pip

Another beautiful day. It's that time of year in Vermont. I was up doing my usual Saturday wood cutting (yes Doug, I was wearing all the appropriate safety equipment). I've been working on a couple of big oak trees in the back, and have to lug them up into the truck by myself. They are very heavy. Last week Erin was around to help me lift them. She even did a little cutting for the first time, and handled it in her usual confident, unassuming way. Wish she was still here. She said she would write a guest blog. We'll see. No pressure there.

the corn guy

Beautiful summer's day. In our neck of the woods, it snows in January, there is sugaring in March, the leaves turn in October, and in late July the "corn guy" arrives on the same corner in West Rutland, and sells sweet corn until the end of the season. Some of the early morning risers have noticed the Pleiades appearing in the morning sky in the east. These Seven Sisters will become more prominent as summer turns to fall. I haven't figured out if the appearance of the constellation causes the corn guy to turn up, or visa versa. Blackberries ripening in the front yard.

Groucho

from Nobleday on flickr

Sunny & pleasant. The other day I was up in the quarry near here looking for wildflowers. I scared up a couple of killdeer scooting through the gravel beds, trying to lure me away from their nests. Somehow the way they seemed to lean forward when they walked reminded me of Groucho Marx.

fledged

the crossroads

Ira, Vermont

Yesterday was sunny and warm. Temps in the high 70's & low 80's. It was about as nice as it ever gets here in Vermont. Erin and Allyn headed out to Ohio. The 2nd batch of bluebirds has fledged. The nests are pretty empty today. Blueberries on the morning cereal.

heat lightning

70 degrees at 6:00 in the morning. Temps in the 90's yesterday & today. People closing their windows during the day, and opening them again in the evening. Heat lightning in the sky last night. Quarries, gorges, and ponds filled with swimmers. It seems I usually use the AC in my Honda about once every other year. I have enjoyed it when driving the last two days in a row, a new record I think.

crickets

from hart_curt on flickr

Sunny and hot. Thin film of water on the tile floors at work. Moisture in the paper there as well. Spotted an Indigo Bunting, the first one this year. Sound of summer, crickets in the back yard.

The sun, we say, is the cause 

of heat, but the heat is the sun,

here on this window ledge.

Mark Rutherford

Zen page a day calendar

thunder moon

lkjlkj

 

The full moon, the "Thunder" moon took place on Friday night when we were on Martha's Vineyard. Some of us went over to the beach to watch it rise over Vineyard Sound. On the way, we met a group of about a dozen photographers. I asked them what was up, and they said they were there to photograph the rising of the moon. The direction they indicated was about 45 degrees to the west of where I thought it was going to rise. I was disturbed to see that there was a cloud bank directly over that part of the sky.

When the appointed time came (8:24), I kept looking, but didn't see anything promising. Then Doug piped up, "There it is!" It was rising over the Sound where I thought it would be in the first place. I don't know why I had more faith in the photographers than I did in myself. Thanks to Erin for the pictures.

clang

Hydrangia

Orange Milkweed

Weekend on Martha's Vineyard. Sailboats on the Sound. Walking into town for ice cream after dinner. Long walks along the shore. The clang of a bell buoy when riding the ferry. This is the most summery place I know.

sweet corn

Sunny and warm. Jewelweed, Blue Vervain, Queen Anne's Lace appearing. Sweet corn for sale at Wood's Market. I was out wandering in the quarry the other night looking for wildflowers. I parked next to this corn field in Clarendon. I remember taking a photo of this very same field on St. Patrick's day showing the corn stubble emerging from the winter's snow. Turn, turn, turn.

midsummer classic

Sunny & hot. Thunderheads blossoming over the Green Mountains. Torrential downpours the other night, large tree limbs down in a yard in West Rutland. Bluebirds nesting again in the back yard. It's the first time I've ever seen that happen. National League won the All Star game, the Midsummer Classic, last night.

hot & humid

St. Johns Wort

Hot and humid. Temps in the high 80's yesterday. Supposed to be in the 90's today. Brought the fan down from the attic last night. Picked some raspberries along the power line in West Rutland on Saturday. Day lilies & St John's Wort appearing. The shadows of puffy white clouds darken the Green Mountains in patches

this time of year.

Sunny and warm. Yesterday I drove from Rutland to Burlington to do some mowing at the Zen Center. Afterwards I drove to Lebanon to pick up Allyn at the bus station, and then home. Vermont is a beautiful place this time of year

the great astronomer

M2 by vbloke on flickr

Sunny & warm. Tuesday night the sky was clear, and I decided to go out star gazing. I had been feeling pretty good about my astronomical skills. Bagged 8 Messier items when the IRA (Ira Regional Astronomers) met in the back yard about a month ago. I acquitted myself well when Pete & I hooked up with the Green Mountain Alliance of Amateur Astronomers last Friday night. There were three items I was looking to see. I wasn't sure about two of them, but I was pretty sure I would be able to find M2, the globular cluster in the constellation Aquarius.

When it finally got dark, I went out to take a visual. I located Aquarius pretty quickly, and hauled out my telescope. M2 is listed as an easy find according to my Messier difficulty chart. I'd been finding the medium difficulty objects with good regularity in the recent past. This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes, I thought, and then on to more elusive quarry. I found the likely area in the sky with my red dot & finder, and took a look; no M2. I reset and looked again, no luck. This went on for the better part of an hour; reset, look, nothing-reset, look, nothing. You can probably imagine the kind of thoughts that enter the mind at moments like this.

After an hour I finally noticed that while four of the stars in the constellation looked about right, one of them was in the wrong position. Uh oh, I hadn't been looking in the right constellation after all. I was in Delphinus, not Aquarius. To be fair, they do look similar, and they are in the same area of the night sky. To make matters worse, by the time I realized my mistake, the clouds were rolling in, and I wasn't able to proceed.

Fortunately last night was clear as well. The constellation Aquarius is a faint one, but I was finally able to locate it. When I set up it probably took less than a minute to find M2. It was beautiful.  Reminds me of the story of the man who was out looking for his keys in the driveway. His wife reminded him that he'd lost his keys in the basement. "Yes" he said, "but the light is better out here."

strawberries to blueberries

Wood's Market in Brandon, Vermont

Sunny and warm. Foxglove, geraniums, and roses in gardens all over Vermont. Fishing boat on a trailer in West Rutland. Swallows careening through the skies above the back yard at sunrise. Purple loosestrife appearing. Strawberries to blueberries at Wood's Market.

looking

from White Rocks, East Wallingford, Vermont

All religions pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.

V.V. Rozanov

Zen page a day calendar

independence day; grasshoppers & ants

canada lily

Independence day weekend. With the warm weather and another day off, there really is the feeling that anything is possible. I remember last year, Allyn & I went to New Hampshire for the long weekend. We goofed off the entire time. I remember seeing people working hard during that same period of time, however. When I got back to work on Tuesday, I heard that one of my co-workers had helped bale 1,200 bales of hay. I really did seem like a grasshoppers and ants kind of holiday. 

This year Allyn is in Ohio with her mother. She has been gone for almost a week, and won't be back until Sunday. There is a certain adolescent sense of independence that rises up. When I take off my shirt at night, and decide to throw it on the television, who's going to stop me? There are things that need to be done nonetheless, and I'm trying to balance my ant and grasshopper mentalities in some form or fashion.

Friday evening: As soon as I got out of work, I climbd all the way up White Rocks, looking for twinflower. No luck. Stopped at the Tinmouth snack bar for an ice cream on the way home. Afterwards,  Pete & I went to a star gazing party at Castleton State College. We got home about 1:30.

Saturday:I slept in late, and went out to the Scanlon Bog in Brandon looking for twinflower and other semi exotic species. I thought I was going to ooze to the bottom of the bog at one point when the water started to come in over the top of my rubber boots. No luck on the twinflower. During the afternoon I worked hard on my wood pile, and brought down two loads of wood. 

Sunday I got up late, and did some laundry. We've had a new washer for about a year, but it was the first time I've been allowed to use it. Did two loads of laundry, and it didn't blow up. Don't know what all the fuss was about. I also mulched Allyn's garden, and brought down another load of wood in the steamy July heat. Drank almost two quarts of cranberry juice afterwards. The ants would have been proud of me.

Today I got up about 5:30, and drove two hours to the Chickering Bog in North Montpelier. Allyn & I went to the same place last year on our way to N.H. Because last spring was so warm, and this spring so cold, there was a different variety of plants. As I was approaching the bog, I noticed about three blooming twinflower. All the rest had gone by. Found one other flower I had never seen, Grass Pink.

The grasshoppers were very happy. Came back and mowed, again in the afternoon heat.

The weekend is winding down, but there are still a couple of items on the grasshopper's agenda. As soon as I finish this, I'm going over to the Tinmouth snack bar with the Blodgetts. If it's clear  tonight, Pete & I are going to look for M's 2, 30, & 52 among others. All in all, a good weekend.

 

smoke & humidity

Rol000 on flickr

Sunny and warm. Campers on Rte 7. Heron in Woods Pond. Season of humidity as front door is sticking. Cheerios are kind of soggy even before adding milk. We had the annual summer picnic at work the other day. It was raining so the barbecue was set up under the canopy on the front porch. I had to close my window before they smoked me out.