It’s been hectic lately – I’ve been making weekly trips up to Vermont to get the last of the stuff out of the house before the tenants move in. I hate moving; I hate how the end stages take f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I hate the part where you’re staring bewildered at a tangled collection of cables and patch cords and ancient digital answering machines and landline phones and cordless phones, wondering, “am I EVER going to use this?” I hate the part when you hesitate to throw out any keys – never mind the fact that you’ve checked, and they don’t fit any locks in the house – because you never know.
That said, I’m well and truly down to the last load, I SWEAR. Which come hell or high water, will happen this week. Except for all the crap in the garage. That’s going to take a dumpster, and unfortunately (due to Kevin’s upcoming work travel) it won’t happen til after the tenants move in. Sorry, guys!
As I type this, I can see the neighbors’ lamb triplets cavorting in the pasture. If you’ve never seen lambs playing, it is a trip – suddenly, you realize where the phrase “kick up your heels” comes from. Our neighbors called us over when they were being born a couple of weeks ago – we arrived shortly after #2 showed up, and watched #3 being born. (And, bonus, Kevin got to name one, and I got to name another. His is “Constance” and mine is “Mo”.) They’re all black, with varying amounts of white on their faces. Cute as can be.
Where was I. If lambs are being born, it must be spring.
That’s better. Trees are budding left and right, and I’m (sob!) focused on other things – so I greet them when and where I can. I tell them, “I see you!” and take mental snapshots. This past weekend, I took a solo spin up to Maine to visit a friend who’s moving to Ithaca soon, and at the last minute I remembered to bring the camera.
Speckled alder.
Deee-licious.
My friend and her family have been renting a place just a few hundred yards from the ocean, and we went on three separate excursions to four different beaches/rocky coastline areas to investigate. For someone who is still unpacking shoeboxes labeled “rocks”, a trip to the Maine coastline – covered as it is in gorgeous striped and mottled round beauties – is like waving a crack pipe in front of someone in rehab. I managed to exercise restraint, for the most part. I had to have this one, for obvious reasons:
A stripy rock, sure – but do you see the FAULT LINE IN IT???? How cool is that?
Didn’t bring home this one – the seaweed would just flake off.
I got back to CT early this afternoon, and shortly thereafter, Kevin and I headed out in the kayaks – our first foray down here.
This is a third of a mile (as the crow flies) from our house. Not half bad. Except for the part where we got lost and couldn’t find our way back to our starting point. This is on a dammed river, and there are several islands and deep coves, and we chose to come back a different way than we’d headed out, so it’s no wonder we wound up in adventure territory.
That’s a Canada goose on her (?) nest, laying low and pretending that if she can’t see us, we can’t see her. We saw another nest a little while later, similarly guarded AND patrolled by the mate, as we bumbled around in various coves trying to find our way back to the put-in. It was funny to be so lost, while we could literally see the solar panels on our neighbor’s roof.
We have gobs of Canada geese around here--I guess they're everywhere--and I only just found out that we have Cackling geese too, and that they're different. Which they are, once you notice, with their blunter beaks and smaller size. How could I have been surrounded by Cackling Geese all this time and not know it? Couldn't it have just been runty geese who liked to chase parked cars?
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