bird watching on the coast can be so calming. here gulls squawk and soar and drift on the air singly or in large flocks. they stand at attention on the rocky shore, surveying their ocean domain as they wait for fishing boats to pass. last night at sunset, a never ending mass of hundreds of gulls streamed toward the west and the setting sun. and sometimes, if i'm lucky, i see other birds here, like herons or terns or this cormorant, pictured below with his gull friends. 
this old green cardboard strip glued with dried leaves is a bookmark the girl made for me when she was very, very small. i treasure this creation and have always used it to mark my place in whatever fictional work i'm reading. 
over the weekend, i saw this in a cemetery. when my time finally comes, i'd love to leave behind words like this. words that make even a stranger laugh out loud and smile days later, thinking that the deceased must have really been quite a gal. 
a lovely summer weekend spent with family at the beach just across the harbor from the city of boston. the lighthouse above is boston light, originally lit with candles in the 1700s when it was built and now powered by a windmill! below, the most unusual weathervane i saw while i was there. isn't she beautiful?
on most august days, i drive by this cornfield on the way to the local farm stand to buy the day's produce. sometimes it's tomatoes or peaches or lettuce or blueberries, but always, it is corn. the season for corn is so brief here that we tend to indulge in it every day that we can. and then never again, not until the following year, in august when corn season returns once more.
i have been quietly busy interacting with children's books these august days. it's solitary work and there's a certain rhythm to the task that is, at times, quite calming. so imagine how startled i was tonight when this book began to chirp at me! chirp! a tiny mechanism inside the back cover mimics the sound of the cricket depicted in the story. and i didn't even realize it was there! how delightful that books can engage small children with sound as well as story! the little girl is going to love this one!
this small creature is one of the reasons i let milkweed grow wild here. in a few week's time, this caterpillar will have undergone metamorphosis and emerged into his final stage of life - as a beautiful monarch butterfly. 
two years ago, i blogged about this, which means i've been attempting to grow these flowers for four summers now. a friend has amazing success growing beautiful giant pink poppies and she keeps me in a yearly supply of seed, which i (now) faithfully plant according to her directions - always to no avail. but apparently this year, i've had some success as i find these spent pods tucked in the garden behind some taller and fuller perennials. the bad news is this: i totally missed the flowers. even though they must have been awfully tiny and hidden behind other garden greenery, i bet, for a few fleeting days, they were really pretty.
What is so rare as a day in june? a day in july! perfect weather today for a long walk, for some work outside at the table, for a snooze under the maples and for a picnic dinner with the little girl, eating watermelon and listening to crickets. summer as it should be!
when this arbor was built last summer, i agonized over the color choice for the paint. when it was finished, i was a bit disappointed to see how blue it was instead of the tree-trunk grey i had hoped it would be. but now that it's covered with lovely, lush vines, heavy with grapes, i see how silly that was. draped serenely in morning sunlight, it would still be beautiful even if it had been painted orange.
each morning this week i've tried to snap a photo of the raucous crows that have been waking me too early all summer long. screeching and shrill, they arrive at dawn to perch in trees around the yard. boldly, they swoop in and cover the lawn, squawking as they hi-step through the early morning dew. once this week, i awoke to rapid, rhythmic, incessant croaking. peering sleepily through the window i spied a young crow, jumping up and down in front of the blackberry bushes. with each screech, he hopped up and gobbled down a berry. needless to say, there are precious few left for us this year. 
just as this day is coming to an end, just as i am thinking nothing photo- or blog-worthy happened today, the tiniest toad hops onto the screen right where i am sitting at the window. and so ends the day.
here is the sight that i opened my eyes to this morning. it's pretty difficult to go back to sleep after witnessing something this amazing.
the little girl arrived at the beach yesterday and suddenly all that was familiar looks different. as we walk, she's like a hawk, spotting smooth white rocks and worn down pieces of beach glass and swooping down to pocket them. she calls the ocean by name, demanding that it come closer or retreat, and tries to hail gulls with a "hell-o! seagull!" she doesn't mind walking in the rain and thinks the resulting sunset is pink and beautiful. and the kite delights her, even though it doesn't fly very high or stay airborne for too long.
i'm not sure why its happened but i'm disappointed with the way some of my photographs have come out this week, especially the close ones. above, the small round beach rock on the right was mesmerizing as it glittered with a sprinkle of tiny copper colored flecks. and below, the opalescence of the small fragment of shell was captivating, the way it undulated and changed colors in the morning sunlight.
how long must it take for a snail to make progress like this, i wonder as i walk. seeing the snail reminds me that i have a herculean task ahead of me this coming year. i'm thinking i should make this photo into a "slow and steady" type inspirational poster and hang it over my desk! i can learn from this determined snail!
to me, this trio looks like ducks. they were perched well out in the water, standing on a rock, i think. as i watched and photographed them, the waves grew higher and stronger and their watery roost soon disappeared, forcing them to float out onto the sea. 
spent time on the beach late this afternoon with the telephoto lens, attempting to capture the activity of a flock of swooping terns who kept dive-bombing into the ocean for fish. here's a lucky shot, a tern in midflight, carrying his dinner-to-go in his orange bill.
lovely low tide walks are one of my favorite things to do here. interesting today to see how much the beach has changed since last summer. pictured here amongst the seaweed is a feat of nature i've not seen in a long time. it's an almost perfectly round sand collar, the egg case of a particular kind of moon snail. i hope this is an indication of what i might find on future walks!
here's my neighbor's woodpile, shot out the window on a hot july morning. this is another picture snapped through the window screen between the camera and the subject. i'm fascinated with the effect it has on the sunlight in the captured image. it almost makes it look as hot outside as it really is.
fieldstone has been removed from the middle of the perennial garden and the ground is settling in preparation for the installation of red brick pavers in early fall. the little girl thinks this spot is now her giant sandbox and has been observed digging out there with pails, shovels and trucks. and apparently she is planting, too. i laughed out loud this evening to see three solitary but strong scarlet runner bean seedlings, standing erect in the middle of the barren sand.
on the right, my old gravy boat from my favorite set of dishes. look closely and you'll see that the "boat" itself is riddled with surface crackling in the glaze and the accompanying plate is poorly held together in several spots with super glue. it's been in that condition for decades. often have i thought to replace it but it's a a bit pricey for the two times a year i serve gravy.
this tall plant is not very attractive. it seeds itself prolifically and, in the early summer, comes up everywhere. its leaves and stems are very sticky with milky sap that oozes when a plant part breaks. the spherical heads hardly qualify as flowers. you can see here its three graduated forms - the head with the buds at the top and the fully bloomed flower at the bottom. even the pink of the petals is a little mauve-y and washed out compared to other pinks in the yard.
it's amazing the things you can find while digging around in your garden. i wonder how old this bottle is. i wonder what swamp root is. i wonder who had to take it. and why. and when. living in this very old house and suddenly finding evidence of its other inhabitants and their lives always leaves me a bit awestruck, wondering for days afterward what life must have been like at this place one hundred, even two hundred years ago.
over a month ago, i hurriedly bought a pair of pants in a department store chain. they're more casual than what i normally wear, so i never even took them from the drawer until this morning. i put them on, then sat outside with coffee to read the daily news. suddenly i felt poking in my backside. i reached behind me expecting to find an insect of some sort but instead found buttoned back pockets which i didn't realize existed - and tucked deep inside each pocket, a jewelry card with a sole silver earring attached. 
growing up, we lived across the brook from a dairy farm. early on we learned that cows lie down when it is about to rain. here, we see a herd of indecisive cows, some up and some down - and i guess they collectively were right in their weather predication. even though it was humid and overcast and the skies threatened the entire after-noon, it never did rain.
so a few months ago, out of the blue, i get this email from a guy named colin at the unusual suspects asking me for an interview. i hem and i haw and i outright stall because, quite frankly, i've never had a request like this before. eventually tho, ego gets the better of me and i acquiesce and answer his questions. and here's the result. 
with the early spring we've had in these parts and with plants blooming earlier than usual, it's encouraging to see elderflower blooming here in mid-june, right on time. above is the flower as it appears on the bush. below is the close-up, taken with the macro lens. that whole big fluffy soft flower head is made up of hundreds of these minute little flowers.
a few times a week, i pass this. a rag, i think. it's hanging off a tree at the top of someone's driveway. and i bet it's been there for a least a year now. what is it, do you suppose? a marker of some sort? a remnant from a rowdy party? something blown in by the wind? whatever it is, it's unsightly and i fight the urge each time to yank it down and throw it away. but i'm afraid if i act on the impulse, someone may go careening down the hill after missing the sloping driveway.
yesterday in a store, as we passed the display of hanging plants, the little girl spotted pinwheels amongst the leaves and flowers. she was captivated with their shiny brilliance even before the wind set them in motion. we spent much too much shopping time blowing them and watching them twirl around. in the end, we bought several and placed them in garden spots and in plants around the yard where they will spin with wild abandon all summer long, much to the delight of both the little girl and her grandmother.
in a small town like this one, high school graduation is a source of community pride and celebration. for eighteen years, we've seen these young people everywhere - on playgrounds and school buses, at the supermarket with their parents, in church, at the library, on the ballfield and at the beach, getting haircuts, scooping ice cream, bagging groceries, taking our orders and washing our windshields. suddenly one day, they're young adults, leaving school and leaving us, as they should. i just love that the entire community comes together with such pride to celebrate this momentous right of passage with our young people.
spent some time at work on this unusually chilly saturday and, after a few hours, felt the need for a cup of tea to warm myself. i checked the stash i keep in my drawer and found the tea bags and the packets of sweetener - but, alas, i was out of powdered creamer. off to the staff room i went, confident i'd find some there that i could borrow and replace on monday. but look, all i found was this gigantic bag of every kind of packaged sweetener you can imagine. but what good is that with no creamer, i ask you?
when you've been at work for twelve hours and you're tired and thinking about the two more hours of work you have at home, when you're hungry because you got so busy you forgot to eat lunch and all you've eaten was cheese & crackers at the meeting and you know you're now missing dinner, when you still have eleven miles to go before you reach home, this is not the vehicle to get stuck behind in a series of s-curves. particularly when your dashboard light comes on to let you know there's something amiss with one of your tires.
sad to say, i'm pretty compulsive about a lot of things, and coffee preparation is one of them. pictured here is the cup i always use at work. after i pour my coffee, i add creamers, one by one, tapping the bottoms to get the last drips of cream from each. when the first one is empty, i stuff its foil top back into the tiny container, put it down, then start on the second creamer. i do this four times, packing each fluted container into the previous empty one, making a stack, as shown. next comes two yellow packages of sweetener, with the empty sleeves crumpled, then packed into the topmost creamer of the stack. a swish with a spoon and i am done. the lid snaps on just so, with the sip hole lined up at a ninety degree angle to the cup's handle when i hold it in my right hand. 
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