spring – Page 8 – In the Woods

crocuses, black vulture, brants, stumps

As we were leaving for an intended walk at Avery Point on Saturday I was delighted to find some more crocuses opening up in the garden.

Then we drove down towards Avery Point and suddenly saw a black vulture guarding a dead racoon on the side of the road! When we slowed down to get a good look at him he started walking away, eyeing us carefully. He didn’t want to leave his prize but he also didn’t exactly want to stick around us humans.

We finally moved on and left him in peace to tackle the task nature has assigned to him.

Distracted by seeing the vulture up close, next thing we knew we had missed our turn into Avery Point. We pulled into the Eastern Point parking lot to turn around and spotted a flock of brants swimming and feeding in the estuary. Hopped out of the car and took a few pictures. But I had my heart set on getting to Avery Point.

3.26.22 ~ brants in the Thames River estuary

On we drove to the Avery Point campus, but, there was a wedding happening and the parking lot, which is open to the public on weekends, was full. And we knew from experience that they wouldn’t allow us to walk in front of the mansion and along the seawall, spoiling the view for the guests.

We then decided to go for a walk in the muddy woods at Copp Family Park. It was a partly cloudy day, with an afternoon temperature of about 50°F (10°C). Being a weekend day we encountered quite a few people, and because there is a dog park there we also ran across a few loose dogs. (They’re supposed to be on a leash until they get into the enclosed dog park.) Sigh… Next time we’ll keep to the trails that don’t go by the dog park.

a tiny princess pine with its cone-shaped flower

this woman was looking at her son hiding
in the space between two glacial erratics

An interesting afternoon, full of surprises! Our shoes got wet but not too muddy after all.

wandering around rocky neck

3.22.22 ~ Rocky Neck State Park, East Lyme, Connecticut

There are still a few places to walk we haven’t visited yet so we decided to check another one off of our still-growing list. Rocky Neck State Park is a little farther west down the coastline than we usually like to go, but seeing pictures of birds taken there and posted online tempted me to give it a try. Sadly, no birds on this windy day. We had to walk through a tunnel (see above picture) under the Amtrak railroad to get to the beach.

This beach is one of the most visited beaches in Connecticut, with some of the buildings at the beach even dating back to the 1930s. This is one of the most popular beaches to visit for those in the area because of how scenic it is.
~ Roaming the USA website

The fact that it is so popular is probably another reason we never tried to come here before. Every summer weekend morning on the news we hear that the parking lot is full and no more cars are being allowed in. When traveling down the interstate we often see flashing LED changeable message signs, miles in advance, announcing the same thing.

We walked down the beach and up a ledge, following a sign saying “Pavilion.” The pavilion was huge! (Perhaps built in the 1930s?) We followed a tunnel through the bottom of it and took some stairs up the back, then came around to the front and took some pictures of Long Island Sound.

Long Island Sound from the pavilion balcony

Behind the pavilion was a pedestrian bridge (above) back over the Amtrak railroad tracks. We decided to go for it, lured in by a point on a map of the park called Toby’s Nose Overlook. Eventually we found the spot but the viewing platform I was expecting did not exist. There was a complicated maze of trails, parking lots and driveways in the woods back there, but we finally figured out a zig-zaggy route we could take back to the car.

view of Four Mile River from Toby’s Nose Overlook

a glimpse of Long Island Sound through the woods

When I got home and studied the map a little more closely I noticed that there was another part of the park, along Bride Brook, with a crabbing deck and an actual viewing platform. Maybe next time. Turns out we had only seen a very small portion of this place.

And now to prepare for a visit from our daughter and granddaughter! Kat has spring vacation so Larisa is going to work remotely here while we have Kat to ourselves for half the week. 😊 (Kat’s other grandparents will have her the first half of the week!)

3.26.22 ~ Look who are coming for a visit!!! (Larisa & Kat)

maple syrup for sale

sunrise at home, 6:52 am, Spring Equinox

3.20.22 ~ Goshen Hill Maples, Lebanon, Connecticut

In our area the spring equinox comes close to the traditional weekend of the maple sugarhouse open houses, fun places to visit to celebrate spring and see how maple syrup is made. Sadly though, probably due to climate change, the sap stopped running and the last boil of the season happened on Friday, two days before we got to Goshen Hill Maples. The friendly couple running this one, though, had a fire going and boiled water to illustrate the process to visitors.

the little sugarhouse, the evaporator is just inside the barn door

a few of the 700+ sugar maple trees that are tapped

It seems the days of tapping a tree and hanging a bucket under the spout to collect the sap are gone by. These days tubes bring the sap to the holding tanks and then to the evaporator. It takes about 40 gallons of sap to yield 1 gallon of syrup. One tree will produce about 10 to 20 gallons of sap, or a quart to a half gallon of syrup.

I get a lesson in bottling (using water) the syrup

We bought two quarts of their maple syrup which should last us for a year. 🙂 I have a salmon recipe that uses maple syrup in the marinade which we have at least once a week. Our days of eating pancakes or waffles with maple syrup are long gone, but we have many fond memories of the deliciously sweet weekend breakfasts.

the great spring murmur

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life. This murmur arose from all the land, fraught with the joy of living. … Squirrels were chattering, birds singing, and overhead honked the wild-fowl driving up from the south in cunning wedges that split the air.
~ Jack London
(The Call of the Wild)

a heavily wooded glacial valley

3.16.22 ~ Paffard Woods, Stonington, Connecticut

The preserve offers diverse terrain ranging from a heavily wooded glacial valley in the northern portion to a salt marsh on a tidal cove at the southern edge. Other distinguishing features include many glacial erratics, large trees, a white pine grove, wetlands crossed by bridges, and a cultivated field.
~ Avalonia Land Conservancy website

After several weeks of being plagued with gout/tendonitis/edema, Tim’s foot was finally healed enough to take a walk! Just in time to welcome some lovely warm spring weather. We chose a new-to-us preserve, Paffard Woods and walked for over an hour, much to my delight! It was a sunny day with temperatures around 50°F (10°C).

skunk cabbage coming up, early sign of spring

glacial erratic with a split hidden in the shadow

curious markings on tree bark
(thanks to Eliza for identifying beech bark disease)

a stone crossing ~ we made it across without incident

root covered terrain leading up to a nicely placed bench on top of a ledge

looking down at glacial erratics from the top of the ledge

Even though these dark-eyed junco photos are marred by twigs I was excited to see them in the woods. They used to visit my birdfeeder when I had one but these are the first ones I’ve seen in the wild.

And then we saw a couple of eastern bluebirds flying to and from the hole way high up in this tree. Again, it was hard to get pictures with the twigs interfering with the focus. These were the best of my dozens of attempts! (Lots of shots with blurry wing action, too.)

Connecticut’s positivity rate has been hovering between 2-3%. There’s talk of a fourth shot being needed for those of us over 65. Still exercising a lot of caution in stores. Putin’s cruel onslaught on Ukraine continues. But it was good to forget reality for an hour and feel grateful for a brief dose of the healing power of nature.

a new kid on the block

Our goat friends Addie, Crackers, Chai and Brie have a new sidekick who we got to meet yesterday. Betsy is much smaller than Chai and Brie, even though she is the same age as they are, nine months old. She had a rough start in life but now she has a good home and new companions. And she has her tail up more and more often these days.

Since our last visit we learned that the holiday tree we brought the gang was polished off in no time. See that story here.

Betsy loves eating grass most of all and is not as interested in grain or goat cracker offerings.

Betsy is in very good hands now! 💕 And we had a lovely afternoon catching up with friends. Back at home, I was delighted to find that spring had arrived in my garden.

so many robins

I took a solo walk yesterday, while Tim rested his ailing ankle. There were so many robins out and about, running across the cemetery lawns. It was a sunny early spring day, a seasonable 43°F (6°C) with a little wind chill, but I didn’t need any thermal layers or heavy mittens. 🙂 Three crows were making a ruckus in the treetops but finally settled their differences and flew off, leaving me to enjoy a robin photo shoot.

The Robin is the One
That interrupts the Morn
With hurried — few — express Reports
When March is scarcely on —

The Robin is the One
That overflow the Noon
With her cherubic quantity —
An April but begun —

The Robin is the One
That speechless from her Nest
Submit that Home — and Certainty
And Sanctity, are best

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #501)

winter no longer welcome

“Shoveling Snow, New England” by Childe Hassam

By the first of March, and often earlier, the world is all agog concerning signs of spring. The welcome accorded winter during the holidays is no longer extended to the remaining snow-storms, and we meet with a frown the last cold wave of the season.
~ Charles Conrad Abbott
(Days Out of Doors)

Sometimes life gets so frustrating! We haven’t been out for a walk in over two weeks. Blaming this on our health problems, car trouble and stormy weather. But on the bright side, we’ve managed to tackle a few neglected projects around the house.

Connecticut’s covid positivity rate is hovering around 3%. My sister worries because there are 72 new cases at the college this week and 4 of her students are isolating. All students and faculty are vaccinated and boosted so hopefully no one is very ill. Still, it’s concerning.

I’m looking forward to spring and the return to our walking adventures soon!

spring will arrive early here

2.2.22 ~ Haley Farm State Park, Groton, Connecticut
cloudy, no shadows

We got our groundhogs out for a nice walk this morning. Meet Basil and little Basil, if you haven’t already. For those of my new readers who don’t know the story, Basil is named for my paternal grandfather, who was born on Groundhog Day, February 2, 1882 in a village near the city of Stanislav, now known as Ivano-Frankovsk, Ukraine. When Pop arrived in America in 1909, instead of translating his given name, Wasyl, to its equivalent in English, Basil, he started using the name William, by which he was known for the rest of his life.

After taking the pictures we decided to walk through a meadow, a path we hadn’t had a chance to follow yet. It was lovely covered in snow, still on the ground four days after the blizzard. But today the temperature got up over freezing so it is starting to melt.

Looks like Friday will be a mess with an ice storm. I was grateful for this lovely day.

the meadow was surrounded on all sides by stone walls

O barren bough! O frozen field!
Hopeless ye wait no more.
Life keeps her dearest promises —
The Spring is at the door!
~ Arthur Ketchum
(The Atlantic Monthly, February 1904)