Muscadines. You can balance four of them on a thumbnail, but they are one of the gifts of fruit of the creek. Year by year the taste seems to vary: some years very tart, some leaning more to the sweet with a touch of tartness. This year’s fruits seem to be the latter. We like to taste them and usually take a bunch off a vine, leaving the rest for the animals.

This year there are not as many as in some years, but the clusters have many more grapes.

The ogeche tupelo have not been blooming very much for several years. At one time one could hear the buzz of bees in the creek when these trees were blooming.

Inland sea oats.

This sweet gum tree is turning early, its seed balls turning color also.

Wax myrtle — one can use the extract from the seeds for bay candles.

Rattle snake master. These plants are all over the creek and bloom in the summer when we haven’t been able to observe them.

Pepper vine fruit are not edible for humans and considered lower-level food by songbirds and mammals.

Oak.

Swamp bay.

Swamp leather flower, clematis crispa. You’ll see more of the seeds than flowers in the coming weeks.

This was not a good year for blooming for the swamp rose. So it goes with its fruit.

On the other hand, it was a good year for the American wisteria.

Many other seeds, to many to list.

Yaupon holly – green.

Yaupon holly – red.

Dahoon holly turning.

When the hollies are turning…then the holiday season can’t be far off.