Gliding like a tiny shadow before the tide, little more than a bit of wind-shifted sand, I search the place where sand and water become sky. The waves quickly erase my tracks and leave the beach empty of any memory of my passage. Days pass this way, the ebb and flow of life and memory, of abundance and heartache. With a note from high overhead I depart toward the southern stars in search of some other land and leave this piece of shoreline in the solitude of a late summer evening.
All posts by laurahinnj
Girdled
Were my desktop PC working, I’d have edited this pic in PhotoShop to crop out Luka’s *girdle* and focus your attention instead on his sweet face. Yet, maybe showing you the whole scene helps to account for the goofy look on his face, I don’t know. I’m not sure why I didn’t think to take off his *no-pull harness* before we started swimming lessons, but once it did occur to me we were both already good and wet. Cedar Creek in the Pine Barrens proved to be a great place to practice, with a gentle current, water that’s shallow and clean, but cold!
gir·dle noun, verb, -dled, -dling.
–noun 1. a lightweight undergarment, worn esp. by women, often partly or entirely of elastic or boned, for supporting and giving a slimmer appearance to the abdomen, hips, and buttocks.
2. a belt, cord, sash, or the like, worn about the waist.
3. anything that encircles, confines, or limits.
4. Jewelry. the edge or narrow band between the upper and lower facets of a gem.
5. Anatomy. the bony framework that unites the upper or lower extremities to the axial skeleton.
6. Architecture. an ornamental band, esp. one surrounding the shaft of a column.
7. a ring made about a tree trunk, branch, etc., by removing a band of bark.
–verb (used with object)
8. to encircle with a belt; gird.
9. to encompass; enclose; encircle.
10. to move around (something or someone) in a circle.
11. to cut away the bark and cambium in a ring around (a tree, branch, etc.).
12. Jewelry. round
-from Dictionary.com
Calling the harness a *girdle* is something of an inside joke with my husband and I, as well as a sweet reminder of our Buddy who passed away this summer. I used to make him wear a sheepskin-covered seatbelt harness when we rode together in the car, and we always referred to it as a *girdle*. Buddy mostly hated it, but it helped to calm him in the car while doing nothing for his figure!
Rambling and grazing
I’m counting on someone out there recognizing this flower; it’s blooming in all the weedy places right now and I haven’t been able to come up with a name. I spotted this patch on a weekend walk with Luka through an overgrown pasture full of goldenrod, milkweed and thistles.
We had actually been walking on a dirt road around the pasture, but took a detour through the middle of it when I heard insistent osprey calls from the treeline in the distance. I wonder if it wasn’t a youngster recently left to fend for itself. Of course, it flew from the perch as we approached, but along the way we came across these flowers and many scattered piles of deer poop which Luka found just delicious! I swear that pup has to put everything in his mouth – thank heavens we haven’t wandered across any dead animals yet!
I don’t have the enthusiasm for identifying wildflowers that I had in the Spring and wonder why that is. I find myself noticing berries, mostly, and trying to guess which animals they’re meant to feed. It took me a while to realize that the ground-level clusters of red berries I’d been seeing were the fruits of Jack in the Pulpit – who eats them, I wonder? The viburnums have set fruit that will persist for months, yet the red dogwood berries are long gone by mid-September. The starlings see to that over the protests of the local mockingbirds. Fallen apples litter the ground, tempting deer and puppy the same, as Fall ambles our way.
Decoy show reminder
I’m posting this as much as a reminder for myself as for anyone else who might be in the area and interested in attending. I remember last year that Patrick had expressed an interest, so Patrick, mark your calendar now!
I had myself convinced that the show was next weekend… sigh. I’m just foolish enough to show up on the wrong weekend!
We’ll be bringing the pup along and I may just decide to enter him in the puppy retriever contest for fun. I’ve been saving up my pennies for a while now to be able to buy a new decoy or two.
Hope to see you there! I may even have a prize to offer the first person who can correctly ID the ducks and the NJ landmark featured on this year’s official show poster.
Click on the pic for a schedule of the weekend’s events.
Yet another Pine Barrens mystery
Found beside a quiet swimming hole along Cedar Creek in the NJ Pinelands this morning. The Piney version of a seaside sandcastle or something else? Anyone care to speculate?
(Click for detailed view of the moat and the goldenrod-decorated towers.)
Puppy kindergarten
This little sweetie is Ciao Bella. Luka seems to think she is his personal squeaky toy. We’ve been going to puppy class on Tuesday nights for the last month or so and haven’t been made to sit in the corner with the dunce cap, yet!
This is Sam, our trainer. All the puppies seem to love him – I think that’s because he always has a treat in his pocket for the well-behaved pup. He’s tough to please, but his experience as a canine police officer comes in handy with the unruly pups. That’s Ciao Bella at his feet.
This is Whiskey – he’s the same age as Luka and is so well-behaved. He’s Luka’s favorite playmate.
Luka and Whiskey became fast friends – they wrestle and chase one another. I think Ciao Bella is that little brownish blob under Luka’s feet – oops! Whiskey is the only pup in the class that’s similar in size to Luka and big enough to push him around. I love to watch them play together.
I don’t know what type of dog Skippy is, but that’s her hiding under the chair while Luka torments her. She’s funny – shy with the other dogs during playtime, but she loves to distract them (especially Luka) during the *lesson* with barks and a flirty ear shake. She and Luka regularly compete for who can bark the loudest while poor Sam tries to teach. She comes to class with her mom and at least 5 little kids – none of whom even try to keep her out of trouble. Tonight she went for a swim in the huge water bowl!
The little black pug whose name I can’t remember – she’s a sweetie too. Luka likes to chew on the side of her face.
So far we’ve learned Sit, Take It, Leave It, Down, and just tonight – Come! Whiskey seems to be the star student in the group. Luka is just a goofball, true to his nature, but we’re having fun.
Season’s end
Empty osprey platform at Horseshoe Cove, Sandy HookI’ve been so out of it this summer that I missed spending any time with the local ospreys and before too long they’ll be gone south for the season until late March.
There’s a pair that nests on a cell phone tower here in town and mostly I watch them while stopped at the railroad tracks that pass beneath their nest. I don’t see much besides an osprey-shaped shadow perched high up, but I’m glad to have them so easily within view. I tried a few times to photograph them from the parking lot nearby, but they always seemed to be off fishing when I was there with the camera. I see the pair though, and their young from my yard once in a while. Their calls stream down from above and I think myself blessed to have osprey as a yard bird.
My favorite nests to watch are the platforms on the marshes at Sandy Hook – especially at sunset. It wouldn’t take much to convince me to set up a home with such a pretty view! I don’t know that this or the other platform at Horseshoe Cove were used this year – the birds seem to have some mysterious preference for Spermacetti Cove or the chimneys on Officer’s Row instead.
I always miss the osprey when they go. What birds do you miss the most when the season changes?
Thistle time
“What if you slept, and what if in your sleep you dreamed, and what if in your dream you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower, and what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand?
Ah, what then?”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Salty dog
What is it about being in a very public place that makes a puppy sooo prone to misbehave?
😉
Maybe it was all that seaweed he ate, but Luka was an absolute devil at the beach this afternoon! He had a grand time digging in the sand and darting off with clamshells in his mouth. He was so wild at one point I almost walked off and left him. You know how puppies get in that frantic mode where their ears stop working and they’re nothing but barks and snapping jaws – any bit of discipline just makes them worse.
I think maybe he was just cranky – his dinner was overdue and he’d missed his afternoon nap. He was snoring in the car on the drive home. He had a bath in the tub and then his dinner and now he’s sound asleep like a little angel curled up on his bed.
I’m not far behind.
Sea legs
The DH and I had a wonderful surprise today. A friend of his just bought a boat and took us along on a ride. Is there anything better than a friend with a boat?
We had the pup along for what we thought was just a walk at the riverside park; before we knew it, we were cruising up the river to where it meets Sandy Hook Bay. We had a nice lunch dockside at a restaurant on the bay – and Luka even behaved himself pretty well! I only wish I’d had my camera along to be able to share a pic of him with his big ears flapping in the wind on the boat.
It was a great start to the long Labor Day weekend. The views were lovely and we had fun! I grabbed this pic off the internet, but it shows one of the views we had along the way – Twin Lights – which I wrote a bit about in this post.
I’m going to try very hard to get back to something like a regular blogging schedule soon. I’m finished with that god-awful training at work finally, and hope to be able to pay more attention to things now. I did very well on the tests and have a new position where I’ll need to forget everything I’ve just been trained in and learn something new. But there won’t be a gazillion tests this time! Two in our group of seven did not pass and are out of a job now. That really sucks. I felt so badly on Friday when we got the news.
So how is everyone else spending this last weekend of summer? Share, please!