Musings

Morning sun with apple leaves.

Black hole of fern.

Apple blossom cluster (in late-day sun).

Work, interrupted.

Posted at 7:37 PM | No Comments »

Our cottage sun-up is delayed by the woods. This was at 7:12am, and filtered through an apple tree.

Midday, I was out assessing the rhubarb crop, and found this grey treefrog hanging in the shade.

When I returned later to do the picking, it had relocated. I picked eight stalks, and took the resulting rhubarb sauce to a potluck next door, along with some boughten (as my child-self would have called it) ice cream. Success!

Returning from socializing at 10pm, I had to photograph the moonrise. Note a few pixels of reflection off the lake through the trees.

Posted at 10:24 PM | No Comments »

Sipping my coffee and looking out the window, I saw the low-angle morning sun gloriously illuminating the birchbark, aka birch bark.

Posted at 10:07 PM | No Comments »

The earliest of the apple trees opened today. Most of the trees in the orchard are still in bud. The Siberian apple is one of the ones that are abloom, and I’m wondering if the pollinator trees are opening first. Certainly, I’m glad it’s warm enough that the pollinator insects can be active.

Posted at 9:05 PM | No Comments »

This morning, I walked through the woods to the other side of the point. There’s no beach, so no beach strolling, just picking my way through the woods avoiding trilliums (most not blooming), ramps, sticks, muddy spots, and the like. The lake looks swollen to me, even without the beach-less margin. In fact, “high water” does not even come close to the present condition.

The ferns continue to unfurl, as you’d expect.

In the field, I found the first lupine bud, a bit ahead of the masses.

Posted at 10:01 PM | No Comments »

We ventured down the Marshland Drive at the Refuge late this morning. First sighting: a pair of loons, feeding.

A flotilla of Canada geese, plus swans outside the frame at quite a distance. Over our visit, BTW, we saw zero mallards—unusual.

Turtle. There were two, but one dove in as I positioned myself to take this shot. We saw many logs with resting turtles.

Single swan close to the road, profile pose.

Far against the trees, in or next to shadow, are two white/white-ish things at the waterline. The one on the right is a tree remnant, given the form. We discussed the one on the left for quite a while as we motored on, and as the angles changed and it sometimes looked the same, sometimes different. We finally ended up agreeing on swan, although we kept driving and looking. Soon, we stopped at the convenient Loon Overlook, and used the heavy-duty monocular bolted to the deck, and, pfft: swan confirmation. Yay!

Posted at 10:09 PM | No Comments »

I did a vegetation check this morning. I found two hogweeds I missed in the corner of the field, not a big deal. I also checked on the unfurling ferns. Unfurling.

I went deeper into the woods, turned away from the lake, and picked my way carefully through the greenery, trying not to step on any flowers or unflowering plants. Then, I heard a din/racket/cacophony ahead of me, and stopped to spot the culprit. I think it was the male sandhill wooing the lady sandhill, just him, and she was quiet, walking away from him, this way and that, at a stately, deliberate pace. Meanwhile, the male walked after her, following, and finally doing wing flaps, as if she has to notice him and respond to That. And then quiet, and I couldn’t see them any more. Did they fly off? Dunno. Can you spot the pair along the treeline? Facing left?

Posted at 9:55 PM | No Comments »

THis morning, under dense overcast, I took a walk-wander around the field. I found a clear view of a deer trail heading through the wildflowers, or wild-plants-without-flowers.

The reason for my circuit, beyond stretching my legs, was to check on emergent hogweed (AKA cow parsnip) specimens. Yup: present. Here’s the harvest after about an hour of unearthing them, laid out to desicate before composting.

Late afternoon, the sun finally came out and it was like a different day.

Posted at 8:09 PM | No Comments »

Overcast and blustery…overcast all day, and blustery more and more starting in the late afternoon.

We went to Newbs and got groceries, enough to get us through the holiday weekend. I also picked up two multi-stem pots of basil. I hope I can separate them when I plant them to give them room to fluff out (when it’s not so windy). We also attacked other chores, ho hum.

Posted at 9:44 PM | No Comments »

Relatively overcast at 8:44am. By the way, that’s the stump of a huge white pine that had two main trunks. It became storm battered and had to be cut down so it didn’t fall on the cottage. This was some years ago. The chainsaw guy had been cutting trees in the woods and elsewhere for decades, and said it was the largest tree he’d ever cut down. I think it was planted in my great-grandfather’s time.

This was just a few minutes later, and you can see the sun was making inroads on the overcast. The cottage looks much better from this distance rather than closer up.

1:26pm. Sunny and almost totally cloudless. That’s a large sour cherry tree, with a gap in the middle. It has lovely dead-white blooms. You can see that the leaves are barely showing pretty much everywhere. (Evergreens don’t count.)

A vulpine visitor came through about 6:40pm, first heading west on a deer trail, then turning north on the driveway, here. If you read the title and get curious, thanks for sticking through the tedious-yet-informative weather-and-vegetation photos. 😉

Posted at 9:16 PM | No Comments »