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| The cattle barn |
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| Sky with horse |
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| Mill reflected in Crosswicks Creek |
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| Cellar view |
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| Mill from the porch of the Waln house |
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| Original haint blue paint swipe on an upper mill wall |
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| Patch of sky with summer’s last greens
More info and pics from past visits to Walnford are here. |
I pick the prettiest part of the sky and I melt into the wing and then into the air, till I’m just soul on a sunbeam. ~Richard Bach
Yes, I’m still checking off items from last year’s list…
: )
Kite flying has always looked like such fun to me and a little boy at the beach on Labor Day weekend with a stunt kite inspired me to get my own. A stunt kite has two lines for control and is not anything one can put up into the sky and tie off to a beach chair to be forgotten while you sunbathe.
You have to manage this thing and boy, is it fun! A gentle (or not so much) tug on either the right-handed or left-handed line will set the kite diving in whichever direction… the wind plays its hand and the kite is making loop the loops in a dangerous spiral towards someone’s umbrella…
Crash!!
There was much giggling and some cheering, even… a brisk wind and the sun low on the beach at Cape May… the lighthouse behind us… the curiosity of an Amish family out for a seaside afternoon…
I hadn’t felt so lighthearted in a long while.
And next I want to learn how to do tricks!
: )
25 in last year’s 39 by 40.
I’d intended to post a “bad bird photo of the week” tonight, but this is not it.
Stop laughing. I can hear you, you know.
; )
I was at Cape May this past weekend and between the swarms of monarchs and tree swallows, which I mean to get to talking about eventually, there was an hour or so spent puzzling over the ducks at Lighthouse Pond in Cape May Point State Park.
I love ducks, but this time of year is awful for trying to identify any of them. There’s juveniles and females and males in eclipse plumage… basically meaning that no duck looks the way we expect them to… there’s hints to their identity, of course, but puzzling one’s way through bill and eye color is time-consuming and generally against the way I like to enjoy birds.
This bird was a puzzle we eventually gave up on… we’d called it a teal for a while… eventually settling on a Cinnamon Teal, even though we *knew* that wasn’t right…
Today there was this from The View at the Cape identifying this duck as a Northern Pintail. We’d never guessed that, I don’t think… some weird Wigeon, maybe, but a Pintail?
Of course it’s obvious to me now that I know what it is…
: )
Migration is sometimes breathtaking to witness!
*Monarch pic stolen from View from the Cape… have a read.
Most every picture of Royal Terns has this sort of feathery dandruff on their bills…
?
Ideas anyone?
Some Borland tonight…
“Another week and Summer will be officially at an end, since we demarcate our seasons by the solstices and the equinoxes. We who live in a land of seasonal change will have Autumn on our doorstep. Even now the sun rises east and sets west, so far as the eye can see; and one hears regret that another Summer is gone.
In a sense, this is so; and yet no season, nor even any year, either stands alone or vanishes completely. Summer is rooted in Spring, and Autumn is essentially Summer’s maturity. The apple now reddened on the tree was a fragile blossom, a delight to the eye and a host to the bee, only a few months ago. The honey in the comb was pollen when June was at its height, and rains of April and hot July nights now come to ripeness in the cornfields. Even before the leaves come swirling down, buds are on the bough for another Summer’s shade.
Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night; and thus he would never know the rhythms that are at the heart of life. There is a time of sprouting, a time of growth, and a time of harvest, and all are a part of the greater whole. There comes the time now to savor the harvest, to pause and know another year not yet brought to full finality.
The rhythm of life and thought and change will be close around us now, and the restless energy of Summer will be distilled into the stout brandy of another season. Change is ours to know and accept and build upon, even as the skies of Autumn clear and the leaves begin to fall. Fallen leaves open wider horizons to the seeing eye.”
It’s reassuring to me that, even with a fancy new lens, I can still take especially bad bird pics…
😉
Any guesses?
