5.14.23 ~ New London Ledge Light half a mile from Avery Point
One last walk at Avery Point…
Race Rock Light, eight miles away from Avery Point
“Azucar” by Christopher Wynter (Tim’s favorite sculpture)
common eider
New London Ledge Light from the ledge in front of Branford House
in the garden on the ledge in front of Branford House
Avery Point Light from the ledge in front of Branford House
two copper beeches on the Avery Point campus
one of the Cross Sound ferries from New London, Connecticut to Orient Point, Long Island, New York
copper beech, gifts of healing energy for me
beautiful copper beech leaves
allium in the Cognitive Garden at Avery Point
daisy
lighthouse mosaic in the garden walkway
This brick path sculpture walk by the sea at Avery Point has been our go-to walk for many, many years. So close to home and so beautiful through all the seasons. It was the first place we walked after Tim’s heart attack and triple by-pass surgery. A place for healing and contemplation, especially to listen to the buoy bells and watch the sky when a storm was approaching. So many memories and changes through the years.
Sunday we took a walk at Avery Point on a hot day, the temperature was way above average for this time of year, but we can park on campus without a permit on the weekends so we decided to give it a try. A nice sea breeze made it bearable.
curious killdeer
A killdeer surprised me by standing very still, as curious about me as I was about him/her. Because the 30th anniversary of my mother’s death is coming up on Thursday, Mom and her love of birdwatching have been much on my mind. At home I decided to pull out her well-worn 1947 edition of A Field Guide to the Birds by Roger Tory Peterson, including her life list. She first saw a killdeer on March 17, 1951. She was 19 years old.
one last comment before scooting off
It looks like she started birding in earnest that year. There are a few birds marked with a check, which she probably remembered seeing before she started to keep a record. Lots of Florida birds were spotted in the 1960s, when I was a child and we made many trips down there to visit relatives. The last new bird she noted was a red-breasted nuthatch on December 20, 1989, 17 months before she died at the age of 59.
ants visiting a beach rose
I adore beach roses
beach rosebud
I only saw this one herring gull this day
Mom recorded 5 kinds of gulls: great black-backed, herring, California, ring-billed, and laughing.
not sure what this pretty bush is
still more new life late in the spring
bee collecting pollen
another beach rosebud
song sparrow
Mom recorded her song sparrow on March 20, 1951. This one was singing such a pretty song, the moment filled my heart with joy.
sunlit copper beech leaves
allium
allium?
daisy
salvia?
Funny thing was, I was hoping to find a Canada goose family with goslings, but we didn’t see any. People have been posting pictures of them in the beach’s Facebook group. Oh well. Encountering the killdeer was a welcome blessing, an even better experience. Another lesson in flexibility and living in the present moment. And it was nice that the killdeer led me to take a peek back into one of my mother’s life’s passions.
Mom first saw a mourning dove on May 23, 1951. A little synchronicity there. This walk was taken on May 23, 2021, seventy years later. Ever since my mother died I’ve been comforted by the mourning doves who keep coming to my garden and my balcony, as they keep reminding me of her presence and love.
“The Younger Brother” by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Teach the children. We don’t matter so much, but the children do. Show them daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of the blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones — inkberry, lamb’s-quarters, blueberries. And the aromatic ones — rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of the world salvaged as they learn to love this green space they live in, its sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. ~ Mary Oliver (Upstream: Selected Essays)
We agreed with him in principle – we were little scientists, born and bred. But children robbed of love will dwell on magic. ~ Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)
Dew Drop Villas created by Cathy DeMeo ~ 10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut
Dewey Greenleaf is the faerie in charge of droplets of dew that appear early each day on the garden’s flowers and plants. He knows that Impressionist artists love to paint the reflections of light, sun, and sky captured by delicate dew and soft mist. So each day at dawn, before any painters arrive, he collects and freezes the glistening drops that form on his multi-level home to preserve their beauty for everyone to see. ~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making
The fairy poet takes a sheet Of moonbeam, silver white; His ink is dew from daisies sweet, His pen a point of light. ~ Joyce Kilmer (Fairy House Handbook)
They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. ~ Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
