Gone to seed

It's mid-August, and in our short northern summer, the nights are cool again. Leaves are turning yellow and red; below big maples, brown leaves crackle under my feet. In the sunny meadows and along the shoreline, the rush is on to get next year's seeds into the ground.

Some seeds are welcome:

Wild cherries. The birds will love them, and spread the seeds all around the meadow.

That tiny rabbits-foot clover, still good to look at, with tiny orange seeds on each bit of fluff.

Field pennycress, Thlapsi arvense. The flowers are white, but on some of the plants, the seed pods have turned pink.

Two different plants, both unidentified.

Sea rocket, Cakile edentula. Look good enough to eat.

According to Wikipedia, the leaves of sea rocket are edible. Another one to try.

And some seeds are not so pleasant.

Large-headed sedge, Carex macrocephala. Those spines are hard and sharp, enough to scratch an ankle as I walk past.

And this is the worst I've found this year:

Silver burweed, Ambrosia chamissonis, looking innocent.

These are the male flowers. They line up in clusters on the tall stalks. A bit hairy, always speckled with sand because they're slightly sticky and catch anything blowing in the wind, but otherwise attractive enough.

The female flowers are towards the bottom of the spikes, crowded into leaf bracts, and soon crowned with the growing burrs.

Developing seed packets.

The burrs dry, turn brown and hard, and fall to the ground, where they become invisible and where they soon find a passing sandal and dig in. Those spines are sharp! Several times, I jumped and yelped, feeling as if I'd been bitten by something dire, then hopped to a support, took off my sandal, and had to pull the spines out of my skin. They don't just shake off.

Rabbits frequent this area. I've found their droppings everywhere. I wonder how those spines feel on their tender feet.

Still here.

Rainy afternoon on the beach

My little aquarium was getting bare, and the hermit crabs looked bored; nothing to eat but crab munchies, nothing to climb on but bare shells. It has been raining off and on, but Sunday afternoon it looked as if the sun might even deign to show its face. I took the chance and went down to the beach for goodies to re-stock the tank with.

The rain started as soon as I stepped onto the shore. But it was just a gentle drizzle, straight down; there was no wind. And the tide was high, the eelgrass at the edge still green and fresh. I walked south, filling my bag. Eelgrass bearing limpets, hydroids and tunicates; sea lettuce for the crab; stones covered with barnacles to feed the leafy hornmouth snails; green, knobby rockweed plants, mainly for climbing on. A small male crab to keep my female company. A couple of unusual Hairy hermits, very large, very hairy, and wearing the tiniest of breechclout shells. And a few periwinkle snails; Val, the big anemone, loves these.

And then I walked back northwards, taking photos. Grey water, grey stones, grey sky. It was beautiful, but no camera could ever capture it; the beauty compounded of the smell of rain on salt water, the whisper of waves, the feel of slow raindrops on my face and hands, the muted call of birds in the distance, the grey light and the glint of water on stones and seaweed.

I took a few photos, anyhow.

A few walkers, well bundled up for the rain.

Sailboats at anchor. Barely visible in the distance, a line of geese with a few ducks.

A rotting log, colonized by barnacles, snails and hermits.

Three kinds of snails. And can you find the orange-striped green anemone?

Stones, barnacles, seaweeds at the top of the tide.

Grey on grey, with every other colour muted.

At the top of the beach, semi-protected by the cement walls, a sea rocket in full bloom. They seem to shed the water, even in a hard rainstorm.

At home, I discovered that I'd brought back more than I'd thought, hitchhikers on the eelgrass; a blue anemone and more hermits and snails (some quite tiny). More on these, later.

Quiet afternoon

The tide was high. It had been raining, just a sprinkle, but enough to clear the beach. With no wind to stir it up, the water was glassy, grey-blue like the sky. In the distance, an eagle called.

We walked along the high tide line, picking up bits of eelgrass for my critters. I turned a rock or two, and watched the crabs scuttle for cover. Turning back, we dawdled through the dunes. I sat on a log to look at the sand.

Sand from Beach Grove upper beach.

Each shore has its own distinctive mix of sand ingredients. This one, from our usual height, looks grey, but it's a mix of many colours and shapes. White quartz, in jagged, sharp-edged chunks. Mottled, chunky conglomerates, mostly black. Traslucent pale green stones, rounded lumps. Pale pink ditto. And a surprising number of deep pink, transparent beads, not quite polished. One dark, opaque red stone.

I expected to find shell fragments, but in this handful, there may be only a couple.

Sea rocket, Cakile edentula, gamely struggling to produce its seed in deep, shifting sand.

Grass grown from the remains of last year's sandbag, dried up now that the seeds are set.

In the weeds on the path back to the street, we found this plant. Someone had given it a protective driftwood "fence".

I don't recognize these flowers. Do you?

Update: Biobabbler recognizes them; they're four o'clocks.

A Skywatch post.