A Grey and Blue Sunday Ride

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Rosy acorn on a wet road
Crystalline air of September
Sun wrestling with clouds (and winning)

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Sunday morning is delightfully rainy - perfect weather for knitting - but in the afternoon the rain stops falling. Roads begin to dry, and the cyclist's conscience awakes. ("You haven't been out all week," it whispers. "Weren't your clothes feeling a bit tight yesterday? You really should take a ride.")

It's cloudy and damp. Temps are in the upper 50s and a cold northeast wind is blowing when Iris and I (with Tallulah the Turtle) set out to quell the cyclist's conscience. I'm wearing a jacket for the first time in months, and spend the first several miles wondering whether I ought to have included arm warmers.

The sky is grey and lowering, but here and there a gleam of blue shines through with the promise of clearing later. The marshes are strangely quiet today - blackbirds have taken their song south for the winter, and even the katydids' hum is subdued as they feel the approach of autumn.

I pass a row of tall bushes with stems and branches of a bright, improbable magenta:

Some branches are tipped with sprays of deep-pink blossoms, and some with berries of a fresh, light green (slowly turning here, from red to deepest plum-colour):

Research reveals these to be pokeberries. (How have I never seen them before?)

A wild cucumber vine is tangled up with the pokeberries, its pod already dried and burst open at the bottom for the release of seeds:

At the marsh up the road, the world seems a bit drab and colourless by comparison with the vibrant pokeberries:

Grasses wave against a cloudy sky:

A mile or two later, blue sky suddenly appears to the north...

...though to the east and south (where I am headed) the clouds still look like rain.

A hawk sits in a bare tree (and lets me take several photos)...

...then decides it's time for a break. Off to look for a snack:

Where are those blue skies now? The favourite bend in the road sits under a canopy of cloud:

We pass a clump of goldenrod, and Tallulah reminds me that I promised her a whiff of the yellow stuff.

Whiff:

These flowers grow nearby, and I take several photos before I realise they're asters (closed):

Asters (open):

Some way behind the goldenrod and aster grow these new-to-me deep-blue flowers (which I shoot from a distance as I don't know how solid the ground is):

My wildflower book identifies them as bottle gentians. (Hooray! I knew gentians grew in Wisconsin but these are the first I've seen.)

Back on the bike, we continue on our way, past the sheep farm and the pedigreed pigs, and up a long gradual climb where acorns crunch beneath our tyres.

One perfect little acorn, blushing with modesty, lies by itself on the still-wet road:

To our left is a long view across golden-green fields to the wind farm:

We climb up to the high prairie, turn a corner, and miles later descend again into long valleys filled with end-of-summer fields, where buff turns to bronze under marching cloud shadows:

Speaking of shadows, mine finally puts in an appearance....

The ride which began in cloudy gloom has ended in bright sunshine. Much better than the other way around!

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