Preacher’s Preserve (Feral Euonymus) CT

   You might miss that striking Grey Serpent (with the white eye) I've shown numerous times as you drive by in mid-July, swallowed in Feral Euonymus and poison ivy, as well as all the Virginia Creeper and low hanging branches. I confess that I moved some plants aside to take this photo: 

  I followed some connecting rows of stones, more Feral Euonymus all over the rest of the row of stones, hiding some mounds of unknown origin, until I got to a place where you walk inside a double row of stones. I was still looking for and finding stone snakes and turtles. And speaking of snake eyes, I found this one, standing out because the head stone was a light colored stone white and smoky grey quartz if I'm not mistaken:

No need to draw in or overlay an eye or a mouth for this stone snake head, the features are there and I suspect the person who placed the stone "just so" did it purposely, eye on the upper side and mouth below, maybe helped a little by some skillful chipping to further enhance a rather rhomboidal eye (or pupil) and a rather realistic representation of a mouth:

The true color didn't show up in my view screen - a green tint to everything when I looked at my images, so I tried the option of black and white in the camera settings:

If you look for more examples to make you wonder if there is a purposeful "serpent stacking" going on rather than random coincidence and accidental placement, you'll find them, maybe less striking but surprisingly similar, a different variation on a theme or pattern, both large and small:

Step back from the last one - note that Manitou-like stone - but this may show a stacking method that may be Indigenous rather than later European - a place that became the home to the first Puritan minister in the days of the Great Awakening. There may be some later re-stacking that happened in the last 300 years - maybe some as recent as the week before last - maybe fallen stones never replaced, maybe a little "borrowing" but still the original row of stones, a larger protective Great Serpent composed of smaller effigies, some snakes, some turtles - perhaps a human-like stone and more that I don't really understand...

And then, farther down into the preserve, this feature (photographed at an earlier date) makes me at least wonder about water management and maybe cranberries - whatever else may be growing: