In this month’s blog:

The Shenandoah During the Shutdown: Fall Colors as Heartfelt Respite

Climate Log: More Wilderness Taken for Fossil Fuel Extraction, But…

Our Garden: Summer Success Turns to Fall Hopes

The October 2025 Photo/Video Gallery: Birds, Wildflowers, and More Colorful Travelpics

Surprise at Algonkian Park: Eastern Rat Snake emerges from den at mouth of Sugarland Run, September 23 (See more pics from this park in this month’s Gallery) 

*******************************************************

“So Darned Beautiful!” The Shenandoah in the Shutdown: Fall Colors as Health and Inspiration

As the news out of Washington became more and more alarmingly bizarre, quite a few of us, it seems, took to the road this month to immerse ourselves in the annual festival of the trees: the sun-painted  purples, reds, oranges, and golds of the autumn leaves. In the midst of the federal government shutdown–in which some of our relatives and neighbors were furloughed (and feared being fired)–we expected that the officially-closed Shenandoah National Park, just 70 miles west of us, might be off limits, or at least sparsely visited.  Imagine our surprise when, at 8:30 AM on October 15, we discovered that the 31 twisty miles of the northern final stretch of the Skyline Drive were liberally peppered with visitors as hungry as we were for the exquisite scenery and valley vistas. As one of the other visitors we met exclaimed, “It’s just so darned beautiful!”

As Red Sumac waves in the foreground, we scan the western ridges toward the Shenandoah Valley and the Alleghenies beyond, early morning, October 15

The wind sings in the rushes, as the sun washes the nearby ridges, the Shenandoah River valley below, and the far Alleghenies, October 15

To our surprise, even the Dickey Ridge Visitor Center, near the northern end of the Drive in Front Royal, was open–staffed during the shutdown by unpaid volunteers from the regional Friends of the National Parks. The Center was packed by visitors asking for information and buying the books on history and nature science that we had been worried would no longer be available from this federal location, just as agency websites and federal climate records have been scrubbed since this Administration took office in January.

***************************************************************************

Climate Log: As Most of the World Moves Toward a Greener Future, US Feds Double Down on Fossil Fuel Extraction

On October 23, as the New York Times reported, the Trump administration has now opened portions of the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling. An earlier Times article (Joselow and Friedman, Oct. 6) described a second approved project (pictured above) that would build 200 miles of roads through lands and across fragile rivers to more undeveloped sites.

 Those for and against. The plans for this latest incursion into protected lands, which environmental and Native-American organizations say would “significantly and irrevocably” damage land, air, water, and wildlife, as well as Native communities, were halted by the Biden administration for those reasons. But now these incursions have the full-throated  support of the Trump regime. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in fact proclaimed that these approved projects embody both “drill, baby, drill,” and “mine, baby, mine,” as the White House wants companies who lease the lands to explore for a wide range of minerals that might be used in the competition with China for energy, military, and industrial dominance. 

But will anybody want the leases? One irony of the project is that it is not clear if any fossil fuel companies plan to buy the leases to drill for oil and gas in the region. Millions of acres of earlier-approved leases have gone unsold, because of the prohibitive costs of development and the intense, widespread opposition to the environmental destruction. Potential lenders to the companies have the same cold feet. 

And what if the future is green (or at least non fossil)? It’s also not clear if oil-and-gas drilling have the same attraction across the rest of the world that they have to Trump, Burgum, and their disciples. Also on October 23, an article by Claire Brown in the Times asked if there might be “A U.S. Nuclear Renaissance?” While she noted the 2 nuclear power projects in development in the US (Including the one in Georgia pictured above), she described the 13 now under construction in China–and the 33 (!) already approved for future construction there. China, it seems, and the nations that share its goals for renewable energy are much further ahead of the US than we’d already suspected.

And all this nuclear activity is occurring in addition to the thousands of solar and wind projects in operation and development throughout the rest of the world. 

Bottom line? Here, where we’ve been prohibited by the President and the fossil fuel cartel from even mentioning “climate change,” and where scientists are de-funded, universities are punished, and agency personnel are fired and their records disappeared, it’s easy for us Statesers to believe that all cars are petroguzzlers, all the higher-and-higher-priced utilities run on gas, and EVs and heat pumps were a momentary California dream now gone for good.  But not so! There is hope, and it may just require us to stay strong–and learn as much as we can from our friends in the sane world.

****************************************************************************

Our Garden: Summer Success Turns to Fall Hopes

October is the month of transition for our little Northern Virginia garden plot.  On October 5, we harvested our last veggies:

On October 6, we celebrated with a tomato-y, pepper-y Mexican “3 sisters” stew:

And that night saw, fittingly, the October harvest moon over the lake:

In the garden itself, we devoted the first week of October to digging and hoeing out, plant by plant, the exhausted tomato vines, pepper plants, chard, and herbs, plus the now-faded marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, and other flowers no longer in bloom. We also pulled up or hoed out a good portion of the “weeds,” like Blue Speedwell and Crabgrass, that had thrived all spring and summer. We did all this in prep for the fall season–including for whatever we decided to plant for that abbreviated time before winter.

Our garden association had chosen November 15 as the water shut-off date, but until then we could water our new plants as needed. There were also the piles of mulch and compost we could shovel on to our ground to help with prep for fall and for the overwintering yet to come.

The New Plants

 

At the local Home Depot, we’d decided on some fall favorites for our flower section and for our veggy section, the varieties listed with the photos above. We’d be planting only the west half of the garden and letting the east half lie fallow, perhaps with the mulch for enriching.  From the flowers photo, above, you might notice that a few plants are carryovers from the summer–3 Swiss Chard and one very healthy Rosemary, a perennial. We’ll see how they do as the cold comes.

As for the Broccoli and the Cauliflower, we tried them with some success last fall in our earlier small plot–so let’s see how they do this year. It all depends on how quickly the cold intensifies.

Oh, and the brilliant Wild Blue Aster plant in the center row? This magnificent Virginia Native did almost nothing all summer–but for the last month it has been its own fireworks display. We’ll keep track.

As you can see, we are having a ball experimenting and growing. You might say our garden plot is our own special Ball-room. And we didn’t have to destroy anything to build it.

Eastern Bluebird scans the garden as a Blue Jay calls, October 24

********************************************************************************

The October 2025 Photo/Video Gallery: More Birds, Wildflowers, and Autumn Travelpics

Besides our trip to the Shenandoah National Park, we also went to the local Algonkian Potomac River Park in late September and enjoyed more colorful sights in the Potomac watershed in rural Maryland and Virginia early in the final week of October.

And, of course, our own little lake offers us too many marvelous fall color and floral/faunal gems to ignore.  In fact, with the return of a substantial rain on October 30, more birds returned to the lake at the very end of the month–and we are able to show some of these species to you in this entry.

Double-crested Cormorant preens on the boundary rock where Sugarland Run enters the Potomac, Algonkian Regional Park, morning, September 23

Chipping Sparrow hunts seeds on ground at our feet, Algonkian Park, September 23

Grey Catbird moves through dry grass, north end path by our lake, October 20

 

 

 

 

 

 

Seven Canada Geese swim in the east lake, as Crickets sing, October 11

 

Song sparrow chirps within a Silken Dogwood on the southeast shore of the lake, as a Blue Jay calls, early AM, October 25

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Great Blue Heron stands atop dead Oak on the east bank and scans the domain, early AM, October 25

And so we move toward November, the month of Thanksgiving, with so much already to be thankful–and hopeful–for…