Morning treasures from a November row

My favorite time to row is early in the morning.  Especially before sunrise when the lake is calm and thick with mist.  Dew still clings to pine needles and wetland plants wear gossamer veils.

Below are a few photos I took the other day - so many beautiful surprises!

Dewdrops clung to pine needles on pine trees growing along the shoreline

Rowing along the lake's perimeter, I was amazed by all the spiderwebs! Almost every wetland plant boasted a gossamer display, a dazzling sight amid the morning mist.

Peelbark St. John's wort plant veiled in webs

I saw beauty in the spiderwebs but the spiders that wove them were after function, not art. A stong, well-positioned web = food, and food = life. Function, art and beauty seamlessly interwoven.

I hope all the spiders that built those webs caught many insects.  Who needs pest control when spiders are on the job!

Cicada entangled in a spiderweb

Speaking of spiderwebs...look at what I found shortly after I cast off from shore!

I'd wear that...

Sometimes I have to row for a while before I see something interesting to photograph but that's not what happened this time.  It took no time at all to find another amazing spiderweb.

This one reminds me of a doily on the arm of a couch in my mother's house when I was little...

It was dark out when I took the previous two pictues but by the time I rowed to the north end of the lake, the sun had broken through the mist and was beginning to brighten the sky. Light reached the pickerelweeds where spiders created a mass of billowing webs.

And this one, woven among the pickerelweed leaves, is billowing in the breeze

My morning row was filled with treasures. So much happens outside at night while I'm inside in bed.  I may miss the night magic but I'm glad at least some traces remain for me to find at dawn.