NOVEMBER TREE FOLLOWING

I'm Following a Tree!

I'll need to labour this all over the place. I apologise if you get bored. And I hope you don't get irritated before I reach 100 mentions but . . .

TREE FOLLOWING 

 has moved to

The Squirrelbasket where Pat will welcome you with a link box!

Apple Tree on November 1st 2015

You'll know Pat already. She's been Tree Following for a while. Last year it was a Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) This year she's following an Empress Tree. (Pawlownia tomentosa) 

I'm sorry to have to pass Tree Following on but laptop troubles (over and over!) have brought blogging from laborious to the point of impossible. You'll still find me on Twitter  and at my other blog - Message in a Milk Bottle - where I attempt to post a picture a day.

Loose and Leafy hasn't finished though. It will merely be mothballed until I my laptop is sorted. (Which may be a while because laptops are expensive!) And before then, there will be a couple of book reviews and a sort of 'wind up' post. There may be other posts from time to time but I won't be reading other blogs much - pages take too long to load and keep getting jammed.

In the meantime, you might like to sign up for Loose and Leafy to be sent to you directly by email. All you have to do for this is to put your email address in the box at the top of the sidebar. That way you won't miss the occasional posts, nor when it starts up again properly. But as for Tree Following - Over to Pat!

Tree Following

This Tree Following emblem links to the

Tree Following Page
at
The Squirrelbasket
If there's a Loose and Leafy Tree Following emblem on your blog
you might like to replace it with this version.

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TREE FOLLOWING OCTOBER - SYCAMORE BY THE SEA

I'll begin by zapping you with colour.

This is 'my' sycamore - the one I'm following; taken in the evening.

I was going to say "It's not really that colour" when I realised I don't really know what colour it is. If I were nocturnal, daytime colours would be an aberration. And in the rain it's something else.

Here it is on the morning of the same day.

Yet this isn't exactly right - for the sun was ahead on the right and not only was it lighting the tree in a morning-way, my camera and I were seeing it differently from each other..

Approached from another side, it was gently green and yellow and brown. From another a silhouette. From another it was almost wiped away in the white glare.

I can't get right close to its trunk because it's surrounded by brambles. Of the ones nearby (and there are many) these blackberries are the last to ripen. The sycamore's shade and a curve in the path combine to keep the sun away. They are sweet though.

(I know this because in a spirit of scientific enquiry I ate all the ripe ones I could reach.)

Quite a few leaves are falling onto the path before they are brown - maybe because the tree is exposed to strong, easterly winds which drive straight at it from the length of the English Channel.

Its seeds are blowing aside too. This one was a few feet beyond the over-hanging branches. One of the helicopter-blades has broken in the fall.

Peering closer one can see that while autumn hits the tree, little plants are growing through the dry and un-nutritious soil. They will be trodden down before they get very tall but for such plants the year is a perpetual spring, regardless of the official season.

We can see that one of 'our' pair of seeds on 'our' tree is broken too. I have photo after blurred photo of this same seed because the tree wouldn't stop waggling around in the wind. But I've followed the progress of this particular seed over the last couple of months so I kept going back. (One day, I'll go and they'll be gone.) 

I can't say this tree is lovely at present. As the leaves change colour (and some fall)  tightly packed clusters of seeds are revealed either against the sky or against the new yellows and paler greens. Individually they are fine - it's almost impossible to walk by without picking them up from the path and throwing them in the air to watch them spin round as they fall. But bunched up they can be ugly and unpleasant. These clusters here are looser and smaller than most - prettier.

(The reason I am able to identify one particular seed again and again is that the seeds on one low-hanging branch have developed farther apart from each other than those on the main part of the tree and one hangs at an odd angle.)

Slightly beyond the tree's shadow other plants are turning into skeletons. These dried stems will stand like this all winter.

But chicory is still flowering and hoverflies are fighting over individual flowers; dive bombing each other even if there are vacant ones on the same plant.

Why? Perhaps some flowers are already drunk-empty of  nectar and pollen? Or maybe hoverflies are jealous of each other and can't stand to see somone else on something good. Or maybe they don't like hoverflies who look different from themselves? (See below.) Anyone know?

Are you
Following a Tree?

Do join us! There's more information on the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page.

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WHY DO LEAVES CHANGE COLOUR IN AUTUMN?

Wonderful, easy to grasp first time and brilliantly short explanation from Peter Gibbs of the BBC.

HOVER FLY SITES

Royal Entomological Society
"Over 250 species have been recorded in the UK, and more than 85 species have been found in a single garden."

British Hoverflies - Useful for ID because there are masses of pictures!

Nature Guide UK - I've only just found this site and have added it to the Loose and Leafy list of helpful and interesting ID sites. Even bigger pictures! It has other insects too. Well worth a browse.

Nature Spot

also on Nature Spot

Some Loose and Leafy blog posts where hoverflies make guest appearances.

The Next Box for Tree Following Links

will open at 7am (UK time) on 7th October 2015

and close at 7pm on the 14th.

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TREE FOLLOWING - SEPTEMBER

Join us and Follow a Tree

I like autumn. Autumn is my favourite time of year.

I nipped out of the house in bare feet last week (taking rubbish to the bin or something like that) and the ground felt refreshingly cool. It had that 'nip' that enlivens the spirit and refreshes one's mind. Sun lovers may disagree but summer can be a trial - headaches, weariness and sweat. The wind is nos getting up. Clouds chase the sun and its light flickers incessantly between bright and dull. There's a hint of rain and a light and cheering breeze.

The haws on hawthorn trees are already red. The sky mostly holds out blue.

September! September 7th. Tree Following time!

I'm still about as intermittent as the rain and about as dependable as autumn sunshine but I promise you I'll be back properly in mid-October.

In the meantime . . . the box for your posts is here even when I'm not.

Enjoy your trees!

Lucy

For all The September 2015 Tree Following Posts - Click Here

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TREE FOLLOWING - AUGUST

Absent but happily not missing.

I'm having an unusual number of being-away-from-homes at present. Hence lack of posts. Hence a bald introduction to this month's Tree Following. A box and little more.

Hence a confession too; I'm thinking of changing my tree to one nearer where I live. I'd thought choosing one in an interesting location would make it extra interesting to visit. Instead it means I never have time to visit it at all!

And now for the box I'm bunging in in passing.

Be back soon!

Click Here for links to all the Tree Following Posts for August 2015

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(Link Boxes kindly supplied by Mister Linky's Magical Gadgets)

TREE FOLLOWING - MAY

Have you noticed how some trees are enthusiastically greening up while others are clinging obstinately to winter? It will be interesting to find out who has leaves and who doesn't. Magnolia people are likely to have flowers. Are there hawthorn blossoms where you live? How are the bluebells doing? And if bluebells don't live where you live - are there flowers under your trees?

I find the heat of summer hard - so I've been making the most of comfortable walking weather. This is a path near The Hardy Monument in Dorset. (Not Thomas Hardy the novelist but Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy, famous for being Nelson's friend at the Battle of Trafalgar.) I'd just emerged from a short stretch of woodland where bluebells were getting ready to turn the earth blue. That was ok - but there was something extra special about the evening light out in the open and about the elegance of these more widely spaced trees. There was a rainbow between them too - a massive pillar of colour that turned out to be too shy to show up in the picture.

If you have become a Tree Follower in the last two months, I'd be glad if you were to check both you and your tree have arrived safely on the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page. I'm pretty certain someone's details went missing while I was computer-less. If it was you - very many apologies.

The Link Box is now closed. All 44 links to May Tree Following Posts can be found by clicking here.

Link Boxes are kindly created by Mister Linky's Magical Widgets.

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I'm Following a Tree.
Are you?

National Trust for Hardy Monument

Wikipedia for Hardy Monument

Wikipedia for Vice Admiral Sir Thomas Hardy

Wikipedia for Battle of Trafalgar

Wikipedia for Thomas Hardy the Novelist - who also lived locally.

For more information about Tree Following, go to the Loose and Leafy Tree Following Page.

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