The Flowers of Ohio

Not all of the flowers are dead and gone in northern Ohio by the end of October.

From the memorial garden at Skypark.

And here's Mother's snowball bush on Middle Bass Island.  It's a bit overgrown, and I was surprised to see faded snowballs and fresh green snowballs but very few of the expected big fat white snowballs. This plant has bloomed in front of my mother's house as long as I can remember.

The only way I might have captured a shot with colors other than green would have been lying on the ground.  By that time, the rain had persisted for three days, the ground was saturated, and I was thoroughly finished with wet feet. My shoes did fine until the water was more than an inch deep, and then I remembered why I decided not to spend a winter on the island and write a book about it:  because most people aren't up to reading much about cold feet and gray skies.