Peepers!!

Spring coming along nicely in leaps and bounds now. Temperatures in the 50s with patchy sun to match today, after a foggy gray start to the morning.


We've been seeing a pair of Canada geese in and around the pond lately, in addition to the ducks. Mostly we hear them, of course. That distinctive honk...and they make these twirling flights together that seem rather flirty, despite the bleating sound of communication.

Here I managed to catch a shot of the pair of them, as well as a single wood duck, or maybe a bufflehead duck (to the right) and our usually assortment of green mallards in the background. I think that's who they all are. Anyway...

All the robins seemed to be singing their territories from various tree branches at dusk this evening. And when they were through, there was a more enthusiastic concert from the peepers! Always such a great sound...

Sunday

Here was the sum total of the total overnight accumulation in Eastham. Or at least what remained after the dawn's early light warmed things up. It was gone before long.

But while we waited for things to warm up a little more, the cat pointed out this female cardinal roosting in the andromeda out the dining room window. She's (I assume it was she) tried that location the past two summers with little success. (Sorry for the crappy photo--insulating plastic's still up!)


Owen's done a great job of rejuvinating our little pond this spring. After the sad carnage discovered upon thawing, it's now been properly cleaned out for our one remaining fish (and whoever joins him this season) and the new class of frogs soon to arrive. (Heard the first peeper rather tentatively around 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, by the way...)

We've also made some progress at raking and/or blowing the dead leaves of winter out of assorted garden beds around the house. And as you would expect, there's plenty of green coming along.

This blue primrose is a real trouper. It's the same one you'll recall bloomed in early January, ready to have another go. That's the spirit!



Crocuses and daffodils are popping up all over!

Herring Cove

I was in Provincetown late this afternoon for a hair cut, and when I had finished, I decided to make a side trip to Herring Cove. It's always a great place to just sit and watch the water, or walk along the shore. I love the way you can look north and see Race Point Light (right) sitting out there in the Atlantic Ocean.

And sometimes you can see other things, too. Of course, the shorebirds are fairly ubequitous.

But while I had heard of such things, this was the first time I ever saw a seal resting on the beach. This one had some minor injury under its flipper--you can see a little blood in the photo, but she didn't seem to be particularly distressed...except by the small groups of tourists who seemed to gather nearby.

By then (around 5:30) the snow clouds seemed already to be moving in on us.
Sometime this evening, the snow began, wet and heavy.

Weekend's Peace

Friday was a nice sunny day for us here, with temperatures just skimming the low end of fifty. It would be easy to get used to this.


Also easy to justify stopping by Rock Harbor for a look around on the way into work, too. I especially enjoyed the view out the harbor into Cape Cod Bay for the fact that it is now unemcumbered by the ice floes of winter.



The sun encouraged the earlier crocuses at work to open up and put on a show. Yep, gotta love springtime!!


Last night at work we hosted a fundraiser for Cape Codders for Peace and Justice, a pajama party concert for peace, in fact! There was excellent music and a wonderful (and comfortably clad!) crowd and they managed to surpass their goals for the evening and have a great time, too.

At home, we now finally have one of those great new rainbow PEACE flags! (Get one for yourself here.)


Our enthusiasm for spring hasn't been tempered too much by the forecast of an inch or two of snow for the Cape tonight. I will wait another day or so before raking off the flower beds, but there's plenty of other things to be done. Of course, the kids are always the best role models.

The Circle of Life

In my search for the renewal of Spring, I found this clump of lovely crocuses outside of the restaurant today. Sure, they were closed up against an overcast sky, but still pretty as anything.

Unfortu-
nately, a garden's surprises are not always the happiest, and I made a sad discovery when I went on a crocus hunt in our back garden this morning. This crow seemed to have simply laid down and gone to sleep, but in this case, it is Shakespeare's long, metaphoric sleep of which I speak.

A quick, but careful exam (In these days of bird flu and West Nile virus, caution is always wise.) revealed no injuries or anything to speak of a sky-borne battle with a hawk or an eagle (both of which we've spotted in the neighborhood during our tenancy here), so perhaps it knew that its time was coming and chose the garden as a peaceful place to meet that fate.

I'm sure there are plenty of folks who would take the negative stand about crows as loud, obnoxious and marauding, but I believe they and their raven cousins are some of the most beautiful birds I've seen, and anyone who knows a thing about them knows how intelligent they are. I've read that they are fairly easily trained in captivity, but also that they don't fare so well because they value freedom so.

As a fan, I'm always hoping to capture a few good photos of their large and majestic beauty, but this wasn't what I'd had in mind.

A moment of silence to consider the Circle of Life, before gently scooping up my late friend with a shovel and laying it quietly in the woods.

Welcome Spring!

Found this pretty golden snow crocus in the front garden bed this morning, appearing right on time for this first full day of spring.

Here's a pair of shots I got this evening of the crescent Moon, with the planet Venus visible just below.

Look to the skies!
Is anyone else watching the skies, and enjoying watching Orion and the Dippers swing around into their proper summertime viewing positions?? There's just so much to love about spring...

Things To Come 2

Spring's coming along, slowly of course, but coming nonetheless. This morning I spotted these bulb leaves appearing in the garden along the back of the house. Hyacinths and daffodils here.

And more daffodils here. Now, all we need is a few more degrees of warmth to encourage me to get out there with a rake to clear off all the dead leaves of winter.

Ducks in Flight

Another snowy morning to greet us today. Finally learning to anticipate the ducks. They are so quick to take flight the moment one of us appears in the doorway, but this morning I had the camera ready and captured this image.

Things To Come

We could normally accept this brilliant gold as proof that spring was already here. But the confusing thing is, some of the dwarf daffodils in this stand along Rock Harbor Road have been trying to bloom since early January, when our lack of winter weather was forcing the cherry trees into bloom.

There's rain on the way for tomorrow, another sign of the coming season, but we enjoyed today! There was this great warm breeze blowing, that made us laugh to think back about the knifing winds of last Wednesday. How quickly things change! I'll try to remember this positive attitude on Friday morning, when the forecast threatens that rain will turn to colder versions of itself.

At home, I counted 23 ducks on the pond, and the morning birdsong seems louder by the day, including the loud and distinctive honking chorus of a flock of Canada Geese(they might've been on the pond, or just passing low overhead, but it was before sunrise and too dark to be sure...). Little green tufts of early bulb foliage are popping up through the winter's leaf debris.

Yep, there's always reason to hope!

Tonight's sunset, as seen over the Cape Cod Five offices in Orleans.

We've changed our clocks, had a few days of kind of spring-y weather, mild temperatures, golden sunshine, birds singing...ducks returning to the pond, en masse. And tomorrow is poised to be our nicest day yet (since Christmas). Of course...heh heh...it should come as no surprise that meteorologists are discussing some snow for Saint Patty's day!

An Arctic Festival of Fun

Here's dusk on our pond this evening, around 5:30 p.m. Don't let that patch to the left fool you, it's frozen as well as the rest, just apparently a little later. Love the gleam of the setting sun on the ice.

The Cold continues and early this afternoon it squeezed out some ocean effect snow flurries. We didn't realize how much more mild yesterday's 14 degrees was, until those unrelenting high winds returned later in the day, and for a while, it was nearly impossible to be out there. Damn...(shiver)...

Tonight we seem to be having something of a heatwave, all the way up to 17, and only occasional gusts of wind you can hear gathering strength through the rustling of the trees.

We are hearing rumors of a climb into the forties and fifties this weekend. That would be nice.

Rest in peace, Steve Rogers: 1941 - 2007

Just An Illusion

All the talk of Spring, it turns out, was just that, talk. Well, at least for now. We enjoyed the heck out of the taste we got this past weekend. And we're enjoying the odd memory of it now, as our temperatures have dropped off to nearly nothing: 14 degrees seemed to be our high today. But it didn't really matter, as we also entertained winds that whipped and roared so much you could only tell where one gust ended and the next began as one door or another at work blew open unexpectedly. I hardly need to tell you this only made it seem colder. Brrr...

The ducks must surely have gone back into hiding, the cardinal shivering in his nest. Our remaining fishy mustn't know what to make of the odd dry leaf blowing over the once-again hard surface of his pond.

I suppose this is what comes of assuming that a rodent in PA could have anything relevant to say about the weather in New England!

Spring Song

Woke this morning to an increase in morning bird chatter, but heard particularly the bright and happy song of a cardinal singing the sun up into the sky. There was no wind and even warmer sunshine today. I even managed to find my feathered friend for a photo!

Spring has come to our little artificial pond by the house, too, although ringing with it a more somber note.

I'm afraid the casualties of our brief but intense winter (remember it stayed warm until the second week of January!) were revealed with the melting of the ice. Our largest koi, and all the frogs who sang so merrily for the holidays were found floating, having apparently suffered from a flash freezing when they ought to have been hibernating. Only this little fellow remains.

Could It Be...?

Ah, what a lovely day, with sunshine and temperatures climbing just into the fifties. Woo hoo...could spring be here? Here's a promising-looking clump of bulb foliage. Star of bethlehems from this, I believe.

A Rainy Ride

In contrast to the snowy commute earlier in the week, today's ride featured mad rain.

It was a hell of a storm, bringing us somewhere in the neighborhood of four inches of rain. The scene was a bit dramatic where the road crosses through Boat Creek marsh, owing to a nearly full high tide. Funny how these storms always seem to know...full moon coming this weekend, too.

Looking out toward the entrance to Rock Harbor.

See Ya Later, February!

A beautiful day to see out the month. It was bright and sunny today, and with temps rising up into the 40s, we're changing to lighter coats, and beginning to suspect that there might be something to this whole groundhog thing. He's only a couple weeks off in his prediction if this is spring.

Sunset, First Encounter Beach, Eastham, MA.

Craft Night

There's nothing like a cold winter's night for some home crafting, and March is always a perfect time for trying something new. So I finally broke out the candle maker I got for Christmas. It's kind of cool, and allows me to recycle the remainders of old candles...which I hate to just throw away.

The candle maker is kinda cool. You chop up your bits of wax (sorting by color, naturally) and load them into the hopper up top. After it has heated up a bit and you sort out the odd bits of wick and ash, you open a valve and fill the mold, which waits down below.

Here's my first candle. I was pretty happy with it, as a first effort, though making the different layers is a little more time-consuming, since you have to let each layer cool a bit before adding the next. Each candle is more-or-less all evening project, but the result is pretty neat!

UPDATE: 3/06/07: A week later, I've made four candles, all of them displayed here. I'm on a bit of a hiatus now, as I've used up all the wick that came with the kit, and have to wait now until I've made a run to the craft store in Hyannis.

Ducks Return

By the next morning, our snow only lingered in the places where sunshine couldn't find it. The pond was lightly frozen in places, but with plenty of open water.

Further proof of the advancing season came with the siting of eight ducks on the pond. They're still as shy as ever about photographers.

I was particularly amused by the duck prints I found on the pond's slushy ice.