Wed Mar 18 (day 4): Out at 12:30 pm. Wind! mostly from the south / south west. The gust pick up leaves and chase them along. You can hear it in the trees constantly, and the beech is making the shir /shir noise it makes -- one of its leaves rattles in a very particular way. The pond is patterned. A few mergansers. No bird calls, then 4 blackbirds go by north to south, fairly high, chattering. Two seem to be interacting in some way, fighting? Big news: a fly. The size of a house fly with the most beautiful iridescent green body and head. Quite stunning. Field grass is that light yellow brown beige. Across the pond the border is grass or reeds, light brown now, 2 or 3 ft high, in hummocks, maybe 15 ft deep, giving way to shrubs interspersed with trees. Close up my 'frond' plant: seems to be basal leaves growing in whorls from points along a trailing stem. There's a patch of it a few feet away that's a foot or two across, still mostly reddish purple 'dead'? leaves from another season. Maybe dormant's the word. Each leaf ( or stem ) has its set of 10 or so unevenly lobed leaves, about 1/2 in across, thin, hand shaped ie blunt bottom and lobes point a bit up. well I"ll take a picture one of these days. Then the purple green opposite leaved plant, the bedstraw, and leftovers from last year. Probably goldenseal stems. round, dead, points where the leaves were traveling up the stem in a sort of spiral, remnants of white fluff probably seeds and the bases of the flowers with 2-3 mm points in a circle, more than six I'd say. Flowers in a panicle on one side of the stem. Another flower head, six calyx points left on each tiny flower, again, traces of white fluff, also one side of the stem empty, thinner stalk. Grass: soft, clumped. Grass seed head, like a little version of wheat. Sky blue but through a hazy cloud cover, near the horizon in all directions it shades towards grey. No real sense of incoming storm at this point. Been a week since it rained.
Thurs Mar 19 (Day 5): Out at 5:30 pm. On the way checked the temp: 43 and the rain gauge: .1. A trace. The pond was dead calm, every tree on the far side perfectly reflected. Saw one circle as from a fish or insect. Several hooded mergansers were active, spending as much time under water as above. Far trees have green / gray trunks, probably various lichens. Underneath, leaves, some open woods. RWB calling back and forth, long call, then a while on single chirps, very melodious. Flock of blackbirds in the distance. 3 geese come in for a landing, wing tips down, then feet out, all 3 hit exactly at the same time. Sky clearing in the North. Tiny white spider on the leaves. Some leaves black with water, others dry. Beech tree zig zags a little with the buds. Spot on lower branch has bark peeling away, around an old wound. Quince tree twigs end looking like they've been broken off, with a leaf scar just below that and a little tiny bud that is just slightly white and fuzzy on the tip right now: will the flower emerge there? The beech is like a large ad for terminal buds. How many of the little twigs with a bud on the end will turn into branches? A bug like a black fly size hit my cheek and went its way. White pickup truck did a screeching start back towards Redhead HIll Rd, then raced by -- feels like part of the local fauna.
Fri Mar 20 (Day 6. Equinox). Went out a little after 7 am. 28 degrees and calm, sun rising through some bands of clouds, blue sky overhead with some cirrus clouds. Blackbird tribe is busy busy. Took the binoculars. Watched a few red-wings puff up and deflate as they sing. They have about 4 or 5 regular calls, the basic chirp, the melodious chirp, the classic, the classic in a slightly different key, and a couple of others. I located one and then after I stopped watching noticed about 5 take off from the same tree that I hadn't noticed. Saw a blue jay! And after following it with the binoc's across the pond saw a couple of others over there. Something called out with a beautiful two tone; I thought it was the jay but I don't find that call at my online bird call site. Maple beautiful in the morning sun. It's covered with the stems of last year's seeds, last year it masted, a huge crop. Pond smooth and dark. Across the field a tree with maybe 10 blackbirds in it. Still contemplating the humps of my section: near the end of the wall behind me, to the North, is where the big sugar maple used to be, and there's a broad hump there, but I cant believe that's all from the old roots. Nice green moss patch at the base of the lilac bush where it divides into two 6" trunks. It leans heavily towards the wall, as though its decided its best solar bet is to climb the wall and get to the Western sun, away from the beech. So its base is closer to horizontal and the moss has bedded there happily.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Sit spot days 2 and 3
Tues Mar 17: Out sitting at 3:30 pm or so, the sun and afternoon laziness was the most notable thing, like a summers afternoon only it was about 45 degrees out. Blackbird and woodpecker. Blue sky, slight breeze. The beech buds looked light against the sky -- were they like that before? Later I got up and looked more closely. The beech has those sets of little rings round the twigs, probably indicating a years growth. Some are quite close -- 1/2 inch, some 3 or 4 inches apart. The buds stick out on individual twigs. The quince throws off little twigs off it's main branchlets too. But more buds per twig. It doesn't have the rings. I used to know what those are called but forget now. The trees under the beech are small sugar maples, from what I can tell (buds look like ice cream cones). I'd read that maples grow in the shade, waiting for their big break -- these will have to wait a long time! Saw another little black spider (or the same one) in the leaves. Turkey vulture -- been seeing those for a few days now. Still never any birds in the beech. Maybe the maple is too tasty and high; at one point there were two woodpeckers on it pecking at the same time. Mostly though it was just the deep silence of the afternoon sun.
Mon Mar 16: Different dead leaves are different shades of brown. There's one, about 2 in x 3/4 in, smooth edges, pale as can be. No oak leaves. Beautiful beech leaves, with the pleasing gently wavy edges. The beech branches reach far out, nearly horizontal at the bottom, and then further up the tree much closer to vertical. It has those big buds that stick out from the twigs. The maple trees are somehow less linear in their approach. The quince bears the marks of my pruning, and one branch is thoroughly chewed, presumably by Meera when I tied her there. I hadn't seen that before. The carpenter's vehicle has left deep tracks in the mud, showing a deep brown mud. The ground feels rich and dark beneath me, not ledgy at all. The air is humid, not very cold but not at all warm. You can see blue sky through the clouds, but they're pretty thick, with interesting patterns. The ponds water is dead calm, no trace of fish or insects yet, very black. I can just smell the mud and dead leaves around. Funny wisteria forest I sit in. Few birds. Sunset on a cloudy day. But twice flotillas of geese arrive, honking loudly and receiving answering honks from those already on the pond. 3 ducks go by. Could I tell a wood duck from a mallard in flight, at a distance, with practice? Yesterday we got out the telescope and identified wood ducks, beautiful with red lines on their head and white lines and blue on the back, like an Asian painting of some sort. And the small little divers were / are hooded mergansers. The female h.m. has a great brownish tuft that she raises, then lowers and dives again. And the beaver has appeared, leisurely making his/her way around the pond last night and tonight.
Mon Mar 16: Different dead leaves are different shades of brown. There's one, about 2 in x 3/4 in, smooth edges, pale as can be. No oak leaves. Beautiful beech leaves, with the pleasing gently wavy edges. The beech branches reach far out, nearly horizontal at the bottom, and then further up the tree much closer to vertical. It has those big buds that stick out from the twigs. The maple trees are somehow less linear in their approach. The quince bears the marks of my pruning, and one branch is thoroughly chewed, presumably by Meera when I tied her there. I hadn't seen that before. The carpenter's vehicle has left deep tracks in the mud, showing a deep brown mud. The ground feels rich and dark beneath me, not ledgy at all. The air is humid, not very cold but not at all warm. You can see blue sky through the clouds, but they're pretty thick, with interesting patterns. The ponds water is dead calm, no trace of fish or insects yet, very black. I can just smell the mud and dead leaves around. Funny wisteria forest I sit in. Few birds. Sunset on a cloudy day. But twice flotillas of geese arrive, honking loudly and receiving answering honks from those already on the pond. 3 ducks go by. Could I tell a wood duck from a mallard in flight, at a distance, with practice? Yesterday we got out the telescope and identified wood ducks, beautiful with red lines on their head and white lines and blue on the back, like an Asian painting of some sort. And the small little divers were / are hooded mergansers. The female h.m. has a great brownish tuft that she raises, then lowers and dives again. And the beaver has appeared, leisurely making his/her way around the pond last night and tonight.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Sit spot
I made my way recently to the Wilderness Awareness School web site where I found a forum for people practicing "Sit Spots". I had read about this in one of Tom Brown's book, when as a child his mentor sent him out to sit in the same spot every day for a long time, taking notice of everything and learning the flora and fauna that presented itself. Anyway someone in this forum posted a 30-day Sit Spot challenge, starting today, so I'm taking them up on it. I'm posting there, but I think I'll repeat the posts here, not that they're particularly linear and they're bound to get repetitive, but it's an enjoyable practice all the same.
I've been sitting for a few days already, off and on. I'm sitting near a 30 yr old beech tree in a quadrangle formed by a couple of stone walls about 60 feet long each, to the south and west, to the east is our lower driveway (dirt) followed by the hay field (about 8 acres) and then the beaver pond (about 4 acres), both of which stretch off to the North and are bordered on the south by a road with light traffic. To the North is the quince tree, a big old sugar maple, more hay field, woods. Our house is 100 or 150 ft away to the NW. On a bigger scale there are 5 or 10 old 100-150 acre farms near me, several large swamps and beaver ponds, and some more suburban housing filling in here and there -- 90 houses within a mile of me. We are at the swampy head waters of what will eventually become the Quinebaug river, then the Thames and reach the sea at New London. The land is old and stony. In the mid 1800s it was fully farmed -- no wildlife left and hardly any woods. Through the age of oil the forest has been regrowing and the wildlife filling in steadily, the latest arrivals are the bears and mountain lions, coyotes arrived maybe 15 or 20 yrs ago.
notes so far...
Sun Mar 15: Out around 9 am for a change. Sun much further "south" than I would think, so where is east exactly? We're close to the solstice. Daylight savings time, so 2 hrs after sunrise. low 30s, little wind, not cold. Lots of water birds. Ice left on pond, some white, near the road 2 chunks one maybe 70 ft x 40 ft, the other smaller. N of the pond 100 x 40 ft anchored this morning to the shore with thin ice from last night. Mallards, geese, something else. Something small that I almost thought was a fish jumping it surfaced and dove again so quickly. Small round, blackish. No binoc's so no details really. Funny call which probably comes from it. 3 red-winged blackbirds calling back and forth, 2 near the pond, one across the road. Cardinal way up on top of the maple making several different calls, all melodious. Stretches itself. Heard the chickadee's phoebe sound for the first time. blackbird chirping too. red-bellied woodpecker. one very green blade of grass. dead maple leaf with about 15 little points or stalks sticking out of what was the top, like a deformity caused by a virus or something. another one with one or two. counted about 20 wisteria shoots if I looked in a line and did a swath about 6 inches wide. frond plants a little grown. young plantain? air fresh, slight smell of mud and dead leaves. still contemplating the rises and falls and pits of the patch I'm in, it's not smooth at all. did Daddy dump stuff over here? or are there rocks under there? I find it comforting, this lack of smoothness. But familiarity is coming over me, the patch is becoming comforting in its familiarity. Saw a spider web in the distance -- are they building already? (later. diving bird might be a bufflehead. need a telescope)
Fri Mar 13: Fat robin sited on my way down, later chirping in the maple? 2 ducks male and female mallards waddle across the ice and back into the water. pond really low, chairs showing, mud exposed between island and lodge. saw goose this AM on lodge. dark big bird flies over, hawk? look at dead leaves some more: awfully small maple leaf. 3 inch long, 1 inch wide leaf. very pale beech leaf? most are nuttier brown. found my lost beech nut husk, or another one. notice ground smells of mud / spring. slightly. sun, blue sky, a few small clouds, cold (around 38), slight nw wind. lots of leaves/sticks along the 'ridge' near the quince. steady rw blbd calls, 2 going back and forth. 5 pm. shadow lengthening. maple shadow reaches pond. 1,2, 3 herbs growing? say 'frond', bedstraw, and the purply soft one, deep green, wilty leaves about 1/4 inch across, opposite, maybe hairy, look thicker than the others. was the bedstraw blooming? or another set of leaves? quince stick broken, very green at the place where the bark broke.
Thurs Mar 12: A little round object like a bit of dog kibble: turd of some sort. Some more in a pile further away. Tan: old? Specks in it. Ice is melting, a small bird disappears under the water, pops back up, disappears again. Not a merganser. My head says buffle. But it's something else. Steady wind from the northwest. Cold. Ground is frozen again. Sun is setting behind me, surprisingly far south or not where I thought west was. You can tell by the house's shadow straight down the field. Reddish spot near the island -- the water is low, black muck exposed all along the edges. The leaves aren't quite blowing in the wind, until a bigger gust arrives. Blackbird flies by. A steady chir chir, or dewitt dewitt: chipping sparrow? a group flies away swooping playfully off to the alder grove next to the pond. A few small clouds, lots of blue. Another beech nut husk, cant see the first one now. I can only see the ground in one place near me, a small black spot showing. Mostly it's dead leaves, grass, shoots: so many wisteria! I could count how many in a square foot, it'd be a lot. Broken bark on the quince. Still no birds in the beech. Something else is growing under the beech, something woody. I get cold in about 20 minutes. Two days ago I sat for 1/2 hr thinking it was 15 min, and a car did a wheely right there.
Sun Mar 8th. Greens: A whorled group of stems 2" long with leaves (or is it a divided leaf?) almost opposite, toothed irregularly, stem is slightly grooved on top. Grass. Bedstraw. Something like a strawberry leaf but not. All around 6 to 8 inch shoots of wisteria, usually with 2 joints / leaf buds. Beech leaves rattling. Dead beach and maple leaves, lacy maple seed wings. A beech nut, with a white worm inside about 1 mm wide by 20 mm long. Field is brown. Some snow patches. Pond is white and black, open water patches and a stretch where the stream comes in. Tick now crawling on my forefinger. Saw a small black spider, too. Bird calls -- red-bellied woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, ducks, others not sure. Flock of something arrived overhead, probably blackbirds. Clouds thickening. NW winds. 50s. 4 pm.
I've been sitting for a few days already, off and on. I'm sitting near a 30 yr old beech tree in a quadrangle formed by a couple of stone walls about 60 feet long each, to the south and west, to the east is our lower driveway (dirt) followed by the hay field (about 8 acres) and then the beaver pond (about 4 acres), both of which stretch off to the North and are bordered on the south by a road with light traffic. To the North is the quince tree, a big old sugar maple, more hay field, woods. Our house is 100 or 150 ft away to the NW. On a bigger scale there are 5 or 10 old 100-150 acre farms near me, several large swamps and beaver ponds, and some more suburban housing filling in here and there -- 90 houses within a mile of me. We are at the swampy head waters of what will eventually become the Quinebaug river, then the Thames and reach the sea at New London. The land is old and stony. In the mid 1800s it was fully farmed -- no wildlife left and hardly any woods. Through the age of oil the forest has been regrowing and the wildlife filling in steadily, the latest arrivals are the bears and mountain lions, coyotes arrived maybe 15 or 20 yrs ago.
notes so far...
Sun Mar 15: Out around 9 am for a change. Sun much further "south" than I would think, so where is east exactly? We're close to the solstice. Daylight savings time, so 2 hrs after sunrise. low 30s, little wind, not cold. Lots of water birds. Ice left on pond, some white, near the road 2 chunks one maybe 70 ft x 40 ft, the other smaller. N of the pond 100 x 40 ft anchored this morning to the shore with thin ice from last night. Mallards, geese, something else. Something small that I almost thought was a fish jumping it surfaced and dove again so quickly. Small round, blackish. No binoc's so no details really. Funny call which probably comes from it. 3 red-winged blackbirds calling back and forth, 2 near the pond, one across the road. Cardinal way up on top of the maple making several different calls, all melodious. Stretches itself. Heard the chickadee's phoebe sound for the first time. blackbird chirping too. red-bellied woodpecker. one very green blade of grass. dead maple leaf with about 15 little points or stalks sticking out of what was the top, like a deformity caused by a virus or something. another one with one or two. counted about 20 wisteria shoots if I looked in a line and did a swath about 6 inches wide. frond plants a little grown. young plantain? air fresh, slight smell of mud and dead leaves. still contemplating the rises and falls and pits of the patch I'm in, it's not smooth at all. did Daddy dump stuff over here? or are there rocks under there? I find it comforting, this lack of smoothness. But familiarity is coming over me, the patch is becoming comforting in its familiarity. Saw a spider web in the distance -- are they building already? (later. diving bird might be a bufflehead. need a telescope)
Fri Mar 13: Fat robin sited on my way down, later chirping in the maple? 2 ducks male and female mallards waddle across the ice and back into the water. pond really low, chairs showing, mud exposed between island and lodge. saw goose this AM on lodge. dark big bird flies over, hawk? look at dead leaves some more: awfully small maple leaf. 3 inch long, 1 inch wide leaf. very pale beech leaf? most are nuttier brown. found my lost beech nut husk, or another one. notice ground smells of mud / spring. slightly. sun, blue sky, a few small clouds, cold (around 38), slight nw wind. lots of leaves/sticks along the 'ridge' near the quince. steady rw blbd calls, 2 going back and forth. 5 pm. shadow lengthening. maple shadow reaches pond. 1,2, 3 herbs growing? say 'frond', bedstraw, and the purply soft one, deep green, wilty leaves about 1/4 inch across, opposite, maybe hairy, look thicker than the others. was the bedstraw blooming? or another set of leaves? quince stick broken, very green at the place where the bark broke.
Thurs Mar 12: A little round object like a bit of dog kibble: turd of some sort. Some more in a pile further away. Tan: old? Specks in it. Ice is melting, a small bird disappears under the water, pops back up, disappears again. Not a merganser. My head says buffle. But it's something else. Steady wind from the northwest. Cold. Ground is frozen again. Sun is setting behind me, surprisingly far south or not where I thought west was. You can tell by the house's shadow straight down the field. Reddish spot near the island -- the water is low, black muck exposed all along the edges. The leaves aren't quite blowing in the wind, until a bigger gust arrives. Blackbird flies by. A steady chir chir, or dewitt dewitt: chipping sparrow? a group flies away swooping playfully off to the alder grove next to the pond. A few small clouds, lots of blue. Another beech nut husk, cant see the first one now. I can only see the ground in one place near me, a small black spot showing. Mostly it's dead leaves, grass, shoots: so many wisteria! I could count how many in a square foot, it'd be a lot. Broken bark on the quince. Still no birds in the beech. Something else is growing under the beech, something woody. I get cold in about 20 minutes. Two days ago I sat for 1/2 hr thinking it was 15 min, and a car did a wheely right there.
Sun Mar 8th. Greens: A whorled group of stems 2" long with leaves (or is it a divided leaf?) almost opposite, toothed irregularly, stem is slightly grooved on top. Grass. Bedstraw. Something like a strawberry leaf but not. All around 6 to 8 inch shoots of wisteria, usually with 2 joints / leaf buds. Beech leaves rattling. Dead beach and maple leaves, lacy maple seed wings. A beech nut, with a white worm inside about 1 mm wide by 20 mm long. Field is brown. Some snow patches. Pond is white and black, open water patches and a stretch where the stream comes in. Tick now crawling on my forefinger. Saw a small black spider, too. Bird calls -- red-bellied woodpecker, red-winged blackbird, ducks, others not sure. Flock of something arrived overhead, probably blackbirds. Clouds thickening. NW winds. 50s. 4 pm.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Monday, December 22, 2008
Solstice
Three days of steady snow, and now we see the sun again. 14 degrees out when I walked the dog her daily mile.Yesterday was the winter solstice. This morning I took my annual sunrise at solstice shot -- that's the middle one and you may have to click on it to find the gleam of sunshine. I tried to line up the window edge with a tree because one of these years I'm going to map everything and figure the exact point on the compass where the sun rises on that day, and maybe that will help. Then I took the shot of the chimney, which faces North -- how often does it have a big patch of sun on it right at sunrise? Oh, and yes, that little patch of green at the bottom is my "green marble hearth" -- 5 marble tiles to extend the hearth. I'm very fond of them. They get all warm when the insert is going full blast.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Winter water
The pond does interesting things this time of year. It was barely hard enough to walk on around Thanksgiving, but I didn't go far as it seemed dicey. Then it thawed all of a sudden night, then froze, thawed, etc. Thursday night we had the heavy rainstorm that was an ice storm elsewhere (the top of the hills around us, for example) and then it was in the teens last night and now there's a perfect sheet of black ice.
My newly acquired overbite is bothersome. An orthodontist tells me if I let him knock a few molars out there would be room to re-align the upper teeth with the lower teeth -- the lower jaw is evidently shorter than it used to be. I'm going to get a second opinion before embarking on what he projects to be a 2 year project. Until we get a good treatment plan in place my broken teeth remain as is, so I can only chew in one small area. Every new appointment requires a 2 week wait. Things proceed slowly. The rehabilitation on my wrist is coming along, I'm probably at about 50-70% of where I used to be in terms of strength and flexibility.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
If you look closely at this photo you'll find two bluebirds. We see them maybe once in the fall and once in the spring. They're very pretty. You can see the foliage is pretty now, too. The maple in front of the house shed its leaves early, perhaps due to a large crop of seeds to disperse. The basement renovation is coming along bit by bit. The perimeter drain is done and exits out of the walls at either end so the water should run out by gravity. Better get some critter covers for the exits though! The electrician and plumber have been in and corrected various creative solutions of old that weren't to current code. The walls and ceilings are free of old and mildewed sheetrock and ceiling tiles, and the smell is giving way to that of new lumber as the bathroom gets rebuilt.
And I'm slowly healing from my fall (broken jaw and wrist), feeling a little more human as the days go by, a little less stunned. 3 weeks down, 3 to go, more or less. Then we'll see exactly how my teeth fared. I'm a bit tired of the liquid diet but tonight's mushroom soup puree was pretty good.
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