At the Bog and Wooster Memorial Park

While I love to travel and experience new places, there's nothing like going home to the parks you know so well, the parks who have shared their secrets with you and let you in on a world all their own. Trekking through these two parks you can hear a whisper in the air, it's quite subtle and if you weren't listening intently, you'd probably miss it. It's the whisper of a song about to grow much louder, the cicadas start off the orchestra and slowly it builds from there - the warm breeze, a choir of emerging fungi, the warm musty bassoon-like scent of decaying leaves - day by day adding more elements to the song until it ends in a fantastic crescendo where all the leaves, which have turned brilliant colors, come tumbling to the ground. 
Yep, the gentle signs of fall are in the air.

Brown's Lake Bog

I'm out here pretty often, yet it seems every time I come out so much has changed. The summer flowers are in full bloom, the ferns on the bog are beginning to change color, and the unique fungi specimens are popping up everywhere. 

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Wooster Memorial Park

A brisk evening walk down the Spangler trail, the nettles in bloom on one side, the jewelweed in bloom on the other. The water is low, it's easy to cross, the minnows can be seen speeding back and forth between water holes. Above the valley the late meadow flowers are blooming, the Joe-pye weed, the boneset, great blue lobelia, even a few wild Senna plants. I was hoping to hear the owls, but they were being quiet this evening.