northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's another reminder of how dry the summer was. It was taken at Washington Valley Park, and is usually a small stream that flows into the Washington Valley Reservoir. (It's not the larger West Branch Middle Brook.) Usually you need to do a little rock-hopping to get across it [1]. But at the tail end of August (and probably almost all of August) it looked more like a puddle with rocks in it. The rocks are still lumpy enough that you needed to cross with care, though falling today would be more of a painful than wet experience. Fortunately the water level has returned to approximately normal levels with our autumnal rains. Still, we did have one of the driest summers I've seen down here. [1] On one occasion I watched a mother attempting to coax a small boy to cross it, but he found it too unsafe.

Though there are plants here, this picture deviants a little from the nature theme since it's of a mostly man-made object. This is a view of one of the many bridges at Duke Farms, and is presumably fairly old (though I'm pretty sure it's had some modern maintenance work done). If you take Railroad Lane to where it nearly meets Dukes Parkway West, this bridge gets you over Dukes Brook. This picture was taken during our summer drought, so normally the water would be higher and probably giving a look of a continuous waterflow with maybe a couple rocks poking above the surface. Despite the drought, the brook still had the water to keep the nearby plants looking green; I think the meadows had a burnt brown look at this time. August 23, 2022 at Duke Farms