Flowers may be done blooming, but some plants are still beautiful.
These three pictures are of fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium), which I found in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick this past September. As you can see, it was already done flowering, but I couldn’t resist taking some close-up shots of the seeds.
Fireweed is in the evening primrose family (Onagraceae); it’s found in Canada and a few northern US states. 
October 24, from the Virginia side of Great Falls, Potomac River. Not sure I like waking up at 5:00 every Friday morning, but otherwise I am enjoying the landscape photography class.
Late in the afternoon of October 23rd, as I was starting to cook dinner, I remembered that a partial solar eclipse was about to begin. I turned off the stove, threw a lid on the pot, grabbed my camera bag and dashed out the door just as Steve was coming home from work. “Dinner in an hour or so, okay?” I drove to a nearby spot, parked the car, then jogged a half mile to the riverbank and quickly set up my tripod.
If I had remembered sooner I could have reached a more scenic area. But it was a cloudy day, and the eclipse wasn’t visible, and my hopes for strange magical evening light were dashed. Still, I managed to get this:
After the Franey Mountain hike, I started watching for dewdrops everywhere, every time I went out. Here are a few I found on late-flowering thoroughwort near Carderock in the C&O Canal NHP in mid-October.
Each of these seed/filament thingies is about pinky-nail size.
I did pull out the macro lens and tripod for this shoot, but everything was drying quickly.
In mid September Steve and I were on a particularly steep hike on Cape Breton Island: Franey Mountain, with an ascent of 1100 feet in just under 2 miles.
Pausing to catch my breath, I noticed that the plants were covered in dew. So of course I pulled out the camera and started taking close up pictures.
If Steve the Impatient hadn’t been there, the macro lens and tripod would have been out, too, and I probably would have stayed until the dew dried. As it was I got a few decent hand-held shots. (And to be fair, it’s pretty boring standing around while someone else plays with the toys.)
Notice how the tree tops are reflected in the drops on the fir needles in this next shot:
And of course there’s my current banner photo at the top of this page.
I don’t know why I am so enthralled by small, ephemeral things, but I am.
Elizabeth's Wildflower Blog 