Keep Your Eye on the Cone!

Cones, Cones, Beautiful and Lots of Cones Everywhere!

I had the pleasure of visiting the White Mountains earlier this month and hiked Mt. Osceola with some friends. It was a glorious day, the rains had stopped and the sun shone brightly. We enjoyed cool temps along the trail and an outstanding view at the summit. Check out the photos taken on our hike and enjoy the exquisite color of these cones! The summit was so full of them one had to force the eye to look beyond at the sites of the other mountain tops in view.

As many of you are noticing the conifer cones this year are quite abundant. You can see them at the tops of the trees from a distance, pulling the upper branches down into an umbrella like arch. The cones for many conifers actually take more than a year to reach their mature size, did you know that?

The red squirrels are busy trying to harvest the cones in the trees that surround my property. It sounded at first like someone either was hitting a slew of homers that fell the hardball in our yard or maybe they were throwing stones. We of course went out to 'check out' what the heck was going on. And thunk, thunk, then thunk thunk, thunk thunk thunk we heard them falling.

No it wasn't the wind, the air was still, so what was it causing them to drop? There are too many on the tree my husband said, I disagreed, I knew all too well what those little four legged furry tooth sawing, gnawing creatures were up to. Sure enough I found em, Red Squirrels, up at the top of the 50' or higher white pine, harvesting the crop! And below, it was 'bombs away'. The ground littered with fresh new cones not yet ready to fall. All nice and thin and green and fresh pine aroma in the air. Alongside of these perfect cones were the cartoonish looking skeletized cone, nothing left but a long thin post with a pointed top and rounded bottom.

So, keep your eye on the cones! For a couple of reasons, they just may fall on your head if you have a busy critter like we do in the neighborhood, and because they just look so beautiful hanging there in large clusters like I don't ever recall seeing before. Perhaps I just never noticed because they didn't get harvested by nature until later in the season when they may have lost a few on their own, or maybe I was just always busier that I am these days to have looked up enough to catch such a site.

I'm grateful this year for whatever the reason we have such a grand display of cones.
I'm also grateful that I'm able to enjoy and experience the journey to the summit of a mountain.
Nature is the most perfect designer of the landscape. I am most inspired by the plans that nature creates all by itself. Thank you Planet Earth for allowing us to join you for the view!





The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man. ~Author Unknown