Wild Nantucket: June 2020

Wednesday, June 24, 2020

June 24

Here we are...watching the sunrise and sunset move south over the sea and over the moors. We love actually being able to see the planetary motion from the equinox to solstice and now to the autumnal equinox.

The plump and juicy pasture thistles are popping; the first yarrow are blooming on the moors. Viburnum is starting along the Polpis Road.

Cirsium Pumilum, Pasture Thistle

Blue-eyed Grass

The Bluff with fog bank

Norwood Farm oak

The weather pattern as the land and sea warms has been foggy in the morning and evening, and fog banks on the sea when the sun heats up the land. I've had a couple of beautiful hikes, on the Milestone Bog and on the Middle Moors to Pout Ponds and Tapashaw Bog in which wisps of fog sweep over the landscape...while it is sunny.

Found a new footpath around the Donut Pout Pond which is now filled in. It is even mowed!

Tapawshaw Bog

Donut Pout Pond- now filled in

Pout Pond

Hiking back on Altar Rock Road

Parking area on Altar Rock Road; field of ox-eye daisies

From the Bluff

Milestone Bog

We watched kingbirds "attacking" Common Ravens which were foraging on the newly mown grass at the Bog.

Saturday, June 20, 2020

Summer Solstice

We've been so lucky to see the days grow longer. After today, the shortening of daylight begins.

It's turtle time: 2 at Windswept Bog earlier this week! And rubrus species dewberries are blooming all over. The fox grapes have moved from their pink unfurling to wide green leaves and even some fruiting. The grasses are high and the scrub oak is leafed out. Summer! Those Quaker Ladies, houstonia caerulea, are still blooming in the shady places.

Pasture Thistle: Cirsium Pumilum at Squam Farm

Cinnamon Ferns as big as me in Squam Swamp

White Thistle: cirsium pumilum

Eastern Painted Turtle at Windswept Bog

Dewberry: Rubus flagellaris

June 20: Walking to Sconset on the beach

Rosa Rugosa on the BluffWalk

Summer

I love the Nantucket outdoors. I am paying the price, contracting Babesiosis. I last got it in 2013, the year my parents died and the year two of my sons got married. I remembered the symptons...because I didn't get confirmation until after treatment!

I went off-island for what was supposed to be 2 days but wound up being 5. When I returned a week ago the wild cherry were blooming and the Rubus dewberries were blooming along the Polpis Road. The ox-eye daisies are going strong.

On June 18, Josh and I walked with Alan Reinhardt and the Nantucket Conservation Foundation at Massasoit Plains. Nice to discover a new part of the island where we haven't hiked. We hiked through the woods to the Plains and then over to Clark Cove.

Massasoit Plains

The next day we headed to Windswept Bog and Stump Pond, where the sandplain blue-eyed grass and blue flag iris were abundant.

Blue Flag: Iris Versicolor

Blue Flag

Sandplain Blue-eyed Grass: Sysyrinchium fuscatum

Stump Pond

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Early June

I miss the gannets. During the winter and early spring, they and all three scoters, loons, long-tail ducks and eiders were always outside our windows. Now they are off to the north. We still have the herring and greater black back gulls with us. And, it seems, thousands of common yellowthroats.

The ox-eye daises are opening, the rugosa is starting to bloom. The wild geraniums (geranium maculatum) are in the shade places and the Quaker Ladies continue to bloom. Yellow iris are in bloom at Reyes Pond, and scotch broom is ablaze in yellow. The blue-eyed grass has started. But most beautiful is the golden heather that is carpeting the middle moors.

We thought the water was high earlier in the spring...but now many of the ponds on the middle moors are flooded into each other, and the stretch between Pout Ponds Road and Almanac Pond roads is more flooded than I have ever seen it. And speaking of that, every time I go on the moors I see people walking and biking now. And it's only the first week of June!