Hallows Days on Nantucket

Milestone Bog

 The days around All Hallows’ Eve have always marked a threshold: between autumn and winter, harvest and scarcity, the living and the dead. On Nantucket, the changing colors of the moors and woodlands seem particularly appropriate to this time of year. The tupelos are now bare, and the dominant colors are brown and yellow: brown from the crumpling leaves of the scrub oaks, yellow from the sweet pepperbush, maples, and black cherry. The bayberries are turning mahogany. 

Squam Farm

Squam Farm

Nantucket is taking on its deer problem. Deer densities on the island are extraordinarily high—in some areas more than five times the statewide management goal. This year, the Nantucket Land Bank opened its Agricultural Processing Center, where donated venison is processed for distribution through Nourish Nantucket and the local food pantry. The archery season has been expanded, both earlier in the fall and later into the winter, and more land has been opened to hunting. Governor Maura Healey has proposed allowing Sunday hunting as well. Even with a record 1,003 deer harvested during the 2025–26 season, it will take substantially larger harvests over many years to reduce the herd and its impact on the island’s natural environment and public health.

I forgot to wear my orange hat while walking at Beechwood and Norwood Farm. It was so quiet—not a towhee to be heard, perhaps a catbird or two. Lots of blue jays and crows. There were no planes to be heard either, on a beautiful sunny Thursday. The black huckleberry and highbush blueberry were red around the ponds. Sweet everlasting and bluestem were still adding texture to the landscape. The Norwood Oak is yet undisturbed by seasonal change.

Norwood Oak

Black Huckleberry

Groundsel, Eastern Baccharia

Sweetpepper, Clethra Alnifolia

At Windswept Bog, I watched a Merlin being harassed by a northern harrier.

Merlin

Merlin, Falco Columbarius

At Squam Farm on Saturday afternoon, I was entranced by the golden switchgrass and the seeded bluestem grasses. A field sparrow was a delight!

I hiked Milestone Bog, where the dew on the grass was frosted and the cranberry bog almost frozen. The switchgrass is fading, the groundsel flowers are blowing away. Snow buntings flew overhead, and American pipits called.

Late October is an opportunity to see the sunrise after 7 and give more attention to First Light. Starting November 1, sunrise will be back to 6:15 a.m. as daylight saving time ends. We are at the threshold of a new season.

October in Living Color

Polpis Harbor

 The nor'easter has downed and browned the garden with wind,sand and salt, leaving only a few maroon sedum standing. I finish making my beach plum jelly of the year from the juice in the fridge and reboiling the batch that didn't gel.  Twenty jars this year!

The storm brought 2.62 inches of rain, according to to my Davis VantagePro weather system.  2.72 inches  was reported at Nantucket Airport.  But it brought sustained winds of over 30 miles an hour for  2 days,  over 35 mph for over 24 hours and gusts from 40-50 miles an hour  on Friday September 25 and Saturday September 26..

Along the roadsides, the Virginia creeper is aflame amidst the browned grape leaves draping the bushes,  the Tupelos are mahogany red  and the groundsel'blooms are bright white.    The poplar grove is stripped of leaves. At Cain's Pond the Pulchea Odorata which has lined the shore of Sesachacha in pink is now a beige fuzz.  The sweet everlasting is also loosing its shape.  Flax-leaved Asters ( Linactis linariifolia) are everywhere in the moors an along the bike paths.

At Polpis marsh the colors of the fall are most revealed: the wheat and gold and maroon and yellow.

The Bluff

The bluff is bright on October 2,  blooming with late goldenrod.

We headed to Coatue on October 3 to scallop, an October ritual.  Bayberry and groundsel  and cedar line the road.  We see a patch of the cactus Opuntia.  Some fields of lichen and yellow sickle-leaved silkgrass and beaten down goldenrod.  A former lagoon with salicornia  is turning yellow.   Josh scalloped between Bass Point and Five-fingered point on Coatue. I found a recently dead Common Dolphin on the shore.  

Coatue Cedar

Coatue Lichen

Eastern Seaside Goldenrod- Coatue

The wind has not only shorn the hydrangeas of all their leaves, but it  rattles soughs and moans all night around the house.  

My bicycle Tour de Ponds shows Wigwam, Corner and Norwood Ponds recovering and Almanac Pond completely dry.

What used to be Almanac Pond

Norwood Pond

Corner Pond

Wigwam Pond

Salicornia at Jackson Point

Opuntia cactus at Coatue

Deceased Common Dolphin stranded on Coatue 

September

 

My early September walks at Windswept Bog and Squam Farm and Swamp are goldenrod filled, now with the taller solidago rugosa,  compared to the earlier  euthamia downy goldenrod.  The tupelos are now mahogany colored contrast. This seems to be the season of dragonflies,  and the early fox  grapes are out.  (Note the stash 100 ft from post  Number 9 in Squam Farm. )  There were no false foxgloves at Squam Farm,  but on Sept 11 they were everywhere at Windswept...more than I have ever seen. before and throughout the entire wetland.  The woods smelled like fox grapes.

The Sickle-leaved aster/ silkgrass still punch up through the sand paths on the moors.  We got our largest haul of beach plums ever  near the Pout Ponds;  the rain in July must have helped them this year compared to the slim pickings during last year's drought. 

My other September favorites are the view of the maroon bluestem grass fields from the Milestone Road , daily monarch butterflies still in the front yard, along with a Northern Harrier hunting along the bluff and semipalmated plovers calling from the beach.

And of course the sunrises are later, making them easier to enjoy.  The earth has reached the half light half dark of the fall equinox. 

Emily Dickinson on fall:

The morns are meeker than they were,

The nuts are getting brown;

The berry's cheek is plumper,

The rose is out of town.

The maple wears a gayer scarf,

The field a scarloet gown.

Lest I should be old-fashioned,

I'll put a trinket on.

Liatris

False Foxglove,
Agalinis purpurea

August

Time rushes forward in August.  For the first two weeks, the aroma of sweet pepper fills the air. I see tansy at the corner of Burnell and New Street and on the bike path near Sesachacha.  The rose mallow is in bloom, along with the butterfly milkweed at the Land Bank meadow near the Creeks.

Butterfly Milkweed,
Asclepius Tuberosa

Swamp Rose Mallow, 
Hibiscus Palustris

Grandchildren fill the house, our begotten biomass blooming, so different from one summer to the next. Frankie and Noa are learning to boogie board and body surf, and Simon is dolphining at the edge. Arthur is focused on Minecraft.

By mid August, the Bush clover is wagging; Sweet pepper is waning and the insects are buzzing. I anticipate the next major aroma of the waning summer: fox grapes- still green now.  Little Ladies Tresses are blooming at Squam Farm.

I took a rainy walk at Windswept Bog on August 13 and time marched on to the first slender golden top goldenrod and false foxgloves (Gerardia) . Although there are still the ghosty pillars of mullein and Yarrow and Queen Anne's Lace along the paths, the landscape is weighted by maroon grasses and brownish sedges.

Little Ladies Tresses

Spirantheses tuberosa

Norwood Oak

By  August 17 at Norwood Farm, the Sweet Pepper is on its last legs...and I see my first aster of the year. There are Meadows of spirantheses tuberosa mixed with slender golden top (euthamia Caroliniana) and pink bush clover and golden grasses. Little Ladies tresses in numbers I have never seen before!  Is this another result of the rainy July?  Rain was 1.17 inches in June and July of 2025, compared to3.02 inches in 2026. They are in meadows before the Norwood oak rather than just at the verges, and all along the paths, even on the Pout Ponds Road. 

The cotton grass is blooming at the corner pond, along with pickerel weed and many Virginia meadow beauties. Yellow-eyed bog grass Xyris Difformis is blooming there too.  Not much visible water in it or in the Norwood Pond or Almanac Pond. Nantucket is still considered to be in a Level 2 drought, although the Wannacomet Water Company argues it should be a Level 1.

Cotton grass at Corner Pond

We see the impact of more rain this summer in fewer deer coming to eat my garden.  The anemone are flourishing, when last year every bud was eaten by deer .

Solitary and Least Sandpipers
at Reyes Pond

American Oystercatcher 

Purple False Foxglove,
Agalinis purpurea