Fall in a Wet Meadow

     I stopped at a wet meadow, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for an hour late in the morning of September 7 to see what was happening in nature.  It was a crisp, sunny day that looked and felt like fall.  A cool, northwest wind blew out of clear skies, patched here and there with puffy, white cumulus clouds.
     Several kinds of plants were blooming along a brook in that pasture, while other species blossomed in drier soil away from that waterway.  The abundant, cheery, golden flowers of bur-marigolds and the limited number of equally delightful, yellow sneezeweed blossoms were starting to bloom, as they always do early in September.  Wild plants have an inner timing that allows them to do what they need to do at the right time to survive.  And, as is their way, the bur-marigolds and sneezeweeds were both blooming along the edge of the brook, brightening that niche greatly.  Those new, golden flowers added to the beauties of the numerous spotted jewelweed blossoms, which are orange with red spots, the New York ironweed flowers that are hot-pink, the white blooms of boneset plants and the pale pink blossoms of smartweeds and Joe Pye-weeds, all of which grow beautifully near waterways in sunny pastures.
     Other species of flowering plants bloomed on drier ground in that sunny meadow.  They included tall Canada goldenrods and evening primroses with their yellow blossoms and brown knapweeds with their pink blooms.  The abundant and bushy-looking asters were just starting to open their pale-blue blossoms.  Asters peak their blooming during the beginning of October when they are swarmed by bees, butterflies, especially the little pearl crescents, and other kinds of insects that will all be seeking one of the last big sources of nectar of the year.  Pearl crescent butterfly caterpillars, incidentally, feed on the tissues of asters until they change to butterflies.
     A migrating ruby-throated hummingbird and several kinds of insects visited flowers to sip sugary nectar while I was there.  A couple of strikingly beautiful, migrant monarch butterflies fluttered here and there among the blossoms to sip nectar before continuing on their way south to Florida or Mexico to escape the northern winter.
     Other kinds of insects, including several each of bumble bees, digger wasps, cabbage white butterflies, yellow sulphur butterflies, great spangled frittillaries and others, also moved from bloom to bloom to sip nectar.  Those insects also contributed to the beauty and interest of the flowers and the pasture they grew in.   
     Decorative common milkweed pods will soon open, which will release their seeds on the wind.  Each brown, flat seed is attached to a white, fluffy parachute it grew to disperse itself, like its many colleagues in a pod, across the landscape.  Many seeds floating away on their parachutes create more lovely and interesting sights in autumn.
     As I was slowly walking along the rural road that skirts that wet meadow, I saw a few kinds of sapling trees and vines growing along the fence line between the road and the pasture.  The trees were bradford pears, mulberries and slippery elms and the vines included poison ivy and Virginia creeper.  All those woody plants, but the elms, were introduced to that fence line by birds eating their berries,
digesting the pulp of those fruits, but passing the seeds in their droppings as they fly from place to place.  The elm seeds blew in on the wind.  The seeds of all those plants sprouted and grew along the fence because the vegetation under it wasn't plowed, mowed, grazed, trampled or sprayed. And, because of the time of the year, some of the pear and poison ivy leaves were turning colors.
     I was delighted to see good numbers of adult grasshoppers of at least a few kinds jumping away through the tall grass as I walked along the sunny meadow.  They were red-legged and differential grasshoppers for the most part.  They hatched from eggs in the ground in spring and ate grass and other vegetation all summer.  Now they are full-sized and ready to mate and lay eggs for next year.
     A painted turtle and a male bull frog were sitting about a foot apart on tall grass that was pushed flat into the shallow water of the brook.  The cold-blooded turtle was there to warm up in the sunlight so it would have the energy to hunt food, while the frog was watching for invertebrates to eat.  The frog was partly in the water which kept him from drying up.  Although I didn't see any of them in that brook, northern water snakes and green frogs also sit on vegetation and other partly submerged objects to warm up and look for prey respectively, making those little, farmland waterways more interesting to experience.
     I also saw a few American goldfinches, a song sparrow and a couple of American kestrels in that pasture.  The goldfinches were there to ingest weed and grass seeds.  The song sparrow, as its kind does, hopped over muddy edges of the brook in search of invertebrates to consume.  And the kestrels
perched on roadside electric wires to watch the tall grass below for grasshoppers and meadow mice to catch and eat.  The kestrels may have been migrants stopping at the pasture for lunch.
     Autumn was in the air that lovely, crisp, sunny day and some of the life in that meadow reflected that.  And all that life was beautiful and intriguing.