Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

When cattitude and I set out for a walk this afternoon, he said we'd look for violets, and we agreed that we didn't expect to find any.

We found one, again on the far side of the soccer field (where there were quite a few some weeks ago); slightly frayed, but bright purple. He said it was probably the last, but I noted that we'd thought that before, this season.

We also saw a robin, in a low tree next to the salt marsh. They sometimes winter over, and the forecasters think it'll be a mild enough winter for them to be okay.

This afternoon, cattitude and I went for a walk in our usual bit at the north end of Inwood Hill Park, around the soccer field, mostly looking for violets. We found two violets, a bit of purple clover, white and pink lady's thumbs, some remnant jewelweed, and a dandelion.

We also found that a piece of retaining wall had collapsed, along the hillside near the south edge of the soccer field: from the looks of it, rain and runoff had been wearing away the mortar for quite a while, and about half of the wall was lying in pieces in the drainage ditch below where it had been standing. There's some wall left, with no obvious damage (it's still basically vertical), but I expect and hope that the Parks Department will inspect it, confirm or refute that fast analysis, and figure out what to do with the pieces of broken wall. (I'm guessing they'll decide that a retaining wall is still a good idea there, and either repair it or build a new one; I have no idea how long such things take, however, in part because I don't know if three or four meters of stone wall less than a meter high have to be treated as a capital expense, or can be handled financially as routine maintenance.)

When cattitude and I went for a walk this morning, we were looking at ducks, and for violets. We saw both: ducks on the rocks, plenty of geese, and violets along the far edge of the soccer field, at the base of a hill most of whose trees have gone to orange, or brown, or dropped their leaves entirely.

We were also looking for late jewelweed, not quite expecting any, and saw two or three flowers.

What we weren't expecting was dragonflies. Cattitude said "Is that a dragonfly?" and pointed. A vague motion in the air resolved into a dragonfly. And two more. And we stood and watched, three, four, a dozen or more, floating and darting over the lawn, and against the clear blue sky. We watched until Cattitude got cold, and then wandered back towards home.

Dragonflies and jewelweed aren't November; they're high summer. The jewelweed has hung on because we haven't had a frost yet; the dragonflies are completely out of context.

A bit of late chicory, and some fine dandelions and clover, near the bridges that lead to the nature center, were pleasant but unsurprising. Most of the goldenrod has gone to seed, huge cream-colored puffs along the stems, but there's some still yellow, and some visibly going to seed, a blend of yellow and cream, the cream with fuzzier edges.

[crossposting to inwoodhillpark]

cattitude and I went for a walk in Inwood Hill Park earlier today, just to get out, see and smell and maybe listen. There were quite a few violets in bloom: the one under the willow is still there, and we saw several on the strip between the soccer field and the hills. Jewelweed is also still blooming, some pale yellow and a few bright red. Dandelions aren't a surprise, even much later than this. The odd little flowers one reference called "lady's thumb" are there in quantity, both pink and white. The clover is still in bloom, mostly white, but we saw one large pink flower.

We saw kinglets in the trees again, passing through on their way south; a bit late by the calendar, but seeming synchronized with the leaves. Mallards and geese, of course.

The dominant color of the trees is now yellow; it was still green a few days ago. There are nice bits of red, again, and the foliage is sparser. The willows are bare, and the berries are more visible on the hawthorne.

We haven't had a frost here yet, though I wore my travel cardigan under my fall jacket on Friday. (That combination will keep me down to freezing, or a bit above and windy, which Friday was.)

I pointed out Cattitude that one of the recently planted pines on the slope between Indian Road and the inlet is mature and healthy enough to have dropped a few pine cones, which I noticed a few days ago. (The other three near it haven't, and one of them looks a bit sickly.)