Photographed today along the BeltLine in Piedmont Park.
Category Archives: Whatever
Untold stories
There are a lot of stories I never got around to telling last year… these are just a couple to share…
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| Waiting for birds to appear on the CBC in January… |
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| A very cold visit to the NJ Meadowlands in February… |
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| Shadows of the March sun at the carousel in AP… |
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| Walking the High Line with a childhood friend in April… |
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| Lunch in Asheville on the way home from W. Va. in May… |
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| Playing with reflections and a new lens on the boardwalk in June… |
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| A couple hours on the beach in July with one of my favorite little people… |
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| Playing tour guide for a flock-mate in August… |
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| A September visit to California… |
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| An October visit to Savannah… |
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| My first (and last!) raw oyster in Apalachicola in November… |
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| Exploring back country roads in December looking for birds… |
I hope to be a better blogger in 2012…
Right brain (fridge) poetry
I don’t know the language, but that shouldn’t stop me from playing, right?
; )
I’m sure one of the French grammarians around here will correct me…
I’m feeling inspired by this article… thanks for sending along the link Endment!
Birds in weird places #1
Willet on telephone pole…
It looked like love
Although as quickly as it happened, he might just have misjudged his landing…
; )
Wordless Wednesday
*smirk*
Show Jersey some love!
(and, for the record, I too love the “city of lights” along the Turnpike mentioned at 5:10!)
Strange bedfellows
All the little ponds here along the coast are frozen solid, mostly. Each has at least some open water and that’s where all the birds are congregating. Fletcher Lake between Ocean Grove and Bradley Beach had this Great Blue Heron (who looks scarily hungry for some Mallard flesh!), many Mallards, a couple white domestic ducks, a Pintail(!!!), a Wigeon and a Black-crowned night heron sleeping along the shoreline.
A couple blocks away in Spring Lake we found a single Snow Goose feeding on the postcard-sized lawn of a beach house with a small group of Canada Geese.
Strange.
I find myself inclined to worry about wildlife when everything is frozen and snow-covered, but remind myself that wild things are good at surviving. They do much better than I ever could, for sure…
Balancing the year
“The short days are past us now… thus the year balances its accounts. In our latitude we know that each year brings the time when not only the candle but the hearth fire must burn at both ends of the day, symbol not of waste but of warmth and comfort. The sun cuts a small arc far off to the south and shadows and cold lie deep. It is for this time that we, if we live close to the land, lay up the firewood and the fodder. Now we pay for the long days of Summer, pay in the simple currency of daylight. Hour for hour, the accounts are balanced.
And yet, the short days provide their own bonus. The snows come, and dusk and dawn are like no other time of the year. We come to a long Winter night when the moon rides full over a white world and the darkness thins away. For the full-moon night is as long as the longest day of Summer, and the snowy world gleams and glows with an incandescent shimmer.
Year to year, we remember the short days, but we tend to forget the long nights when the moon rides high over a cold and brittle-white world. Not only the moon nights, but the star nights, when it seems one can stand still on a hilltop and touch the Dipper. Who would not cut wood and burn a candle for a few such nights a year?”
-Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons
OK astronomy geeks… with tonight’s solstice and lunar eclipse… is tonight the longest and the darkest night ever?
How many of you mean to stay up to see it?
(shivering at the thought!)
Image from here.
Mmm…
All the chatter at work the last few days has been about the upcoming holiday meal and who’s going where and cooking what.
It’s a pretty diverse crowd and I’ve enjoyed hearing about everyone’s plans for Thanksgiving as well as their family traditions. My own family is pretty typical, I’d guess… a huge meal on the fancy china, but the star of the show is always the variety of vegetables we prepare; we always go a little overboard in that way. It’s hard for me to settle on a favorite, but Brussels Sprouts certainly top my list.
Is that weird?
(It seems like most everyone I talk to hates Brussels Sprouts!)
My answer is that if you don’t like ’em, you must not be cooking them properly.
; )
So tell me… what’s your favorite thing to eat on Turkey Day? Mashed potatoes piled high with butter? Or mixed with whipped turnips? Creamed (yuck!) onions? Lasagna? Arroz con gandules?