Summer’s End
While the hot days of late August are not finished, even into early September, there are signs that the summer season is winding down.
Cranefly orchids tiny, rice-sized seeds are maturing on thin brown stalks and the lady slipper orchids are dry and opening to cast in any breeze.
August is often a wet month and the moist woodland floor abounds with surprises after every shower. Clumps of Indian Pipes emerge, pushing up the pine needles and leaves to stretch their ghostly flowers into the light. These are saprophytic plants; they gather nutrition from decaying matter instead of sunshine so they have no chlorophyll or 
green leaves.
Many mushroom varieties are popping up too, including the colorful Russula mushrooms with their bright red caps. Our visiting female box turtle has been here again, probably looking for some of her favorite mushrooms. One year I watched a turtle eat a whole patch of mushrooms, snapping at every bite.
In the garden a brightly striped caterpillar lazily munches stalks of parsley. When it settles down to pupate for the winter in a hard chrysalis. In the spring a lovely black swallowtail butterfly will emerge.
The late summer flowers are blooming in earnest and the hummingbirds are busily feeding as much as they can before their long trip in a few weeks. It is a last flurry of activity while the sun is still high.
Take a Walk
“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Early Explorers
In 1524 the Italian Giovanni de Verrazzano was sent to explore the eastern coast of North America. Translations of his journals are interesting for references to locations along what is now the Delmarva Peninsula (between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean). It seems that he likely stopped to explore the area somewhere between the Pocomoke River and the Assawoman Bay. (Verrazzano apparently missed the entrance to the Chesapeake Bay)
He states that he left the place of isthmus 1 mile wide 200 miles long (Carolina barrier Islands?) and “following the coast which veered somewhat to the north and after 50 league we reached another land which seemed much more beautiful and full of great forests…”
On going ashore he mentions “In the whole country, in the area of 200 leagues that we covered we didn’t see a single stone of any kind.” He did, however note the abundant vines; forest”We saw many vines growing wild, which climb up around the trees as they do in Cisalpine Gaul: they would doubtless produce excellent wines if they were properly cultivated, for several times we found the dry fruit sweet and pleasant and not unlike our own. The people must value them because wherever they grow the bushes around them are removed so that the fruit can ripen better.”
The muscadine and other wild grapes still grow abundantly in the forest and do, indeed, produce a very nice juice, jelly or wine. They scent the air with delicious fragrance in the fall but the vines, which can grow as thick as a small tree trunk, tend to grow the best fruits far up in sunlit treetops.
Verrazzano and his crew explored as far as they could inland until they were stopped by almost impassable undergrowth and likely never saw the Pocomoke River or a hint of the Chesapeake Bay.
On a hot and humid summer day by a marsh or the deeper forests with pesky insects buzzing, I am sometimes reminded of Verrazzano and the small group of early explorers pushing their way into the wilds of America. One of Verrazzano’s crew is reported to have remarked that ‘what don’t stink, bites’.
