Phenology: Gather Roses While You May

This phenology post is brought to you by a sight I've not seen before, in my fifty-plus years, and don't expect to see again.

Trees on the Blue Ridge Mountains are just starting to show bright colors, many still waiting for a real frost. Air temperatures dipped below the freezing mark last week, but not for long enough that anything actually froze.

At the same time, flowers, fooled by a long cool summer and that freaky last late frost, think it's spring.

This morning on the way into town I saw asters and convolvuli, calendulas and ladies' bedstraw. Those flowers normally bloom until frost. It's unusual, but it's not the first time I've seen them in early November.

I saw honeysuckle in full bloom. I've seen honeysuckle bloom twice in a long summer...I think this web site noted that in 2011 or 2012?

But I also saw two old-fashioned irises, blue-and-white ones. And I saw roses. I saw several different kinds of roses. I'm particularly appreciative of the ones in front of the retirement project, sometimes known as Bedbug Towers; the background of white gravel reflected enough light that even the cheap cell phone photo makes them look like roses. I assure you, the other blobs you may or may not recognize are roses, irises, and honeysuckle, all blooming on the first of November, as the first maple leaves begin to fall.

This is actually a mushroom--a very large mushroom. That's my foot in the picture beside it, showing that the diameter of the mushroom is just about the same as a woman's size 7 shoe.

In real life the smaller flowers and ground cover in this floral border do not actually swirl in a circle around the Iris germanica. 

"Wild" roses accompanied by vines...in real life they grow up at about the same angle as the porch posts on the house. The Tracfone never ceases to amaze me.

In real life you can see from the Jackson Street side of this home site that two of the bushes on the Park Street side are rosebushes, one pink and one red, and both are in full bloom this morning. In the background, behind the houses, you can't see the railroad track but can see the ball park, with a few trees turning orange among the green ones behind the park. Blobs of color in between the camera and the rosebushes are painted rocks. People on Park Street got tired of looking at the bare rocks and painted them in colors.

It's hard for me to recognize these blobs, too...the white blobs are honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica, almost covering the bush that supports the honeysuckle vines.

Roses and other pretty things.

Roses in the gravel patch.

It cost me about two dollars to snap and download these pictures, but it was worth it because I don't know whether anyone else is documenting them. The normal autumn flowers, and autumn leaves, are similar to the ones professional photographers have documented using good cameras.

Today will probably be the only chance anyone gets to see them all at once. The edge of the storm is expected to wipe out both flowers and maple leaves tonight. If you are a school child or parent, be sure to schedule some time for leaf and flower peeping on the way home from school...after supper could be too late.