76° / 60°Sunny, clouding lateSunset 7:01 PM
The last dry day for a while. Sunday brings half an inch of rain and thunder.
Look closer
Along damp shady edges, the fat green pods under jewelweed's orange flowers are coiled springs. Touch a ripe one and it fires its seeds several feet, which is how the plant sows next year's patch.
Look closer
Monarchs that emerged after mid-August skip breeding altogether and live for months instead of weeks. The one on your goldenrod is fuelling up for a flight to a few mountain forests in central Mexico.
Right outside
Clouds thicken this evening ahead of tomorrow's rain, and a low sun behind a broken deck sends bright shafts across the sky. They look like a fan opening out of the sun, and that spreading is only perspective.
Look closer
The Assabet at Maynard was running 21 cubic feet a second at five this morning, and the Sudbury at Saxonville about 10. Tomorrow drops half to three quarters of an inch onto ground that has been drinking it straight down.
Go see
At Wachusett Meadow you help catch a monarch, stick a numbered tag on its wing and let it go. If somebody in Mexico finds that tag this winter, the record is yours.
Look closer
Oak crops swing wildly from tree to tree and year to year, and a few trees make most of the acorns in any patch of wood. Tomorrow's wind and rain will shake this year's answer onto the ground.
Go see
A naturalist walks you around Belmont naming the common plants that can go in a cup, and the invasive ones that took the ground those plants grow on. Gentle pace, two hours, adults only.
Go see
A fungus spends nearly all of its life as a thread network eating wood out of sight, and fruiting is the short visible part. This session sends you home with a live culture so you can watch that happen on your own shelf.
Coming soon
Day and night even up a few days after the equinox rather than on it. Sunrise and sunset are timed off the sun's upper edge, and the air bends its light enough that you see it before it has really risen.
Coming soon
The Aldrich Astronomical Society sets up on the open fields at deCordova and turns its scopes on whatever the season has brought up. Tickets go by the carload rather than by the head.
That's what's worth noticing right now. Go have a look.