Today we celebrate the young botanist who disappeared in Australia 171 years ago and the pioneering female lichenologist who worked for the British Museum but was never officially on the payroll. We'll learn about the French botanist who had a life-long love affair with the trees of North America and the Los Angeles woman who found a trailblazing career in botany after getting a job at an employment agency. We'll hear some beautiful prose about bluebirds in autumn, "they linger like the last leaves on the tree". And, we Grow That Garden Library with the book New Vegetable Garden Techniques by Joyce Russell. I'll talk about harvesting the black walnut and then wrap things up with a bittersweet story about the founder of the Boy Scouts.   But first, let's catch up on a few recent events. Andrew van Egmond recently wrote a post on Landezine called Into the Forest. It's about a property in the Netherlands that backs up to a nature preserve and the images are inspiring. What I love about this post is that the owners have made the forest in their garden. There are floating runners that allow visitors to walk above the forest floor, and the long lines make the tall Larch trees seem even grander. There is a feeling of "being a guest in the landscape." "From the living room and the kitchen, you have a poetic view through the big windows into the forest.  The play of vertical gestures is the basis for this design. The viewer’s perspective is steered towards a group of long vertical trunks of Larches.  A composition of horizontal lines and floating boardwalks create a frame which steers the view."   Another great story in the world of horticulture recently ran in budburst.org, which is a project of the Chicago Botanic Garden.    Budburst aims to understand how plants respond to changes in their environment. Their citizen science activity, Fall into Phenology, is a fun way for everyone to get outside and observe fall changes from around the country.   They invite you to join them, watch a plant or tree near you, and then report all your phenology observations to your Budburst Account.    They say:   "[There's] no need to limit your Fall into Phenology observations to leaf color and drop.  Watch for fall flowers, such as asters, and record first flower, or full flower.  Seeds and fruiting abound in the fall months. All observation reports - whether life-cycle or one-time events - help understand how plants respond to changes in climate and atmosphere. The goal of this campaign is to collect at least 500 observations from around the country (that's only 10 per state!)."     Brevities   #OTD  Today is the birthday of the Prussian botanist Ludwig Leichhardt who was born on this day in 1813.   Leichhardt is remembered for his impressive and arduous collecting efforts in Australia. For his part, Leichhardt loved Australia. He wrote,   "I would find it hard to remain in Germany, or even in Europe, now. I would have returned to the scene of my wanderings, to the clear, sunny skies of Australia."   In October in 1845, Leichhardt wrote in his diary after losing his work to a fire:   "... tears were in my eyes when I saw ...[the] results of my expedition vanish ... my collection had the great advantage of being almost complete in blossoms, fruit, and seed."   A year later, in 1846, Leichhardt wrote a letter to his botanist contact and friend the Italian, Gaetano Durando, who was living in Paris. Leichhardt's message conveys the extreme difficulties and dangers faced by the early plant explorers.  He wrote,  "My dear friend, You have, no doubt, noticed and regretted my long silence...But you must bear this in mind, my good friend, ... it was not my lot to travel all at my ease... Gladly would I have made drawings of my plants, and noted fully all particulars of the different species which I saw; and how valuable would such memoranda have been... [as] four of my pack-horses having been drowned. Botanical and geological specimens thus aba