i've been

swooning over skimmers

contemplating colors for toenails

thinking about a perfect day

staring at a september sky from the shade of my very favorite lighthouse

reading books in bed

finding peace in the sweet lullaby of waves outside my window

flipping rocks to find nothing underneath but sun-warmed crickets and roly-poly bugs

feeling ridiculously happy

loving the way the late afternoon sun makes everything beautiful

marveling at the fall flight of osprey and eagles and peregrine falcons

contemplating colors for toenails

(over-thinking it, probably)

feeling thankful for monarch butterflies and the people who love them

wondering if forever means tomorrow, too

deciding now is what matters most

finding that places remembered have changed

falling in love again, anyway

dreaming of enough days to make up for lost time

enjoying the peculiar kitsch of the jersey shore

the sharing of it and the sand between our toes

indulging the last weekend of summer

cape may finally!

(i've been busy)

Placeholder

Just a random shot of a roadside waterfall from somewhere in northern Michigan... pretty nice for drive-by scenery, no?

That sixth sense

Do you have it?

;-)

Maybe you call it intuition?

You know... that little tingle in the pit of your stomach... that something mysterious outside of normal perception?

I do, at least... I think it to be true. I hardly pay enough attention to it, to that part of myself that tries to warn me of something bad looming on the horizon, but I'm trying to learn to trust what my gut seems to sense, somehow.

Flaky and weird, yes, I know.

A most recent example... yesterday. Before the fire.

A routine home visit with a not so routine client of mine. Legally blind and bi-polar. She's not particularly communicative. Odd, most people would say.

Thank heavens she wasn't at home when the fire broke out.

She's okay!

This is, after all, the type of thing that would have my name in the paper, under an ugly large-type block headline.

We did paperwork and then I did my inspection of her apartment. There's a whole laundry list of things I'm to check for. Safety is foremost, but there's also cleanliness. Just two things stood out: her stove didn't work properly; two burners were dirty enough that they wouldn't light and she needed to do a better job of cleaning up the bird seed her pet parakeets were throwing everywhere. I made a note on my report and suggested that she clean the stove and vacuum her carpets better.

Almost on my way out the door, I backtracked to check the smoke detectors. They're high on my list, but often overlooked unless they're chirping away annoyingly with a spent battery. Her smoke detector (one, only) seemed okay, but I couldn't test it properly, even with a broom, because it was detached from the ceiling, for whatever reason. I tried like hell... even stood on my tiptoes, but couldn't get leverage on the thing.

Bugged me. That feeling, you know, the one in the pit of your stomach...

First thing this morning my intention was to call that landlord and get him out there to fix the darn stove and smoke detector...

Before I even sat down at my desk, the phone was ringing.

As usual.

A detective from the AP police department. There had been a fire... paper was used to ignite a burner (and discarded carelessly in the trash.)

My client had wandered out to the store after cooking lunch without realizing there was a fire brewing in her trash bin.

?

A neighbor heard the smoke detector going off, though. Called the fire department.

My client's ok. Her birds aren't. My name won't be in the paper, at least.

Check your smoke detectors! Every month!

Photos from Jasper Knob overlooking Ishpeming Michigan. For any of you rock-heads, Jasper Knob is a bald-topped hill composed entirely of jaspilite (banded hematite and jasper).

You can't get there from here without a lot of trouble

Click to see the full mess!

All along the route
their patience waned
as the roads turned sandier
down to the Jersey shore
when back ways could not avoid
the open bridge
as one slow thin mast
would paralyze the day
and our front-seating it
pushing crowding forward
"not there yet!"
then racing
who'd see the ocean first
pushing towards its vastness
our young lives stretched out
in unending summer
and in one shell
its mystery

"Before the Parkway" by Jerome Leary

The Highlands-Sea Bright Bridge, a 1240 foot drawbridge that spans the Shrewsbury River, is being replaced with a fixed-span bridge that will rise some 30 feet higher than its predecessor.

Gone will be the occasion to put the car in park and step out for twenty minutes while the bridge is open to watch the sailboats go by underneath. Gone will be that instant of panic when the light on the drawbridge turns from green to yellow to red and you wonder if you should chance it before the bells and gates descend to make you twenty minutes late for wherever it is you're meant to be on the other side of the crossing. Gone will be the convenient excuse of the bridge being up. Gone will be the pause on a summer day.

In the meantime, we have this mess of cranes and a crazy maze to navigate the way from here to there. I can't help but be discombobulated by the change.

Are drawbridges in your neck of the woods being replaced, too? Will you miss them?

Birds at Rocky Point

Susan and Seamus came to their first-ever birdwalk without a pair of binoculars between them. As Field Trip Chairperson, I'm supposed to be prepared for this inevitable oversight on the part of the beginning birder with spare bins to loan out, should anyone need a pair.

Of course I always forget the box of loaner bins that's buried in a closet somewhere. Luckily someone else in our little group had an extra pair to share. Beginners are such fun and really make these walks for me. They're enthusiastic about every bird and are curious about everything. I think I'm so used to birding with people that know more than me that it's nice to feel like an expert once in a while.

We birded in the rain, but did pretty well considering the lousy weather. Rocky Point has an interesting history as a coastal defense site and the views on a sunny day can be dramatic. This morning, the ocean and the river and the sky were all gunmetal gray.

The shrubby fields around Battery Lewis held the expected redstarts and cat birds, a baltimore oriole and lots of vocal carolina wrens, plus some massing tree swallows and a lone chimney swift overhead. We had a nice look at a Peregrine and a couple Osprey, too.

Down at the fishing pier at Black Fish Cove, we found a yellowlegs and a couple oystercatchers, plus a very wet and cranky-looking red tail perched along the river.

Our species count for the couple hour walk was only 35, but for these beginners willing to be out in the rain, each was a small, wet joy.

MCAS field trip

Monmouth County Audubon's first Fall field trip is this Saturday at 9 am at the Rocky Point section of Hartshorne Woods.

I'm not sure that we can expect to see very many birds, but I think this is the best time of the year to be out looking for them! The nights are getting chilly, beach plums are ripening, dog-day cicadas are in full chorus and goldenrods, boneset, and asters are in bloom.

If you're in the neighborhood, why not join us!

Know bones?

Out at Sandy Hook the other day, among the clamshells and bits of drift washed ashore, we found this part of a skull that I imagine belonged to a bird. It's a duck's bill, I think.

I'm not really even sure which way is up, but the bottom (pictured, I think) has an interesting texture, almost coral-like, that I imagine has happened since the bill was attached to anything living.

I checked in my Bird Tracks and Sign book, which has a section on skulls, but didn't find anything to help me beyond the guess that it's a duck's bill.

Anyone know of a good online reference?

The first sip is the best

I learned to drink tea with my grandmother. I like it now the same way as when I was a kid - mostly milk and plenty sweet. Tea smells especially delicious, I think, if you're used to drinking coffee.

A cup of tea shared with grandma was a recipe for happiness, as I remember it. All I need now is that first sip to be carried back to her small kitchen; the clink of spoon against saucer recalling my grandpa in the next room, the parlor, listening to a ballgame on the radio.

I don't think my grandmother and I ever did anything especially memorable together, but I remember drinking tea and feeling very loved. Her memory is a joy and one that usually surfaces as a surprise. A cup of tea is the only way I know to will it.

Labor Day Weekend

In these parts, the highlight of Labor Day Weekend is mostly about what changes afterword; the beaches are free again, there's less traffic, we "locals" have the place to ourselves again...

Maybe a Bar-B-Q somewhere in between...

What do you look forward to with the coming "end" of summer? What plans have you for this long weekend?

Do share!

--Laura (arranging a date with her beach towel and a clear view of the sea)

Punished with kisses

I'm not a cat person, but I suspect they're more like bunnies than dogs. A well-trained dog can be disciplined with a stern voice, a severe look even.

Not so the misbehaving rabbit.

How might a sweet little bunny misbehave, you wonder?

;-)

I'm not sure what it is that comes over them, but once in a while a bunny decides to act up and there's just no dissuading them from whatever it is they're up to.

For Peeper that usually means eating my books or jumping on and off the couch or clanging things around in her cage in the middle of the night.

I don't mind the noise-making so much; usually I interpret it as a call for attention, some bunny-specific need that I've failed to meet during the course of the day and the banging in the dark is just her way of getting revenge.

Book-eating, though, makes me mad. She knows it, too.

The other morning, she got it in her head that she was going to tear up the dust jacket of one of my books. She was in full view of me as she hopped innocently toward the bookcase. I called her name and she stopped for the briefest of moments, then went ahead and tore off a corner piece. I needed only to stand up from my computer before she was headed in the opposite direction. No sooner had I sat, then she was back on her way to the bookcase.

We went on this way for a bit... me threatening her with my approaching steps and her retreating behind her cage, just out of reach, with a bit of glossy book jacket as her prize. I'd sit and forget about her until she did it once more. Then I'd be up after her again. Up and down. Back and forth. She had that cheeky look bunnies get when they know they're being bad, and that saucy little way of turning her back to me.

Just plain fresh.

If it were Luka misbehaving, I'd only need to call him over with that voice, my teacher voice, and maybe wag my finger in his face to correct him. But a bunny? What to do?

Putting her back in her cage to discipline her, after the ordeal of catching her, would only cause a Terrible Mad Bunny Tantrum.

Not pretty.

So I did what I always do with Peeper... the most awful penance imaginable... I scooped her up and kissed her. Over and over again.

She hates that.

;-)

It works though.

Navel gazing

You know that Wendell Berry poem about despair for the world?

I'm trying TV instead.

I'm not exactly sure where to find a wood duck at this time of year anyway.

Other than its mind-numbing effects, the TV isn't doing much to make me feel any better. On the one hand, NCIS reruns (more specifically Mark Harmon) and House (Hugh Laurie!) do have a way of making me smile.

I'm wondering what it is about grumpy almost-gray-haired men that I find so amusing.

On the other hand, watching an episode of What Not to Wear this afternoon and seeing a little too much of myself in the awkward, she-really ought-to-wear-some-makeup woman, that didn't improve my mood much.

Are there any normal, well-adjusted people on TV? Are there any normal well-adjusted people who watch TV?

God it bores me.

I found a neat little used bookstore and self-publishing place in Asbury the other day. I went in shopping for a retirement gift and came home with this, and this, and this.

So much for not buying any new books. I felt a little guilty, but happy to have discovered a book shop where the proprietor was a reader herself and capable of making book recommendations. Probably I'll go back there often.

My clients are one-by-one going off the deep end and threatening to take me along for the ride. I can probably predict the full moon by the number of phone calls I get on any given day.

I'll save that rant for another time.

In the pizza place the other day, a man "selling" toys out of a very large duffle bag approached me by asking if I had grandkids. Grandkids.

Pfft.

I gave him some friendly sales advice.

;-)

Probably my camera lenses are "for sale" in a similar fashion in some other pizza place or chinese restaurant.

Still pissed about that.

Anyone use Pandora Internet Radio? It's very neat.

So what are you all watching or reading or listening to lately?

Shorebird reflections

In a world of distant horizons, the lone shorebird is little more than a windblown fragment, too easily lost under sun and sky.

It must be that they find comfort in the relative anonymity a flock provides: the sense of direction, a defense against predators, the company of other wanderers; a solidarity of purpose.

I find that I enjoy a mixed-species flock of shorebirds in a way that isn't possible when confronted with a lone bird... the solitary shorebird practically implores that it be identified by name, but the magic of them, for me, lies in the wheeling mystery of the flock.

The delight in shorebirds comes not from any individual bird (unless its an Avocet or a silly-spinning Phalarope) but in a mudflat alive with thousands of birds and the subtle mosaic of tones it presents; black streaks of folded wing feathers, drab sandy grays and stony browns... all of them more striking in pattern than in color... cloud shadow, grass and earth, the glint of late-day sun on salty water.

When suddenly they snap together like a magnet in the air or scatter to the blue of four directions, I'm mesmerized.

Their movements... bent airbrushed wings skimming overhead, wheeling and turning on some imperceptible cue, any one member's slight adjustments in direction only serving to highlight the unity of the whole. They appear like a dark cloud detached from the sky showing the gray of their backs, then vanish into the glitter and glare as they wheel to display the white of their underbellies, then reappear at some distance away, as if by magic.

Let others ponder over their ID; I'm happy to know it of course, but it does little to affect their magic in me.

Skywatch Friday: Jamaica Bay Birders

The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is one of the most important urban wildlife refuges in the US and is renowned as a prime birding spot where thousands of water, land and shorebirds stop during migration, with more than 325 species having been recorded in the past 25 years.

Our group of ten or so, minus those couple who were afraid of a little rain (Hi Patrick! Hi John!), grew and mingled and shrank throughout the day. This pic was taken early, before we were very muddied and before the storm clouds had passed us by.

Visit here for more skywatch posts.

Your empty office

Dear Kathy,

I snuck away during your retirement tea this afternoon for one last look at your office. Already it was mostly empty of any trace of you, but for the umbrella on the desk.

I wonder if you did that; looked back on your way out the door. Or did you just walk, with a smile and your balloons and that silly plaque the county gave you, to do whatever it is you'll do now that you're not doing this anymore?

How does it feel to look back on thirty-five years, I wonder?

It goes that the best things said come last. I hope those words reached you today and that you leave knowing the respect and love we all have for you. That your example and your influence, by means of the mentoring you've provided for many of us professionally or personally, extended well beyond the confines of your sunny corner office.

In the span of years I've known you and worked for you, my perception of that office and of you has reshaped itself a number of times. I'm glad now to be far from those first nervous days when I was a trainee in your unit, seated in rows just outside your door like a schoolkid, under your watchful eye. To have come from that, to where I was invited in these last couple years with the door closed behind me, like a trusted friend, is possibly the greatest compliment you could ever pay me.

Thank you for that and for your confidence in me. Thank you for being there with Deb and Linda and Cathy M. to hold me up when my dad was dying and I didn't know how to manage it all. Thank you for quietly letting others help me when I needed help and couldn't get out of my own way. Thank you for encouraging my move to a promotion in social work without making me feel too guilty for leaving my *home* in Unit 425. Thank you for welcoming me into your office as a friend, even though you were my boss. Thank you for cheering me on, in this, now.

Your office is empty. I'm lingering at the door with a rush of words, too late.

Mid-week bunny fix

Peeper on the job!

Peeper the bunny isn't the friendliest of rabbits and she would just as soon box and growl as allow herself to be petted; unless you have a handful of strawberries, that is!

But like most any bunny, she's a busybody! The alarm guy's work mat spread across the floor and covered with assorted tools and a multitude of plastic packages and little doodads proved just too much for her curiosity and she had to investigate and climb all over everything. She even chinned a couple of his power tools!

;-)

I had to put her back in her cage when she started trying to run off with his stuff, though. Ever watch a bunny try to run with a cardboard box in her mouth? It's the funniest thing, really.

Telltale

Their cries echoing a melancholy end to the carefree days of summer, shorebirds concentrate at a few scattered places along their migration routes to fatten themselves up and bewilder those birders foolish enough to attempt separating one species of nondescript shorebird from another species of nondescript shorebird.

Yellowlegs, thank goodness, have those telltale yellow legs.

;-)

In addition to the wealth of shorebirds, Jamaica Bay offers up-close looks at birds that are so often viewed at a great distance across the haze and shimmer of a mudflat. The difference at Jamaica Bay is that you're standing in the midst of the birds, on the mudflat yourself... fighting for purchase among the muck as it threatens to swallow you whole or maybe just steal a shoe should you misstep...

I saw that happen to a couple people the other day... and have pics to share!

;-)

I've avoided ever going to Jamaica Bay, mostly because it involves driving through Staten Island**, but it was a great day and I couldn't resist the chance to meet some other bird bloggers who were there as well. I almost think I've learned to ID a couple sandpipers, too. Plus there was an Avocet which makes any trip worthwhile, even one through Staten Island.

More another day.

**The Staten Island thing is a family joke, but most anyone from NJ can imagine what I mean.

Landmarks

How about some Borland? It's been a while...

A man must pause now and then, when the storms of human passion have filled the sky with the dust of emotions, pause and wonder if the old landmarks are still there. So, when the heat of the day is past and evening comes, a man steps outdoors to look, to feel, to sense the world around him.

These late August evenings, a moon well into its first quarter hangs high in the west, where it has been at this phase ever since there was a moon. North, as the dusk deepens, stands the polestar, and beneath it and to the west a few degrees hangs the Big Dipper, just where it has always been on a late August evening. To the east is the Great Square of Pegasus, old and fixed in the firmament when the Greeks first knew it. And overhead flies Cygnus, the swan.

A man listens, and the scratchy stridulation of a katydid rasps at the dusk. There is an answer, then another, and soon there is a chorus. As always, in late Summer, as it was before man was here to listen. And the crickets chirp and trill in the meadow grass, as they have chirped and trilled for several eons. From the edge of the woodland comes the call of the whippoorwill, over and over, repetitious as the years but reminding man that birds were here and flying before man came and walked on two feet.

A breeze moves down the valley, and the leaves whisper in the treetops. Trees that count the centuries, a breeze that curled around this earth when the hills were mountains. The leaves whisper, and a man listens, and he knows that there still are landmarks.

--Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

Pic is of one of my landmark trees... a hackberry I'm told.

Zen thoughts with bunnies

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.

~H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Midsummer minutiae

I love tiny, tiny flowers and the littlest details revealed with a close-up. I haven't discovered the skill yet, with a very fussy macro lens, to reliably get all of the flower in sharp focus, but instead let the camera choose its point of interest. Sometimes we agree on what's interesting, but often not. I liked the rich brown scaly head below the petals of this Yellow-eyed grass, but the camera had other ideas.

The barely pink urn-shaped flowers of Bearberry are a treat in mid August. This plant was obviously confused; flowering when it should be bearing fruit. The ant on the underside of the most forward leaf distracted both me and the lens.

I'm not sure which of the Bladderworts this is, but the effect of the water and the angle of the sun is pretty psychedelic! I can't ever produce this effect on purpose, but I'm tickled when the lens makes it happen by surprise.

Sweet pepperbush and its tiny fragrant flowers... as abundant as blueberries in the Pine Barrens, but not as tasty.

;-)

I was up to my ankles in mucky water when I took this one, but a close-up of Horned bladderwort requires that, almost. I love the flower's yellow spur. There's some 11 species of bladderworts in the Pine Barrens, yet I've only ever seen 2 or 3 of them.

Thanks to Steve for use of his macro... I needed a close-up flower fix!

Exploring the Red Road

If yesterday's pic wasn't a clue... I went on a pretty intense botany trip to the Pine Barrens on Sunday. MevetS was nice enough to invite me along, but probably didn't properly prepare me. Sure, he said to bring lunch and bug spray and the directions led me to an unmarked sugar-sand road in the middle of the Pine Barrens, but...

Seeing this really scared me. Adding to the fashion faux-pas of tucking their pants into their socks, these folks were using packing tape around their ankles to further geek themselves out/protect against chiggers.

Chiggers? Huh?

Yesterday was brutally hot and the pines in the pygmy forest did little to provide any shade from the sun, but we wandered and wandered, with the promise of a 'wetland' somewhere along the way.

After a couple hours walking in the blazing sun, I was fantasizing about a cool blue pool of water and cabana boys, but...

These people were all about plants... and most of them weren't even flowering plants!

;-)

I've learned that plant people, as they progress and learn more, get really into sedges and rushes and grasses. This is kind of too much for me just now, kind of like shorebirds and gulls are too much for me as a birder.

I need colors and blooms and flashy stuff that catches my eye!

Digging up a sedge to be able to identify it based of the shape and fibrous nature of its roots?

Feels too much like aging gulls based on primary molt or whatever.

;-)

TMI, especially when it's 95 degrees and you've been walking for hours looking for the pool - which turned out to be nothing more than a mucky stream we had to bushwack our way through.

I'll share a couple pics tomorrow of the few flowers we did manage to stumble across. I sound like I'm making fun, but mostly I'm almost awed by the knowledge and enthusiasm I witnessed with this group and wonder how long it'll take me to be ready to tackle (and get excited about!) sedges (or gulls).

;-)

How to 'really' see a sundew

Me, with my face in the dirt.

With a hand lens, of course!

;-)

Photo by MevetS

Clearwater

The Clearwater Festival is an annual event; the state's largest and oldest environmental music festival. I usually always find an excuse to go, even if it's just for an hour or so to stroll among the vendors or listen to the music at the circle of song (pictured here).

I first remember going when I was in high school and back then the festival took place at Fort Hancock on Sandy Hook, right along the bay. A much nicer setting than where it is now, I think.

Anyway... there's always an interesting mix of people to make for fun people-watching: hippie-types straight out of the sixties, kids with their faces painted like butterflies or flowers, today I even saw a young couple, multiple tattoos and body-piercings among them, strolling along with a rather large and vocal parrot on the woman's wrist.

;-)

A coffee story

I read the sweetest little book by Julia Alvarez yesterday evening... A Cafecito Story: A Story of Love, Coffee, Birds, and Hope.

;-)

My coworker Linda, mi pana, is from the Dominican Republic and has been trying to sell me on Julia Alvarez for months. Mostly she writes something like historical fiction that spans the divide between her childhood in DR and her adult life here in the US. I enjoy the poetic way she often writes and this little book suited my short attention span of late.

It tells the story of one man's love affair with a good cup of coffee and how the challenge of growing coffee under the shade of trees, where songbirds come to sing over the ripening coffee beans, ultimately inspires an organic shade-grown coffee company and a community. Cafe Alta Gracia is the name of that company and their coffee is available for sale through the Vermont Coffee Company.

Anyone tried it or have a favorite to recommend?

Blue-eyed grass

BLUE-EYED grass in the meadow

And yarrow-blooms on the hill,

Cattails that rustle and whisper,

And winds that are never still;

Blue-eyed grass in the meadow,

A linnet's nest near by,

Blackbirds caroling clearly

Somewhere between earth and sky;

Blue-eyed grass in the meadow,

And the laden bee's low hum,

Milkweeds all by the roadside,

To tell us summer is come.

Mary Austin

I love the contrast of the yellow throats with the purple petals! Another from the Chiwaukee Prairie in Wisconsin.

Birds at the beach

I wish there were something prettier to follow up that last post with, but...

I spent an hour or two at the beach after work yesterday and as much as I love it, I'm kinda scared to swim in the ocean and so mostly I just wade in a ways and try not to drown. The lifeguards here are so militant anyway, I guess because of the riptides, that they hardly let you go into the water deep enough to actually swim.

So I sat in the shallows with the gulls, letting the ocean fill my bikini bottom up with sand, just like a little kid. Fun! Gulls are pretty tolerant of people in the summertime, especially if they think you have food. They're interesting to watch; the way they eye you over as you approach, how they watch each other and give chase if another finds an interesting morsel in the surf. They especially like pizza flavored Combos and will swallow them whole. Something really cool I saw yesterday was a bunch of those little fish the terns catch started jumping up out of the water... I guess to escape some predator down below (maybe a bluefish?)... and the gulls all got up at once and were grabbing those tormented fish right out of the air! I've even watched the burly gulls try to sneak up on a lone sanderling... explains why sanderlings are so flighty, I guess.

Terns are my favorites; probably I could watch them all day. I guess their young have recently fledged and the parents are still feeding them while they learn to fish for themselves. It seemed they were fishing in pairs and the adult would return to the sand with a fish in its bill, young one following behind, and land to feed the baby... sweet! Anyone else ever see that? I would think terns are acrobatic enough to be able to do a fish exchange in mid-air and wonder why they bother to land at all.

The laughing gulls are starting to look all disheveled... the summer's drawing to a close, I guess.

Anything interesting happening with the birds in your neighborhood?

Gratuitous

Add this to the list of Things I Didn't Need to See

(but had to blog anyway)

(fair warning: it's about to get worse)

(grateful for having laid my towel sidewards of him)

;-)

Can we girls offer some advice like, "No. Don't ever. Please."

A doorway into thanks

For terns and their fast wings
and the silvery fish that vanish beneath them.

For the little that I have
and less now, even, that you left me with.

For the oddly striped and sunblocked
and our ritual weekend-wash in the sea.

For my books
and your eye that didn't discern their value.

For this memoried vessel
and its wealth of beauty in bloom.

It draws my eye from what's been broken and dusted over;
a greasy black powder to name my fear.

For the comfort of neighbors
and the part of me, despite this, that wants to feel ok here.

For the perfect pink end to this day
and its voices that animate the darkest corners of my heart.

For your lack of any real malice
and the small brown bunny left in peace to be a witness.

For all the familiar things that mock me, unseen
and the Kingbird's solemn regard.

For having no one, really, to run to
and surviving, anyway, this first of disasters.

*This post was created on a Mac!... the only happy result of my laptop and most all of my camera gear being stolen early this week. I'm working my way through being angry... and trying to find that thankful place in my heart again.

Please pardon the interruption

This space'll be quiet for a while longer until I sort out some computer issues.

Until then, be well!

Another skeeter hawk

This one probably teneral, or newly-emerged.

*Teneral* is Laura's big word for the day.

;-)

Free from the forest

I stumbled across an assemblage of mushroom geeks today (prior to our local audubon chapter's summer meeting) and showed them this pic of a day-glo orange cauliflower shaped mushroom I'd found in the woods in Michigan...

They all looked very excited and started licking their lips...

It would not occur to me to eat anything this flourescent, honestly.

But Chicken of the Woods, as it's known, is quite tasty according to those in the know.

Can anyone here recommend it? Have a nice recipe to share, just for fun maybe?

Under a prairie sky

It seems to me nothing man has done or built on this land is an improvement over what was here before.

An example of one such place, land that hasn't ever been tilled for agriculture or improved in some way for development, lies halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee. A genuine tallgrass prairie, the Chiwaukee offers a delightful mix of native grasses, uncommon sedges and drop-dead gorgeous orchids among the many wildflowers that bloom within its swells and swales.

It's an excellent place to test your plant identification skills. I was fortunate to have a botanist and walking-encyclopedia along with me to identify plants. I'd point and Jim would spit out a Latin name. Kinda Pavlovian and fun.

;-)

I was tickled to spot this beauty first, after he walked right past it.

The Prairie White Fringed Orchid is a federally threatened species and like most orchids, rather mysterious in its growing habits... some years there's lots, others not so many. We found just two, I think, on the small portion of the Chiwaukee's 225 acres that we walked through.

Swaying back and forth among the grasses... delicate and exquisite... and tall at about three feet, it was easy for me to see why there are volunteers sufficiently enthralled with this particular orchid to stand in for their hawkmoth benefactors and pollinate them by hand, with toothpicks, at various sites within their range. So beautiful were they that I hardly saw any of the other wildflowers that surrounded them.

Pristine as it may be, the Chiwaukee and all its wonders are surrounded by houses and sprawl and represents just a small fragment of the native prairie that once existed in that part of the country.

It's hard for me to imagine anyone plowing these under to grow corn or soybeans or heaven-forbid-Walmarts, but that's not my reality. Far removed, I see only the interplay between an ancient prairie threatened by people, even as it's watched over and appreciated by others.