Missouri is home to several Amish and Mennonite communities. Roundrock is near one of them, and often on our early morning drives to our woods we will pass a few horse-drawn buggies on the shoulder of the highway.

I took this picture from Prolechariot as we zipped past. (I had slowed down considerably, but the semi behind me didn’t seem to care at the time.)

The Amish are widely admired in this part of Missouri. They are respected for their hard work and craftsmanship, and are often hired to work on construction in the area. There is a cabin not too far from my woods that I’ve been assured will stand up forever because “the Amish built it.” (I haven’t seen the cabin yet, but I’ll take it on faith.)

On a couple of occasions, always in the winter, we have passed more than a dozen of these buggies on the road. One time I counted eighteen in the few minutes it took me to drive by. Later that day when I was returning home, I saw all of those buggies parked in the yard of a house up the hill from the highway. I suppose it was a social or religious gathering if it would bring them out on such a cold day.

Missouri calendar:

• Columbus Day (observed)
• Arrival of American wigeon, pintail and gadwall ducks is at its peak.

Today in Missouri history:

• The first medical surgeon to work in the frontier town of St. Louis was born in Germany on this date in 1854.

If all went according to plan, I should have awoken in St. Louis this morning. Libby and I headed to that other great city in Missouri for the annual birthday celebration of my only niece. It’s not really her birthday yet, and she’s not even from St. Louis but some place called Chicago. Still, most of the family manages to gather at my parents’ house for this event. We may see a few sights before we leave.

Believe it or not, I continue to get comments to my post about blue-tailed skinks. It was curious that throughout the summer this year I had not seen a single blue-tailed skink in my woods. I didn’t even hear them skittering through the leaves as I approached. I was beginning to think they didn’t actually exist (as I suspect some of you believe). It was only on my latest visit that I finally saw one again, just before the recent chill that has probably driven them all into hiding now.

Check out Feel Yourself through Nature, a mother and son photo blog from the Czech Republic. The photography is truly gorgeous!

Okay, so you’re supposed to be able to see a small photo of five round rocks in a row on the upper right of blog. It should be right above the Contact RRJ box. Do you see it? If not, let me know what browser you’re using. I’ll have to let my tech monkeys (they’re not really monkeys) know since I’ve gotten at least one report that it isn’t there.

The next Festival of the Trees is going back to where it all began: Via Negativa. Send your links to Dave at bontasaurus (at) yahoo (dot) com or use the handy online submission form by October 29. And don’t forget to check out the current edition over at Arboreality.

You shouldn’t be shy about becoming a host yourself. Dave and I can give you all the help you need to make a big success. It will drive more traffic to your blog and maybe even make you some new friends.

What’s Pablo reading now? I’m enjoying Philip Roth’s new novel Indignation. I’ve read everything he’s written, many of the novels more than once, and one of them about fifteen times (The Ghost Writer). Next I have to dash through the Joseph Conrad novella Typhoon for the reading group that meets this Wednesday. It’s the same group that just finished Moby Dick, so I guess we’re still in a nautical theme.

Missouri calendar:

• Hellbender breeding is at its peak.
  

Today in Missouri history:

• The very first ironclad gunboat, built in Missouri and originally called the St. Louis, was launched from that city on this date in 1861.
• Comedian and activist Dick Gregory is born in St. Louis on this date in 1932.

Welcome to Saturday, everyone! This is the video I hoped to share with you last week. I couldn’t because I needed to reconfigure something on my new hard drive. I’ve done that, and I’ve done this.

Anyway, this is the view from Rumination Rock. It’s pretty much the same thing as I showed you last week, but this one is in motion. If you watch carefully, you can see leaves falling past the camera.

Missouri calendar:

• Watch for flocks of blue jays flying low.

Today in Missouri history:

• General Jimmy Doolittle visited the small Missouri town of Centerville on this date in 1946. The town had renamed itself Doolittle and invited the general for a party in his honor.

I think I need to tell you what I’m tryin to show in this photo. This is a shot on the north-facing slope above the lake. This side of the land tends to be wetter, and given all of the rain in recent weeks in the Roundrock area, the mushrooms have been sprouting happily.

And that’s what I’m trying to show in this photo. Specifically, I wanted to capture the line of white mushrooms going down the hillside. Can you see them? This marks where a fallen tree had rotted into the ground. The mushrooms are busy digesting the remnants of that old tree. (That might be a round rock there on the left. We find a lot of them in this area.)

I can remember stepping over this fallen tree in the early years of my Roundrock rambles. Now it’s gone. That’s a curious phenomenon I’ve noticed in my woods. Not that fallen trees rot away but that they seem to hang on for so long on the ground, and then in seemingly one year, just dissolve utterly.

I suppose I could be misremembering the timing of this, but it’s a notion I’ve had when hiking in other parts of this wetter slope in my forest. Way back when, I made a similar post about a log I could remember sitting on and then finding turned to pulp on the next visit. (I’ll leave it to you to surf through my earlier posts to find that one if you’re interested.)

The bright area at the top of the photo is actually the lake bed. It’s farther down than it looks. The land drops about ten feet down just beyond those trees. You can just see some water on the right side of that area, but if the lake were full, the whole area would be underwater to about three or four feet.

Missouri calendar:

• Downy gentians bloom on prairies.

Today in Missouri history:

• On this date in 1871, Governor B. Gratz Brown (finally) sends the state militia into certain southern Missouri counties to begin investigating and eradicating the flourishing Ku Klux Klan.

I came upon these sweet little flowers on our walk around the lake at Roundrock last visit. I had never seen them before, and it took me some time to identify what they are.

I’m confident that these are calico asters (Aster lateriflorus), which are common enuf in Missouri, even if I’ve not had my eyes open to see them before.

Sometimes I’ll have a photo in my library and I can’t remember where I took it in the vast 80+ acres of my forest. Identifying this flower might be easier if I knew I had taken it in a wet spot, a dry spot, or an open spot, for example. What I do in that case is look at the photos before and after it in the library — they load in order of occurrence. Often that will give me a clue about what was around them or where I was going when I took the sequence.

In this case, the photo immediately before it was taken just above the dam. Okay, that anchors one end of the sequence. Several of the pix after the aster photo are indistinct as to location, but about three hence there is one that I know was taken on the south side of the lake, about halfway along that leg. Hence the aster photo was taken either atop the dam or in the forest on the south side of the lake. This is generally wetter, cooler territory, so when I saw that calico asters favored wet ground, I was confident of my identification.

Further, it says that the center part of these flowers begins yellow and matures to a deep red. You can see some yellow centers at the bottom of the photo, so that helped me nail down my identification.

These flowers are supposed to bloom until November, so maybe I’ll get another chance to see them when I return to Roundrock, especially since I know where to look.

Missouri calendar:

• Order next year’s Natural Events Calendar.

Today in Missouri history:

• The first overland mail arrived in Missouri all the way from California — a trip of twenty-four days — arrived on this date in 1858.

These are the fruits of buckbrush, a plant that grows just about everywhere in my woods at Roundrock. It’s a common plant east of the Rocky Mountains, sometimes going by the name of Indian currant, and I’ve tripped over its stolons (ground runners) many times.

I understand this is part of the honeysuckle family, and around here that plant is considered a noxious weed. Some references to buckbrush are very admiring, speaking of how well it grows in any type of soil and how useful it is for covering sloping sites. Other references consider buckbrush a weed as well, unsuitable for cattle grazing and not that beneficial to wildlife either. The fact that “buckbrush” is a common name used for many different plants may explain the range of opinions about it.

All of that is judgment from a human perspective, and I don’t think the buckbrush much cares.

Missouri calendar:

• Yom Kippur

Today in Missouri history:

• The Veiled Prophet Ball was first held in St. Louis on this date in 1878. Drawing on its Mardi Gras heritage, the ball (and lately fair) is the high point of the social season for St. Louis elite, though it has been marked by protests calling it discriminatory.

This is a close-up shot of the same round rocks that have appeared in the upper right corner of this blog since the day I made my first post. (Specifically, these are the second and third from the left.) Over the years, these rocks have been added to, lost in the leaf litter, accidentally kicked about, and subject to whatever weather the gods have chosen to throw at them.

On a recent visit I happened to notice how the rain has apparently washed away some of the dirt on the downhill side of these rocks, creating those pillars of dirt on which they rest. That’s my guess as to what happened anyway. I think water has washed away the dirt that had once been the mostly even surface, leaving behind whatever was protected by the rocks above them.

I don’t know how long they’ve been perched like this. I think I might have noticed this earlier had it been around earlier. But if it is recent, why the sudden change? It’s mysteries like this that keep me up at night.

Missouri calendar:

• Ruby-throated hummingbirds have migrated.

Today in Missouri history:

• Sterling Price had lead his Confederate forces to within four miles of Missouri’s capital, Jefferson City, with the intent to retake the state for the rebels. Learning the strength of the federal garrison there, he decided to withdraw and begin the march to Kansas City on this date in 1864.

You may remember seeing a similar photo in this post. This is a close-up shot of my pants leg after I had taken a walk about Roundrock on a recent visit. Those are chiggers on the fabric. Chiggers are just about the worst thing when it comes to Ozark hiking. (You can see why it makes sense to wear light-colored clothing when hiking the woods.)

There is a difference this time though. All of these chiggers are dead. They are ex-chiggers. (Reference, anyone?) Far too late in the season this year, Libby and I finally soaked our going-to-the-woods clothes in a solution of permethrin. This poison is supposed to be fatal to the touch for insects (though — they tell me — it’s perfectly safe against human skin). It seems to have worked.

These chiggers were no longer moving. They had made their last climb.

I’ve made an occasional observation about the effectiveness of this chemical approach to pest management in clothing. Mostly it has involved the times when I am sitting in the comfy chair and happen to look at my pants. Chiggers don’t stand a chance. Larger insects, though, seem to do better. I’ve seen ticks crawling woozily through a forest of fallen chiggers before. That’s not so bad since ticks are more readily seen and dispensed. I’ve also seen a few ants racing across my clothes. Normally these ants around the shelter tarp appear to be foraging, but the ones I’ve seen on my treated pants generally look as though they are in a hurry. Spiders don’t seem affected at all. I’ve always heard that spiders are the hardest to kill, and that’s good since I guess I want spiders about in my woods (even if I must manually remove all of their webs).

The buggy season is coming to an end in the Ozarks. A couple of frosty nights will draw the curtain closed until about May. We do sometimes see a lone tick on our clothes, even in the iron cold of February, but no chiggers are about.

Missouri calendar:

• Cardinal flowers bloom along Ozark streams.

Today in Missouri history:

• Missouri’s first regiment of volunteers for the Seminold War was mustered in for its tragic tour of duty on this date in 1837.

I’m not sure when my next trip to Roundrock will be. Actually, I have a lot of vacation time I have to burn before the end of the calendar year, so even if a weekend doesn’t work out, I could easily go in the middle of the week. Or I could use that time to get plenty of other things done around the house and in life. I wonder what I’ll choose.

One thing I would like to do when I’m out to Roundrock in the coming weeks is set up the game camera at our entrance again just before deer season opens (firearm season is from November 15 through November 25). I’m curious to see if I have any interlopers in the period when I deliberately don’t go to the woods. If I return to the woods to find the camera vandalized or missing, I guess I’ll have my answer.

You may notice a new name in my blogroll. Beetles In the Bush should add a little sophistication and erudition to this blog. So let’s all straighten up and fly right.

The Farmer’s Wife (also in the blogroll) hasn’t been posting much lately, but I think that’s because she’s been spending a lot of time at home. Go have a look.

And here’s a happy surprise. White Rabbit at Underground Ozarks hadn’t made a post in more than a year. I feared the worst (urban exploration being a sometimes dangerous activity that often skirts technically legal definitions). But White Rabbit has made some fresh posts in recent days, so be sure to head over there and welcome him back.

Have you visited the latest edition of the Festival of the Trees yet? Jade at Arboreality has put together a real beauty, grouped by the four elements. Give yourself a treat and head on over. You may find a few new links you’ll want to visit regularly.

My Adam’s apple is bruised this morning. Yesterday evening Libby and I went to the wedding of the oldest son of my good friend Duff. I wore a necktie (and not the clip-on variety they wear in Florida either). I haven’t worn a necktie since my own son’s wedding more than a year ago! The wedding was an eclectic affair with everything from tailored suits to tattoos in evidence. The youngsters are in their 30s, but they still looked like a couple of happy kids.

What’s Pablo reading now? I’m still working my way through Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose. Part of the point of this book is to pay better attention to how good writing is crafted, so going slowly with it makes a lot of sense.

Missouri calendar:

• Listen for the trill of field crickets.
• Peak of fall color begins.

Today in Missouri history:

• Frank James, brother of the outlaw Jesse James, turned himself in to Missouri’s Governor Crittenden on this date in 1882. In his subsequent trial, even the governor stood as a defense witness. James was acquited and lived a peaceful life on his farm near Kearney, Missouri for the rest of his days.

I was all set to share a video with you of the view from Rumination Rock, but for some reason, I can’t upload the video to Yahoo as I could in the days before the new hard drive. (If I can figure out what I’ve done wrong, maybe I can share it with you later.)

Instead I offer this still photo of the view. A long time ago, someone going by the name of Rexroth’s Daughter said she would love to see a view from Rumination Rock. I never forgot that request, but I also didn’t have a lake that wasn’t mostly an embarrassment to show.

This post is for you, Rexroth’s Daughter. I hope you get to see the view in person some day.

Missouri calendar:

• Watch for goldfinches eating sunflower seeds.

Today in Missouri history:

• Moses Austin, called by some the Grandfather of Texas because of his son Stephen, was born on this date in 1761. During his time in Missouri, Moses Austin refined the lead mining and smelting industry of the state into a powerful industry that is still in operation today.