Boardwalk reflections

Some scenes from an early evening walk along the boardwalk at Asbury Park today...

My favorite shop for reflection pics is the Bodega Shoppe at the southernmost end of the boardwalk. There's always something interesting on display in the window there... lately there's this crazy looking bust with a curly wig that ends in a sailboat... fun! Reflected in the window are the happy people dining at Stella Marina (which has really nice homemade pasta, btw.)

The sky reflected in the windows of the north side of Convention Hall... the south side of the building's been restored, but this side is still crumbling into the Atlantic bit by bit.

A new children’s water park—a water-filled playground where kids wade through shallow pools and run under a giant squirting watering can—sits just off the boardwalk, in view of the ocean. I need to find a stray kid so I can go...

;-)

I stumbled upon a jazz band playing a free concert in Convention Hall... Asbury, you just never know.

;-)

The meadow

Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.
--Emerson

The queen of them all

Back to Orchid Week.

Look awake!

;-)

Said to be fussy, we found Showy Lady's Slippers growing in the dappled shade along someone's driveway in Bailey's Harbor, Wisconsin.

In someone's driveway!

Like a common weed!

The location of the most prized orchids are oftentimes kept a secret so people won't dig them up and carry them away. The kind people at The Ridges led us to these for photos.

Aren't they pretty?

Ever seen any?

Wandering out to the driveway to see what I can find there...

Just add water

Speaks for itself, no?

At our favorite swimming hole along Cedar Creek in the Pine Barrens... made even sweeter by the huge muddy puddles we just had to tromp through on the walk there.

A new blogger among us

Please go visit my big brother's blog...

He FINALLY has an actual post up... some two years after threatening to start a blog of his own and leaving the occasional comment here as The Reluctant Chicken Farmer. Some of you know him from Facebook, too, and so know of his good sense of humor and tendency to rant. It promises to be a fun chicken blog once he finds his voice.

Stop in and welcome him to the blogosphere!

Grass Pinks

A wild rose torn to bits, then glued back together by someone who had never seen a flower before, might look something like a Grass Pink.
--Raphael Carter

Isn't that a great quote about a really odd-shaped flower?

;-)

Another orchid from The Ridges and one that I've seen here in NJ in the bogs of the Pine Barrens.

The upper petal should be triangular, according to the books, tho this one doesn't look it; the important thing to know is that the bearded lip is the uppermost petal on a Grass Pink... the other pink bog orchids wear their beards on the lower lip.

What do you guys call that?

;-)

The flower that walks

This might turn into orchid week here, so be warned...

;-)

Mostly I prefer simple common flowers, but orchids and their variety of forms can't be denied.

Look at those sweetly twisted sepals!

I geeked out for a moment there. Sorry.

So... flower fanciers, which do you prefer: the pink or the yellow?

Yellow Lady's Slipper Orchid photographed at The Ridges Sanctuary in Door County, Wisconsin.

I really, really like the yellow.

Days at the beach

The people along the sand
All turn and look one way.
They turn their back on the land.
They look at the sea all day.
--Robert Frost

I grew up with a mother that loved the beach... whole afternoons were spent baking under the summer sun, a cooler filled with sandwiches and ice-cold plums. Childhood photo albums are proof that many of our vacations centered around a visit to the shore, as if living within a couple minutes drive didn't already offer us enough of the ocean's delights.

My father is mostly absent from these memories... his fair and freckled skin kept him under the beach umbrella or back at home when he wasn't rescuing me from the breaking waves or my brother's torments. I don't remember much beyond the shock of seeing him in shorts, his legs whiter than white, some goofy looking never-worn sneakers, his trademark black dress socks and the huge mole that grew near his left knee. He used to tease that the little fish liked to nibble on it...

;-)

Someone, maybe him, or one of my big brothers used to let me ride on their shoulders in the water, out of reach of the sharks and jellyfish that I was so sure would devour me whole.

I spent a couple hours yesterday watching the same stories unfolding for any number of beachgoers... building sandcastles... bodysurfing... eating tuna sandwiches with a fine dusting of beach sand... the heady scent of Coppertone... all reminding me that this love affair with the sun and the water and the sand is in my blood, even though I burn just like my dad always did.

Any beachy memories to share from your own growing up?

Meddle not

Meddle not in the affairs of the dragon; for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.

Or without.

;-)

Legs and wings, apparently, are too crunchy.

This last pic is nightmare material... look at that mouth!

Mooseless Wednesday

Presque Isle on Lake Superior, Michigan

Windy and rocky, very beautiful.

No moose.

Little tyrants three

I think I've figured out what the guy in the middle's problem is...

;-)

Letter to me

Brad Paisley   More CMT Music   More CMT Music Videos

Country music is a guilty pleasure I'll admit to. The sappier the better.

Throw your rotten tomatoes at me now... get that out of the way, first.

OK... so.

I had this great creative writing teacher in the eighth grade and then again as a junior in high school. Mrs. Cella had us write daily journal entries which she would comment on once a week when she collected our journals for grading.

It occurs to me now that Mrs. Cella would've loved blogging and the interaction between writers and their audience.

Most often she wanted us to *free write* about whatever came to mind, in whatever format we chose. Those were painful, difficult entries for me to make, faced with a blank sheet of paper.

Kind of like blogging sometimes.

;-)

In her comments in our journals she was a writing coach, but as is often the case when working with adolescents, it gave her the opportunity, I suspected at least, to get into our heads and act as social worker and therapist; an adult we could be honest with in a *safe* non-judgmental arena.

Every so often she'd give us an actual topic for our journal entries and usually I enjoyed those; enjoyed a guide with which to focus my thoughts.

I remember one of the topics she gave us was the opposite of Brad Paisley's idea with this song of his; rather than writing as an adult to our 17 year-old selves, she had us write a letter to our grown-up selves.

I'd love to be able to put my hands on that old journal of mine. Buried in the closet in my childhood home, one of my brothers probably found it when we sold the place and is holding onto it to embarrass me with someday.

Anyway...

(Ramble, ramble.)

Mrs. Cella often criticized my rambling away from the point at hand.

I like the spirit of this song, for all its hokeyness and thought I'd have a go at a similar letter.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear Laura,

For Godsakes stop being so shy!

Stop thinking you're too skinny!

Go with the curls; one day you'll laugh that you ever wasted so much time trying to have hair like every other girl.

That guy: dump him. Quick! Don't wait till just before the Senior Prom. That'll feel sweet, of course, but...

The quarterback of the football team wants to ask you out... and a couple baseball players too, but instead you're wasting your time with that jerk.

Those other quiet girls in your classes that you won't give the time of day to even... take the time to make friends with them!  They'll write the sweetest things about you in your yearbook and you'll wonder how you never even noticed them.

Dad will not be heartbroken if you drop Calculus. Honest.

Speaking of Dad... give him a break. Enough of your moodiness. Enough of the silent loathing. You'll regret it sooner than you expect to.

Mrs. Martin... tell her what a great teacher she is. Tell her even though you're sure she must know. You'll understand one day how nice those words sound coming from a student.

Smile in your graduation photo... you'll be looking at that sad face years from now wondering why it looked like the whole darn world was on your shoulders.

Love,
Me

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Add something, if you would, of what you'd include in a letter written now to your teenage-self. Maybe just that one big thing.

;-)

I promise not to take points off for rambling, either.

Twinflower

There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
-- Albert Einstein

Twinflowers are tiny! That I'd somehow spotted a miniature forest of them blanketing a spot of sun in the cool damp woods of Northern Michigan was the first miracle. Surviving the swarms of mosquitos long enough to get a couple shots was the next.

Three reasons I got nothing done today

Is there any sweeter distraction than that of baby birds?

Oh and don't worry about the one in the middle... it does have a head. I think it might just have been mid-nap when I snapped this pic.

THE pic I missed was when a spotty-breast baby robin perched itself as the fourth beggar in the row and was rebuffed by the parent kingbird... made me giggle for a half-hour at least.

;-)

Two uses for a lily

Hmm... which is prettier?

This Eastern Kingbird considers himself the watchman of the neighborhood and since they've bloomed, has been landing amid the small patch of daylilies beside the courtyard here.

Whether he's just appropriating a convenient hunting perch or instead has some aesthetic sense of his own handsomeness, I'm not sure.

What do you think?

;-)

The bird no one knows

Our nation's list of imperiled species includes some celebrities... sexy ones like the Whooping Crane and the Florida Panther.

Most, however, are virtually unknown.

The Kirtland's Warbler, one of the rarest of songbirds, is a specialist and nests only within a very particular habitat.

The habitat itself, even, is imperiled.

The scrubby, non-descript trees that emerge from sandy and fire-scorched terrain in isolated parts of Michigan are the bird's touchstone. Jack Pines, like the Pitch Pines more familiar to me, require fire for regrowth.

Fire isn't very popular in residential or commercial or agricultural areas, but the Kirtland's depend on the mosaic of changes inherent in the destruction and subsequent renewal caused by fire.

They nest only in those areas where fire has created the conditions that select for early successional plants... plants that typify a pine barrens community. Without proper management, gradually the Jack Pines grow too tall, the canopy closes in and the grassy understory where they build their nests disappears because of low light levels.

The birds move elsewhere... or try to. Aggressive management has allowed for the hope of recovery and populations are increasing.

None of this has anything to do with what it felt like to wander in those pine plains searching for a Kirtland's.

This is not a bird that I'd hoped ever to know.

The Kirtland's is near mythic among birders and the makings of a pilgrimage for many.

I was just along for the ride.

Please click on the pic! It's one of only a dear dozen or so and is especially sweet because he's carrying food in his beak.

Yoga with an audience

I arrive at yoga class at the Y really early so I can stake out my comfortable spot way in the back left corner. The lights are low. I can hide there.

So... yoga on the boardwalk, in broad daylight, was a bit of a stretch for me.

;-)

I very nearly bailed when my sister-in-law called at the last minute to say she wouldn't be able to make it to join me. Then I thought, "What the hell?"

I'm glad I did... it was a lot of fun. There's something really humbling about practising yoga outdoors, with the sky and the ocean at finger's reach and crowds of people gawking and pointing and laughing.

;-)

The class meets outside a little health food shop on the boardwalk and proceeds benefit Mary's Place by the Sea in Ocean Grove.

Bad bird photo of the week

Can you hear the evil cackling from behind my computer screen?

;-)

I imagine there's enough here for guessing anyway.

As to hints, well... the pic was taken roadside, behind a restaurant featuring pasties.

And I did eventually learn the proper pronunciation of that delicacy, but not before embarrassing myself with the waitress.

Without a map

Along the northern shore of Lake Michigan... a pic taken at a stop along the way to somewhere else... a chance to stretch our legs and see what there was to see.

I was struck by the familiar... the feel of the wind in my hair and dunes dotted with tansies. I filled the pockets of my jeans with tiny purple mussels cast ashore and wondered at a sea without salt and waves without a tide.

Explorers believed the world had an edge and they could fall off if they went wrong.

I think they were right.

This world is full of edges and falls. That horizon might be a new world or it could be a cliff.

Still, this is true.

I look around me and find the horizon is only a line drawn in the sky... a kind of dare.

For navigating... there's the fear map that directs me back to shore where it's safe and dry and comfortable. But following that map means going backwards. And backwards causes my heart to sink, really.

Always, there's the straight line, the *I know exactly where I mean to be* map. I keep thinking I can somehow convince myself of this, so long as I keep both hands on the wheel and don't let my hair become undone.

Mostly I've given up on that, lately. My record at trying to control the world ain't so great, plus it makes my shoulders hurt.

;-)

Instead I find myself wandering willy-nilly, easily distracted and with too much play in the steering wheel as I look at the sky... my heart and my head in their own happy argument... an argument that's sweetly wrong, but which pushes me into trouble at awkward times and which laughs me through disaster.

Who can deny it?

"Breathe," I keep telling myself. Feel. See. It seems simple, but is so very, very hard.

I keep forgetting.

The sea reminds me. This sea. The waves pound it at me, each a different ride, each a different possibility of diving or floating, of swimming or drifting.

The world insists itself like a lover. "Take me. Take this moment... this, now."

Naming the dragons

"What's the use of their having names," the Gnat said, "if they won't answer to them?"

"No use to them," said Alice, "but it's useful to the people that name them, I suppose."

-- Lewis Carrol

A person who goes traveling to far-flung places with the express purpose of seeing things should, I guess, be concerned with the naming of those things.

I rather enjoy the mystery, and the magic, of meeting these fierce-looking creatures in their own strange paradise of wet meadows and sunny paths through the forest without knowing much at all about them.

Their names don't much matter when I find them basking in the sun on a weathered plank bridge or stunned with the chill off one of the Great Lakes. Theirs is a world entire and to be allowed entry, however briefly with the lens of my camera, is enough.


Mostly.

;-)

Some are so beautiful, so otherworldly, their faces so expressive...

or their existence so threatened that even the shimmer of an iridescent wing is enough to inspire me to learn more.

For those of you Type A personalities that just HAVE TO KNOW (grin) each photo is tagged with a name, as best I can guess or remember. Click on each to enlarge.

An orange hemiparasite and lily

A beautiful Indian Paintbrush glimmers from damp sedgy meadows on the Door Penisula of Wisconsin. This gorgeous member of the figwort family is saddled with the rather ignominious rank of a hemiparasite. Oh! What is a hemiparasite you may ask... a hemiparasite is a plant that derives some of its sustenance from other plants. In the case of our beautiful paintbrush, it taps into the roots of various grasses.

Our orange flamer has a bit of Spanish flair to it... the genus name is Castilleja. This name honors the great Spanish botanist Domingo Castillejo, who plucked plants in the 18th century. The specific epithet is coccinea, which means scarlet - a fitting descriptor for our showy hemiparasite.

Many believe the brilliant orange floral parts to be flower petals. No, they are not. The eye-catching sprays of orange are in fact brightly colored bracts, which are modified leaves that subtend the true flowers. And it's a good thing the paintbrush is adorned with those festive bracts, as the true flowers are greenish bits of nothingness.

Beads of water glisten like jewels on the tepals of a stunning Wood Lily. Uncommon and always a treat, these lilies glowed like beacons from the perennial gloom of a boreal forest edge in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I think that orange flowers are especially attention grabbing. Perhaps this is because orange is not a particularly common color in nature. In any event, these plants, when in full bloom, hit the eye with the force of a barreling Mack truck.

Another reason that the Wood Lily is conspicuous is that it is our only native Lilium in which the flowers are held perfectly upright. All of the others droop or nod.

Suffer a spider bite lately? Native Americans would have you believe that this is the cure... they ground up Wood Lily plants and made a thick paste, which was then slathered onto the area affected by the spider bite.

The allure of lilies dates to the beginnings of the written word... witness this quote from the bible: "... Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." (Matthew 6:28-29)

Rocks with pictures worn

Rising from stormy waters and crowned by old forests, the sandstone cliffs of Pictured Rocks stretch for 15 miles along Lake Superior's southern shoreline.

Historically the land of the Ojibwa, the rugged beauty of Pictured Rocks makes it easy for one to imagine a world shaped by unseen spirits, when in fact the formations are a work of nature, carved by water and time.

A couple hour boat ride from the little marina in Munising is the way we saw them today and despite the choppy seas and cold temps (50 degrees!) - any discomfort was quickly forgotten once I had a cup of coffee in hand and stable ground underfoot.

The pics speak for themselves, I think. Michigan's Upper Peninsula is remote, but breathtakingly beautiful in so many ways that make the trip worthwhile.

Bad bird photo of the week

Here's a hint: pic taken today in Northern Michigan at a state park's feeder. Happy guessing!

Back soon

am currently having an adventure... think Kirtland's Warbler!

back soon, friends. in the meantime... have a happy 4th.

The flower salesman

I know the faces of most of the homeless in the town where I do my field work; many have sat across the desk from me at one time or another and others I just recognize from seeing them around town.

But I was caught by surprise with his flower-laden hands; the roses stolen, I'm nearly certain, from a streetside bush. "I love your hair!" he shouted at me as he crossed the street while I got in my car. Polite to a fault, I smiled and thanked him and closed the car door in his face.

Then I realized he meant to give me some of those flowers. Or so I thought.

;-)

Inwardly cursing my good manners, I rolled down the window and smiled some more and listened to his story. Because there's always at least one good long one. Something in my face brings out the storyteller in people.

Really, I think I must have *I'm a social worker. Tell me every last one of your troubles, please!" stamped across my forehead in ink that everyone but me can see.

Turns out he's a Vet that lives in a tent in the woods beyond Deal Lake in Asbury. Has a small army of children that eat up the majority of his VA pension with child support. His mind is still mostly somewhere in Vietnam, as he referred over and over to what his Captain says, as if that weren't forty-some years ago.

I'd guess it was about 10 minutes into our conversation, when he wanted money for the freely offered roses, that he regretted ever throwing a compliment my way.

Cast aside was the smiling white lady who might have money in exchange for a sad story. She was replaced by the social worker with suggestions for where he might find a place to stay for a while, a list of phone numbers and more unsolicited advice than he cared to listen to.

I left him finally with my business card, some change from the bucket I keep in the car for tolls and a bit of inside information that might just make some real difference in his life.

The application list for rental assistance opened in Asbury today. Only today. People wait for years on those lists, wait for decades for the list even to be open. Most people find out after the fact, when it's too late. Many of the people who need rental assistance never read a newspaper where the announcement and application are published.

I told him to take the money I'd *paid* him for the flowers and buy himself today's paper so he could submit the application right away and have it postmarked in time.

He thanked me and ambled away across the street, not realizing I was watching him from the intersection while I waited for the light to change. He crossed Main St. and went straight to the liquor store with my money in his pocket.

I'm hoping he bought today's paper and not a bottle.

Answers come, I suspect, in the form of angels sent to us unaware. So often we're upheld by giants of Kindness and Hope, by the kind of people who you pass on the street and feel sorry for because they are poor or uneducated or unable to speak much English. Together with the burden of all the sad stories I hear, I like to imagine the benefit of understanding and knowing deeply that true treasures wait here, that a certain kind of strength and confidence resides in the exact places and in the very people you’d least expect.

His rose, suspended in a small ceramic vase on the fridge, will remind me of that for the next couple days.

Clouds

All afternoon, Sir,
your ambassadors have been turning
into lakes and rivers.
At first they were just clouds, like any other.
Then they swelled and swirled; then they hung very still;
then they broke open. This is, I suppose,
just one of the common miracles,
a transformation, not a vision,
not an answer, not a proof, but I put it
there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves

the purpose. I go on, soaked through, my hair
slicked back;
like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.

Clouds by Mary Oliver

I wonder if it'd been raining for a month straight when Mary Oliver wrote this poem.

;-)

The sky cleared early this evening and the light was just gorgeous the way it lit up the tips of the oak leaves, the white of the kingbird's tail feathers, the sand at the edge of the ocean.

There will be a Father's Day post, but right now it feels like pulling teeth.

;-)

Hope it was happy for all and was spent in whatever way made you happiest.

Skywatch with horses

Yep... it's still raining here.

ABC meme

Stolen from Lynne on Facebook. Play along if you like!

A - Age: 39
B - Bed size: Queen
C - Chore you hate: Balancing the checkbook
D - Dog's name: Luka (also rabbits named Boomer, Sunshine, Peeper, and Freckles)
E - Essential start your day item: Coffee.
F- Favorite color(s): Green
G - Gold or Silver: Platinum!
H - Height: 5'10"
I - Instruments you play(ed): Clarinet, Piano, Pennywhistle
J - Job title: Housing Coordinator/Social Worker Bilingual
K - Kitchen wish list: Lessons, maybe. ;-)
L - Living arrangements: Close to the beach!
M - Mom's name: Claire
N - Nicknames: BLT (coworkers), Lauralie (family), Legs (high school)
O - Overnight hospital stay: None
P - Pet Peeve(s): That fuzz under the bed (where does it come from?), bossy people, product packaging that's impossible to remove
Q - Quote from a movie: I don't do movies
R - Right or left handed: Depends on the task at hand
S - Siblings: Two (I'm the youngest and the only girl = spoiled)
T - Time you wake up: 6:30 ish
U - Underwear: Usually, yes. ;-)
V - Vegetable you dislike: Cauliflower
W - Workout style: Weight training and yoga
X - X-rays you've had: Lots of my teeth
Y - Yesterday's best moment: Finally getting iTunes to cooperate after 4+ hours of fighting with it!
Z - Zoo favorite(s): I've never been to a proper zoo

Wordless Wednesday - Birds fear me

;-)

Cormorant, fleeing.

First steps

We have a student interning with us for the summer... a sweet girl from my alma matter who I got to drag along on field visits with me today.

I have to give her credit... so far she seems unfazed by anything she's seen. What she's heard about during downtime late on Friday afternoons hasn't scared her off, either.

I admit to being careful in the selection of clients we saw today; I don't suppose I needed to do that. But some things and some clients just make me too uncomfortable to have to deal with, without a student watching every bumbling move I make.

:-)

So rather than treating her to the guy who routinely answers the door in his underwear (!) or the lady in the house without a single place to sit or any of the really shady parts of town, we met with mostly regular clients and one who likes to talk. Alot. About everything imaginable. Inappropriate things, even.

It was fun. She barely raised an eyebrow.

Beauty is where you find it

I know, I know... it's a horse's a$$, but it's freckled!

Yes, I'm giddy with having found sunshine and a field full of horses all in the same day.

;-)

Late spring weather report

Is this the coldest, dreariest June ever? Or does it just feel that way here at the Jersey Shore? I feel like I live in London, or somewhere out on the coast of Oregon with all this fog and dampness and rain.

It's kind of depressing.

There have been moments of light and magic... the rain clicking and tapping its song on the roof... the porch and its electric, marshy yellow-gray smell of storms before they get here... the big flag up the street snapping in the wind and the curtains blowing like ghosts in the night...

There was an hour or so on the beach at Spring Lake yesterday at sunset, after crab cakes for dinner at the inlet with the fishing boats going by with their escort of laughing gulls...

A bit of magic despite the gray, but I'm tired of wearing sweaters and long pants.

Is it summer yet in your part of the world?

Nice is just nice!

Susan would say this type of thing happens to me cause I'm tall or cause I'm cute, but I'd rather like to think that sometimes, occasionally, once in a while, people are just nice.

Three teenage boys made my day today!

I'd had a photograph and this little Northern Pintail painting that I'd been carting around with me while I looked for suitable frames. Both were matted to odd sizes which would ordinarily require custom framing.

If you've ever paid for custom framing, you know that's not anything to be undertaken lightly.

I'd gone to a couple arts-and-crafts type stores but couldn't find any frames to fit, nor could I dream up a cheap solution. Tonight, almost desperate, I went to the custom framing desk at AC Moore and presented my problem and asked the young kid if he had any ideas for what I might do without spending a fortune.

His pimples and the smirk on his face as he approached left me pretty doubtful.

Before I knew what was happening, he'd amassed the rest of his team: Louis came along and began searching the aisles for the perfect color frame to complement my prints, Kevin joined us for the math and measurements to cut each mat down to fit standard-size frames, while Mike did the actual cutting and framing up.

Those boys spent better than an hour with me. All the while I kept saying, "This feels an awful lot like a custom frame job, boys!"

I'd started to worry that they'd misunderstood me. I'd started to worry what all this attention was going to cost me.

Turns out, frames are 40% off this week and my nearly *custom* framing was free, on these adorable boys who, apparently, needed something to do tonight, or needed practice, or just felt like being nice.

Imagine that.

The total cost for both was less than $25. I'm thrilled. I'm wondering at my good fortune. I'm wondering what one does to repay the kindness of strangers, especially considering the unlikely source of that kindness.

Wordless Wednesday - An old favorite

Yummy!

My brother just scares me

This from his Facebook profile.

;-)

He called me today, while he sat in traffic on his iPhone, to wish me a Happy Birthday. Said he felt bad that there hadn't been cake; felt bad that he hadn't called.

Anyway... he mentioned that he finally got himself on Facebook and that I should look for him.

I had to ask if there was a picture and if I'd recognize him.

"A bearded one," he said.

"Your Osama Bin Laden pic?" I asked, referring to his profile pic here on Blogger.

"Not quite," he said.

Of course not. This time it's My Brother the Christian Crusader.

I'm wondering how many more uses he can dream up for that silly fake beard.

Another look

A toad's facial expression doesn't seem to change much from moment to moment.

;-)

Easy for me to say, right? I'm not about to become its next meal.

This pic shows a bit more detail... the three or more warts on the largest dark spots that help to differentiate between the Fowler's and a plain old American Toad.

There's also some rubbish in books about the shape of cranial crests and their nearness to the parotoid glands that helps distinguish one toad from another. I know Fowler's by their call, first. It's a long, "Waaaaaaaaa" that sounds almost like a baby crying. Not as sweet a sound as the first Peepers of spring, but a welcome sound in the Barrens nonetheless.

Happy Lucky Idiot

I was feeling pretty sorry for myself yesterday... it was my birthday and it poured rain all day and there was no cake and I had to work...

Can you hear that tiny little violin playing there in the background?

The day after, a couple hours in the sunshine, a walk on the beach, the neighborhood kingbird, and this little poem and all is right with the world again.






If you have time to chatter
Read books
If you have time to read
Walk into mountain, desert and ocean
If you have time to walk
sing songs and dance
If you have time to dance
Sit quietly, you Happy Lucky Idiot

--Nanao Sakaki

Ducklings in the rain

I broke The Rules today and fed the wildlife... only to entice the peepers a little closer to my lens.

It was whole wheat, at least.

;-)

Mama looks quite pleased with her progeny, I think.

Click on the pic to see her smile.

Nature stark naked

Every new flower's my favorite for a while... so bear with me here. Turkey Beard is a characteristic Pine Barrens plant and, according to all my books, quite common and easy to find.

Pfft.

The knowing where to look is key, apparently.

Mostly I just wander on my own when I go there; a precarious thing considering my poor sense of direction and how easily one might get lost among the intersecting sand roads. My always-turn-right strategy has served me well enough so far, but one of these days...

;-)

It must be the strange, hard-won beauty of the place that captivates and distracts me so... the craggy pines and impenetrable scrub that holds the promise of something new at every visit. I don't always find something new, of course, some days I just wander aimlessly and get eaten alive by skeeters and deer flies. Or practically freeze to death in the winter. Those things are pretty fun, too, when done in the spirit of exploration.

"There is something grand, charming and desirable in this vaguely despised country... the sand, the pines... it is Nature stark naked." --Phillip Vickers Fithian, a Revolutionary War chaplain

Captured: A moment

"Laughter is the shortest distance between two people." --Victor Borge

Photo by Nina.

It had been six months or so, that first night at Smokey's, since Susan and I had had a chance to catch up, face to face. There was lots to talk about and some to laugh about, too.

Some, who like to tease, might compare her to another, more easily recognized birder-blogger, but I know better. She and I are like opposite sides of the same coin.

I've said that before, I know.

We'd toasted to our gathering, had dinner with old and new friends, and then, like the bad kids in the bunch we aspire to be, slipped outside during the evening's program to laugh together and goof around without any audience. We did that a lot during our couple days together in W. Va.