Off To See The Gentians

Usually when school starts I start thinking about the gentians that grow along the river, so last week off I went to see if they were blooming. Though it is the same Ashuelot River I showed you in the last post, this section of river is north of where I was then and it’s really quite different as far as the plants that grow here. You wouldn’t expect this if you looked at a map. As the crow flies the two places are just a few miles apart but instead of floodplain dotted with trees the river’s banks are thickly forested here. I can’t remember ever seeing the river flood along this stretch. That could be because the trail you see in this shot is built on a berm, so this bank of the river is higher than the far side. Back in the day when I was a gardener I usually figured on September fifteenth as the first chance of frost. Of course it could happen before or after that date but unless you wanted the client’s house plants to be frosted you had cleaned their pots and brought them inside…