Amber Lamps

From this post at Power Line:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/04/028868.php

[Edit 2011/08/26: Looks like the video's been taken down. Here's the Power Line Post.]

The elderly couple whose properties I had been maintaining both died, and one of the properties was sold, leaving me with not much to feel productive about. I had promised myself that after they were gone so was I, and it seems to be working out that way. Forty years of Maine winters is an awful lot.

A cold day in heck.

So here I am on my birthday, in a putatively warmer clime, hunting for a house. It’s kind of cool today, I don’t think the temperature broke 70; but it was in the 90s all last week and it’s supposed to warm back up to the upper 80s again later this week. Beats the 30s and snow they’re having today back in Maine.

I stumbled across a small state park this afternoon. Not much there, but it supplied a respite from people and buildings for a little while. Worth the three dollar entrance fee: finally learning how to identify the three different kinds of mangrove that grow around here. I also ran across these little guys:

A bunch of tiny crabs at the water’s edge at Don Pedro Island State Park.

This one was crossing the path in front of me as I headed back to the car:

“You’ll never get the secret recipe outta me!”

I paid for that shot. After crawling around on all fours, sticking my macro lens in the claw of this arthropod, I found I couldn’t straighten up. I had to make my way back to the car crabwise. My back is still in spasm. Still, it was worth it.

We saw a bunch of deer crossing the trail. The ones I managed to shoot either turned out headless, as they were passing behind trees when I tripped the shutter; or blurry, because I didn’t have sense enough to change the ISO setting on the camera to compensate for the dark overcast exacerbated by thick canopy. It sure was green in there, though.

I did manage to get an almost-passable shot of a pair of Great Egrets hunting along the marsh.

Great Egret [Casmerodius albus] at the Marshlands Conservancy in Rye, N.Y.

Just before the first crack of thunder heralding the coming storm, we came upon a tiny cascade:

Tiny cascade in Marshlands Conservancy, Rye, N.Y.

The last shot shows just how incredibly green it was in there. It doesn’t show how incredibly overrun with poison ivy it was. At least I haven’t started itching yet.

Right after that we hotfooted it out of the woods and made it back to the car just as the first drops started falling.

Next up: Day Three.

I just got back from my nominally annual trip to NYC to visit my sister for her birthday. We took a hike in a different part of Westchester County each of the three days I was there. On the first day, we went to the Cranberry Lake Preserve. While the gardens and grounds of the homes in that area are beautifully landscaped, not much seemed to be blooming in the woods.

This was one exception:

Wild Geranium [Geranium maculatum]

A Jack-in-the-pulpit is a Jack-in-the-pulpit, right?

Ha! Apparently, there are three types of Jack-in-the-pulpit, and I didn’t have my book with me to make a positive identification. But this looks like the variety sometimes known as Indian-turnip:

Northern Jack-in-the-pulpit [Arisaema stewardsonii]

We never did make it to the second lake, because the trail markers for one whole end of the preserve were nonexistent. They ran out at the same place on two different trails: the old quarry left over from the building of the Kensico Dam. The one quarry pond we found was a nice place to have lunch, though.

Quarry pond at Cranberry Lake Preserve

There was lots of wildlife. At the quarry pond, we spotted a water snake I was too slow to capture with my camera. We also saw what might have been a redheaded woodpecker, although it was too distant for positive ID. Later in the hike, my nephew with the young eyes spotted this guy sunning himself beside the trail:

Northern Black Racer [Coluber constrictor constrictor]

Despite not getting to see the whole preserve, we had a pretty good outing. Next up: Day Two.

Update: I’ve added a link to the Cranberry Lake Preserve’s website (just click the name of the preserve either here or at the top in the original body of this post). Not including it earlier was an oversight on my part, now corrected.

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

I drove on for about a half mile and then made a U-turn. It was just what I thought it was.

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

If the captions haven’t tipped you off, it’s a 1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan.

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

Aside from a few cosmetic differences, this is the car my father bought new in 1956. Same colors. Same chrome trim. Aaaaagh! The chrome!

The chrome! It burns!

Even as an eleven-year-old, I had large amounts of patience and OCD. But the chrome polish was handed to me, and this grille was a killer. There was a lot of it, and the back edges were sharp. And it sucked even more in cold weather, when my hands hurt anyway.

1956 Ford Fairlane Town Sedan

Still, if I hadn’t just blown my life savings on a new truck, I would’ve been sorely tempted to buy this one-owner sweetie. Chrome killer-grille and all.

Hey, I never said I was rational. OK, maybe I did, but I lied.

Sunday was my every-fourth-week drive to Denmark, Maine, with a friend and his daughter. I’ve been promising her for six months that I’d take her on a little hike one of these times, and the weather was too good to pass up this time. As is usual for me, I grabbed my camera and tripod; because, if I’m gonna be out in the woods, I’m gonna be taking pictures.

Except I hadn’t hiked Douglas Mountain in about twenty-five years and my memory was a little fuzzy on the length of the hike. And when I take pictures I like to take my time.

So we ended up not being able to reach the summit, and I hurried the shots and came away with not much usable, and we were late getting to Denmark.

I need to learn to focus.

A small waterfall on Douglas Mountain

A small stream on Douglas Mountain

I think I’ve figured out why I get so depressed in March. That’s when, at the end of a long, hard winter, I figure out that I still can’t afford to retire to Florida and I’ll have to spend next winter here, too. Even with that in mind, this past one was particularly bad. Several injuries have left me limping and depressed. In the midst of it all, the 95-year-old whose property I maintain fell and broke his hip. Between hobbling to the hospital every day with his mail, trying to shovel snow using only one arm, and watching my retirement fund fly out the window for a new truck after the old one died of cancer, I’ve been functioning at a very low level.

The good news is that most of the snow has melted and the temps have gotten high enough that I can put out the garden hoses and start spring cleanup. A few days ago, as I was surveying the damage to the trees out back, I came across a little patch of color in the woods. As I couldn’t decide which shot to post, you get two.

Crocus, unknown species or cultivar.

These crocuses were poking their heads out of the mess of leaves on the far side of my canoe. The colors remind me of a children’s book I had when I was a kid, “The Color Kittens.”

Same crocuses, different shot.

I didn’t even notice that I was crawling on my belly in the mud until I brought it into the house with me.

And a couple of nights ago, as I was walking home, I thought the fog rolling in to Memorial Field was pretty neat. But by the time I got my camera and got outside, the fog had completely rolled in and there was no contrast between clear air and fog. Some interesting shots, anyway.

Deering High Memorial Field at night in fog.

The lacrosse players were taking a break on the left side of the picture. They’re pretty hard to see.

Deering High Memorial Field at night in fog. This view is from ground level.

Back to working on my attitude…

Update: Well, crap. I just noticed that for the last few posts, Worpdress hasn’t been automatically making each image a link to its full-size self. Now I gotta go in and hand-edit all the images. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update 2, now with more bookly goodness: Here’s the cover from the book. I found it at Wikipedia.

The Color Kittens

That takes me back about sixty years. That’s scary. And sad.

The unicorn seems to have been held up in shipping; but the Skittles are being delivered. For some reason, though, the only ones coming through are the brown ones. And they smell kind of funny, but it’s probably ungrateful of me to criticize. I’m sure the rest will start shipping any day, now.

I’m so excited!