I'll lead off with a row of trees along the Methodist Church parking lot.

I've been hunting for red this year. Here's one splash.

This was a few days ago, right on US 31 at Wolf Lake!

I had sort of forgotten how beautiful rural Oceana County is. There are a lot of rolling hills, and I loved my drive coming home yesterday. These fields were just stunning! Vinyard on the left.

But maybe this one is even nicer with asparagus in front, then an orchard, and the woods.

And you know that quote- not sure who said it- "Of all the roads you take, make sure a few of them are dirt." Totally agree. 96th Avenue in Oceana County was up for the challenge. I took pictures at two different places, but decided this was the best. Can you feel the peace?

I had a chance to go for a hike this morning, but I decided I really nneded to stay home and get some things done. Worked pretty steadily at all my projects. More time on the autumn olive and a little more putting the gardens to bed in the afternoon.

But, tomorrow, the discipline ends. I have a little adventure with a friend planned!

See More Fall Finery

A Mini-Adventure at Branstrom Park

Today was my day to have the stitches out of my mouth, requiring a trip to Muskegon. I couldn't waste the drive!

Well, I wanted to get another short Newaygo County trail to write about, so I went to Branstrom Park in Fremont. They are supposed to have a wooded two-mile hiking loop.

Yes, yes they do. The sign says it's well-marked. Hmm. Some of it is well marked. I had to stop someone right out of the parking lot and ask where the loop started. OK, got it. Then it was quite well marked. Until it wasn't. Or maybe it was. But the problem is that the park also has a disc golf course so there are trails all over the place. I managed to walk 2.5 miles, and I think I missed a section of the actual trail.

When I lost the trail and then came back to an intersection where I'd been before, I knew I'd gotten messed up.

I was using Avenza to track my route, which would allow me to find my way back even it I got really off. An awful lot of trails show up on Open Streets Map which is free with the Avenza download. But this one was not there. And I hadn't been able to find a map online (well, for free. AllTrails has it, but I'm not a member).

Anyway, after I lost the marked trail again, and came to another fork that was marked to the right, I chose left because I needed to get back to the car and on to the dentist. Found this cute little covered table.

Near the beginning are a couple of small bridges. The waterway is Daisy Brook Creek. I liked this rustic one, although the other was nice too. The pictures are a little dull. At this point in the day, it was completely cloudy. There were even rain showers on my way there.

Along the traills, I saw a few interesting things. This banded metamorphic rock is really nice. Not sure of the minerals.

This is Oriental Bittersweet. I didn't see a lot of it, thankfully, because it strangles trees and kills them. It's an invasive.

These awesome trees were hugging. The red is an oak (maybe scarlet or pin), and the yellow is a quaking aspen.

So, I got myself back to the car, but with having trouble finding the right parking lot and losing the trail twice, I had to call the dentist and tell them I'd be late. They were gracious.

The stitches are out, and they said it's healing really well. I have to wait until at least January before they can do an implant, so I have that long to decide if I really want it. I think I'm going to miss that tooth a lot, but I'll need to sell a lot of books and do some serious editing to pay for it.

Then... OH! One of my favorite things. I drove home on whatever back road I wanted. The sky cleared and it was a totally stunning day to be out for a rural drive in the fall. I have some pictures I definitly want to share, but they'll need to wait for another day. For today, I'll just share the Beaver Moon, coming up as I was writing this.

Now I have to do some kitchen stuff. And before I left this morning, I managed to fix a problem with my database. Great day!

I have to decide if I can use this hike and Old Grade in my news column. That was my plan, but neither trail is easy to follow. This one is nice in that it's only two miles, but has quite a bit of topography, so you can get some real exercise without a long hike.

Miles hiked in 2025: 429.4

Branstrom Park, Fremont, MI. various trails 2.5 miles

See Exploring Old Grade

Spirit of the Woods Hike- November

Although the morning started out chilly, it turned into a perfect crisp day for the NCTA Chapter hike. We had 22 people, but there were 7 dogs who came along this time. (1 person and 2 dogs didn't make the picture.)

We started at Upper Branch Bridge which is where the trail crosses the Pere Marquette River.

Gary leads us off into the autumn woods with rich brown oaks and yellow beech.

Two of the hikers completed their 100 Mile Challenge today. I didn't get a picture of Peg, but here is Sue.

There are still plenty of little gems to see. Northern Maidenhair fern grows along the banks of the unnamed creek there.

We were discussing whether these are quaking aspen leaves or big-tooth aspen. I've decided they are big-tooth, even though the teeth aren't huge, because the trees are tall and straight with ridged bark. Quaking will get ridged bark if it gets old enough, but I just have a feeling these are big-tooth. Anyway, I took the picture because I like how the water beads up on wet leaves. This is because the leaves have natural plant oils. (I'm a dummy- didn't check to see if the stems were flat.)

The oaks are starting to get involved in the fall color. Even though they don't get the really bright colors, I always like how rich they look. These are white oak.

We did hike a little farther than we usually go from this trailhead. To go to the next road and back is only 3 miles. We did the half-mile roadwalk (a pleasant dirt road), and partway into Bowman Semi-Primitive Area, so that the total miles would be more. I did five.

This is the only section of the NCT that is along the Pere Marquette River. There is one place where you get an unobstructed view, and I almost always take a picture of it there. But today I decided to try to find another place for a glimpse of the water. This one through the trees isn't bad.

I managed to do some computer work before the hike. In the afternoon, I mostly worked on trying to get some computer coding to work. I've determined several things that DON'T work. I guess that is progress of a sort.

Miles hiked in 2025: 423

Miles hiked on the NCT in 2025: 241.3

North Country Trail, Lake Co, MI. Upper Branch Bridge into Bowman Semii-Primitive area and back. Total 5 miles.

See SPW Hike- October

Color in My Kingdom

I still have some really nice autumn photos from the past few days, but I think today I'll just show you what's going on in my corner of the universe.

Here's the female mulberry tree. The male one didn't look too healthy this year. I'm hoping it's not going to die. These two trees have given me several fantastic photos- see link at end for two of them

This is the paper birch I planted about 30 years ago. It's probably too close to the house, but oh, well. It almost died, and then came back, so part of the trunk is ugly. I have to keep trimming it away from the roof. It sheds leaves all over my front flower bed. That creates a big mess to clean up in the spring, but I think it has also improved the soil there tremendously. It's always golden in the fall.

The Sedum elecombeanum that I like so much in the rock garden with its yellow-green leaves all summer and bright yellow flowers in June- turns red-orange in the fall!

There is a big patch of Winged Sumac just out into the field a little ways. I missed the peak of its color, but here is proof that maybe a week ago it was bright.

Here is a picture from last year that shows how beautiful that clump can be.



And my parting shot is one of those "huh?" moments. I posted last year that the maple tree I planted as a sapling about 6 inches tall in 1991 got autumn color for the first time ever. It's the darker orange tree behind the yellow mulberry. That was taken October 31, so almost exactly a year ago.



Here's what it looks like this year. It has very little interest in changing color for me. You can see a few hints of orange/salmon on the edges of some leaves. But it's a nice tree, and I planted it, and it lived. So I like it.

I slept in this morning because I did not sleep well last night. Still got a fair amount done and took my 3-mile road walk.

Miles hiked in 2025: 416.2

See Pink, Blue, and Red

Caught Some Critters

Ludington School Forest has lots of squirrels. In fact, I'll bet if I checked back, most of the squirrel pictures I have taken are from there. Gray squirrels, anyway. And gray squirrels include black and white squirrels which are color morphs. They are all pretty jumpy, and hard to catch a picture of while you are walking fast through crunchy leaves. No chance to sneak up on one.

Today I caught a gray one...

...and a black one.

Oddly enough, the trees are not turning colors very much in the School Forest. This is the same tree (from a different angle) I showed you weeks ago, the one that turns red early every year. There is some yellow and a lot of the leaves have come down, but not much color.

I stole this idea from someone else. I didn't work very hard at it... like to find more leaves of the same kind. Long after I took the first picture, I found an orange maple leaf that was even bigger. If I had held on to the leaves until the end of the walk, I could have had 5 in that stack. But what I wanted to do was hike 3 miles in the hour before bell choir, so I needed to keep moving.

Did I succeed? Not quite. I ended up with 56 minutes to hike and made it 2.8 miles. So, I probably could have done those other two tenths in the four minutes. (A 20-minute mile is one-tenth in two minutes, so I am not fudging the pace.)

Got a lot done today on projects and editing in the morning. Finished the mowing in the afternoon, then bought screws, walked, and went to bell choir. That filled the day!

Fall just keeps being glorious! I will have more pictures for another day.

Miles hiked in 2025: 413.2

Ludington School Forest, miscellaneous trails, 2.8 miles

See Pepper and Salt

Exploring Old Grade

Today was pretty busy, but it was all good. In the afternoon, I stopped at the "Old Grade Campground" (Manistee National Forest). It's only the second time I've been there.

Can you guess how it got its name?

Yup! It was a railroad grade. But you know I can't be content with only knowing that. I had to know what railroad. This is not far north of the village of Peacock where two separate railroads crossed each other. However, it is on the north side of the Little Manistee River. So I couldn't quite figure what railroad this was.

Turns out, it's a logging line of the Manistee and Luther RR. Their main line went from Eastlake to Hoxeyville (never quite making it to either Manistee or Luther!). On the map, the red lines are Manistee and Luther. The topmost of the dark green arrows points to where I was today. And that means the railroad had a bridge across the river there. I wonder if one can find any remnants.

The lower dark green arrow points to Peacock where the light green Michigan E & W line crossed the Chicago and West Michigan line in magenta.

I was hoping to write about the loop trail at Old Grade for one of my columns. I have to think about whether I should do that. Some of the trail is in bad shape. I made it through with electronic help. The good portion could be done as an out and back. Anyway, I had fun. Here's where the trail begins.

When you get around on the other side of the loop, the trail briefly follows a small, unnamed creek that flows beneath hemlocks to the Little Manistee River .

Here are a couple of closeups. Red maple leaf- not just red in color, but it's a red maple.

And some needles from a white cedar which fell artistically on its horizontal trunk. I suspect squirrels bit these off and dropped them.

This all happened after I met with some people about some trail stuff, and I also did laundry. I worked on computer stuff a bit this morning, and my day was completely filled!

Miles hiked in 2025: 410.4

Old Grade loop trail and in and out from entrance 2.3 miles.

See Not Quite, But Quite All Right