I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
(The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne)
autumnal sunshine
Category: Tim
maritime heritage festival
shooting celebratory sprays of water into the air
Last weekend we went to the Connecticut Maritime Heritage Festival. The weather was terribly hot and unbearably humid, but we pressed on… You can see how hazy it was in the pictures. I love tall ship parades. After the parade we went home to recuperate in our air conditioning. When you can’t cool off standing by the sea it is just too hot.
home port Panama City, Florida
home port Mystic, Connecticut
home port New London, Connecticut
home port New London, Connecticut
Later on we went over to New London to take a dinner cruise on the Mystic Whaler. I have a bit of history with this schooner. Back in the early 1980s two of my aunts signed up for a two-night cruise to Block Island. But just before they were to leave, one aunt got sick and couldn’t make it. The other aunt insisted I go with her, which I did, very reluctantly. I had three small children and didn’t want to leave them for two nights!
The cruise was a mixture of very high and very low experiences. I loved the sailing and the meals grilled outside on the deck and the captain singing and playing his guitar when we were anchored for the night. I just wished I was there with my husband! Sadly, though, my period came early and heavy and it was a struggle to use the “head” (bathroom) correctly. And in the next cabin was a teenage boy and his mother. They were up most of the night, or so it seemed, as the mother pounded his back trying to loosen the stuff in his lungs. He had cystic fibrosis and his suffering tugged at my heart.
So one day Tim surprised me with tickets for the dinner cruise. The following pictures were taken from the ship…
it looks so different from the mouth of the Thames River
the benches behind the fence with the white posts are where
Tim & I usually sit to have our supper in the summer
As it turned out this cruise had its share of negative aspects, too. It was still so hot outside that I never needed the jacket I brought, figuring it would be cool out on the water. And I wish we had been informed that most of the tickets were held by a raucous group of people celebrating a birthday. They brought their own drinks and things got lively very quickly. Someone even started choking on his food and luckily someone else was there to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him.
So much for romance at sea!
wild turkeys
You can’t be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.
~ Hal Borland
(Sundial of the Seasons)
After way too many days of miserable heat and sticky humidity the weather finally changed Sunday afternoon. We celebrated by going to our favorite gluten-free pizza place and having our supper there outside in the fresh air.
On the way home I spotted six wild turkeys in a field and insisted Tim turn around so I could get some pictures. Most of them had their heads down in the grass, feeding. But the lookout was keeping his eye open for danger or trouble. I’m glad he didn’t seem to think we posed any threat.
This field is separated from the road by a stone wall. After feeding for a while, the lookout turkey jumped up on the stone wall and started watching the cars go by. It seemed like he was looking for a good opportunity to cross the street with the rafter of turkeys in his charge.
There was just too much traffic! We grew tired of waiting and the other turkeys kept on feeding themselves so we decided to leave. When we drove past him on the road I tried to get a picture of him from that side of the wall, but it came out blurry. But still, it was fun to watch them, and a great way to end the weekend.
before the storm
Five days ago there were a lot of birds at the beach, perhaps getting ready for Tropical Storm Hermine… I had some fun trying to identify the different stages of life of the laughing gulls…
We had a few gusts of wind which ruffled some feathers…
I wondered if the cormorants would be staying out on their island during the storm…
The baby great black-backed gull wondered if we would be handing out a french fry. Tim had unintentionally dropped one recently, renewing hopes for some of the younger birds…
My friend knows better — he’s content to visit with us. 🙂
We also saw a great egret — they don’t often come this close, preferring their island in the middle of one of the salt ponds.
The swan’s pond has mostly dried up due to the drought…
Sharing the estuary by the sea wall, we were amazed to see eight snowy egrets feeding with the great egret, the swan and a flock of Canada geese!
The calm before the storm… Hermine gave us mostly gale force winds and drizzle. Several branches and many leaves and twigs came off the trees, but no trees were uprooted in our vicinity. That was more than enough excitement for us!
safe harbor
New London, Connecticut
Tropical Storm Hermine is supposed to head out to sea south of us, sending us very little rain or wind. (Too bad because we could really use some rain here.) Of more concern is a predicted storm surge of 2-4 feet tomorrow and beach erosion. But Hermine delivered us quite a surprise yesterday, a huge guided-missile destroyer, seeking shelter from the storm.
Today we decided to take a water taxi across the river so I could get a picture of this huge warship. As it happened, three sailors from the ship were on the water taxi, too, and Tim got to talking with them while I was snapping pictures. After the storm passes they will be headed to the Gulf or the Med, which is sailor slang for the Mediterranean Sea. They are hoping for the Med because it is hotter than hell in the Gulf.
When Tim called their ship a boat they corrected him — they refer to it properly as a destroyer. We may think this vessel is huge but they said it is one of the smaller navy ships.
These fellows seemed so young, even younger than our own children. As we go about our busy lives, it’s so easy to forget that our nation is still at war, that so much is being sacrificed. Carry on sailors, and thank you for your service.
and New London Ledge Light
home places
Nature is not a place to visit, it is home – and within that home territory there are more familiar and less familiar places.
~ Gary Snyder
(The Practice of the Wild: Essays)
sprightly
So… Yesterday there were three cormorants sitting on the breakwater, closer to land than I’ve ever seen them before. But, confound it, still too far away for a decent picture. And of course, they had no interest in spreading their wings out to dry. So tantalizingly close by, yet still so far away…
However, in my efforts to get as close as I could to the cormorants, I discovered a large group of gulls wading in the rocky pools created by high tide.
A few days ago my gull friend with the mangled foot came back! He was sitting on the white post in front of us as we sat down on a bench to eat our supper. 🙂 He took off several times, soaring up high and circling around the beach house and landing each time again on the post in front of us. I think he was trying to demonstrate that he was just fine, thank you. He seems so healthy and energetic now — he must have recovered from whatever malady was troubling him earlier this summer.
Yesterday I spotted him hanging out with the other gulls on the rocks. He was getting a drink of water. Gulls are able to drink salt water or fresh water.
My family thinks I should come up with a name for him but for some reason I can’t think of one. I’m also not even sure if “he” is male or female.
After his thirst was quenched he decided to walk over to investigate a noisy group of gulls nearby.
Meanwhile, another herring gull walked into view. He’s pretty handsome, too.
It seemed like everyone wanted their pictures taken!
I’m still amazed that the juvenile great black-baked gulls are larger than the adult herring gulls. In fact, they are the largest species of gull in the world.
We didn’t see any laughing gulls this day, who are smaller than the herring gulls, but had seen several of them a few days beforehand.
Summer is winding down, but it’s still hazy, hot and humid. We are close to setting a record for the hottest August in Connecticut weather history. Sigh… Looking forward to October!
doubt
What we overlook is that underneath the ground of our beliefs, opinions, and concepts is a boundless sea of uncertainty. The concepts we cling to are like tiny boats tossed about in the middle of a vast ocean. We stand on our beliefs and ideas thinking they’re solid, but in fact, they (and we) are on shifting seas. Any ideas or beliefs we hold in our minds are necessarily set against other ideas and beliefs. Thus we cannot help but experience doubt.
~ Steve Hagen
(Buddhism: Plain & Simple)
fun with the little one
Little Katherine and her mom, Larisa, visited us for a few days during a 10 day heat wave in July. It was miserably humid as well. One morning Larisa and I took Katherine to the aquarium where she was delighted to see so many fish and beluga whales and sea lions – all rescues I believe. And she got to touch a sting-ray! It was so much fun watching her discover so many new creatures because she is definitely an animal lover.
It was so humid outside we didn’t make it over to the penguin exhibit but even so, a penguin is what she picked out for a souvenir of the day. 🙂 She named him PB and even had supper with him. But the best part of the day was yet to come. When Grandpa Tim came home from work we all went down to the beach. Katherine loved chasing the bubbles her grandpa blew for her.
Not sure why some pictures came out blurry but they still capture some of the fun they were having. 🙂
Back at home I caught Katherine sitting in my spot, using my laptop. (If only I had thought to remove the bowl from the shot, but that might have disturbed her concentration.)
The next day Larisa and Katherine flew home. But we will be flying down there to visit them in September, so we still have another visit to look forward to. So many good-bye hugs and kisses. After they finally got home – there was a cancelled flight and other delays to deal with – we got this picture in an email from our sweet little granddaughter.
Dear Grammy & Grandpa,
Thanks for the lovely visit. PB the Penguin and I had lots of fun. I’m very tired. Airports are only fun for a little while. But Mommy played with me a lot. People were nice to me too.
*kiss*
-Katherine