neverspent | October 4: Mist of asters

The shady roadsides in the woods are now grown up with asters, which have tall (sometimes 4-5 foot) main stems with many branches and many, many little, barely-blue flowers. If you look at them from a distance, it's almost like morning mist creeping along the edge of the road. When you get very close, you can see that the young flowers have dark purple center disks, and the more mature ones have yellow centers. It's an attractive little bit of variety.

These plants are good browsing for deer, and indeed, later in the day after I took this picture, I scared up a large whitetail buck which leaped up the road bank and into the woods as I went by.