Summer weather returned on Monday. We took our new kayaks out to Glen Lake for a paddle.
Monday was a holiday and the lakes in the area were packed. But when we pulled out of the boat launch area, the lake didn't seem busy at all. Having the truck makes these events easy. We're able to just throw the kayaks in the back and secure them with bungee cords. We got ice cream cones for the drive home. It was a lot of fun.
It was a very strange Fourth this year, cool with light rain. Temperatures never got above the mid-sixties yesterday. I made soup for dinner. It was 48 degrees here this morning. The furnace went on and woke Allyn up.
Leaves on the maple trees changing from the light green of spring to the darker shade of summer. St. John's Wort appearing.
I think Clarkie was the first to see her, a single doe feeding in the back pasture.
She appeared now and then over the course of a couple of weeks. It seemed a little bit unusual to see a solitary deer. Usually they appear in herds of a half dozen or so. Given the time of the year, I wondered whether she was prepping for a birth or whether one had already occurred. Sure enough, the other day we saw her with a fawn. The fawn couldn't have been much more than a day or two old. You could barely make her out as they walked through the tall grass. The fawn would mostly follow mom, but every once in awhile, it would start running around; for no apparent reason and in no particular direction. It was running just for the fun of it; just happy to be alive in June in Vermont. Sometimes the mom would join in the fun. It was wonderful to see.
The other day I was out on the usual morning walk and heard the sound of a crow screeching over the hill in the back. It went on for hours and I heard the same sound coming from a different crow up the road a piece. I wondered if there was some parenting going on; if they were directing/training some offspring who had recently fledged. On the same day, I heard the sound of a fox barking from deep in the woods, and wondered again if it was literally "barking" out directions to her new pups. It certainly seemed like the right time of year for that.
Part of the enjoyment of observing behaviors in the natural world is when anomalous behaviors occur; trying to figure out what's going on. I've been doing this blog for many years and this is one of the first times I've considered some of these anomalies as signs of parenting behavior. In hindsight, it seems like I've probably been missing these parenting clues for many years.
Spent a couple of days on the shores of Lake Champlain for the first time. I learned something. Conditions change quickly and markedly on the surface of a lake.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Zen Page-a-day calendar
This is kind of a blog continuation. On Wednesday night, John and his family arrived. Thursday turned out to be a red letter day in our family as all of the cousins were old enough to fully enjoy each other. They played together with wild abandon virtually all day long. It was amazing to witness as they personified a zest for life that you hope to see in your grandkids. This photo from yesterday says it all as they hopped over the gate on their way to checking out the cows.
