yellow blossoms, purple fruit

Here's some photos taken on our morning bike ride yesterday. All the flowers that are left in bloom seem to be yellow! Matches the yellowing leaves on the trees very nicely. These Sunflowers line one of my neighbors' driveway.

The last remaining Black-eyed Susans are fighting the advance of the season. Their dried out predecessors tower above them. (I was tempted to pick these seed pods and bring them home to start our own patch of pretty Susans.)

Let's not forget Goldenrod! It's everywhere, the delicate sprays of yellow flowers brightening the roadsides and meadows.



The kids pedal past browning fern fronds and blooming Goldenrod. It was another absolutely gorgeous early fall morning, crisp enough to mandate jeans instead of shorts, but moderate enough for short-sleeve t-shirts. Days don't get much better than this one!

A little hard to see, but those dark clusters amongst all the greenery are bunches of dark purple grapes. The native grapes grow wild everywhere here, along the roads and pasture edges. This time of year the thick scent of grapes hangs over the fields in the morning, the breeze playing with it so that one minute, you can smell the grapes here, the next they are over there. Birds knock the grapes down along the roads and passing cars make squishy jelly of them. The sheep stand on their hind legs along the pasture fencing so they can reach up and pluck the grapes from their vines, or help themselves to a mouthful grape leaves.

One year, when I was a child, we helped my dad collect wild grapes, walking down the middle of a brook (that's what we call a stream in New England!), reaching over our heads to pull them off their vines, collecting them in a bucket. Dad boiled and stirred, we strained out the skins, he boiled and stirred some more. He ran out of sugar and had to run to the store to buy more. The house smelled like grapes for days. The jelly was good, but mostly I remember the mess and how long it took to make it. Every September I remember that, looking at all the grapes around us, and hope the birds and sheep enjoy their snacks!