Surprise #1: My first day back in the office since a week ago and my desk didn’t actually look that bad… the post-it note fairy exploded gangs of little pink and white and yellow papers everywhere, but the effect was kinda pretty.
Surprise #2: It snowed today here for a couple hours… big wet flakes that stuck to the orange oak leaves outside the office window. Wasn’t I at the beach in a t-shirt just the other day?
😉
I’ll be back in a bit with some birds from Cape May.
Maybe you’re all waiting for the telling of silly stories (check with Susan) or fabulous bird pics (check with Lynne) or tips for identifying sparrows (check with KatDoc) or maybe just Delia’s straight-forward way of saying things (which cracks me up because she’s such a hoot in person!), but if you’re looking for any of that tonight from me… well, I don’t even know where to begin, but to say that it was a fabulous couple of days for this member of the flock.
I’m still amazed with how easily near strangers can come together and feel so comfortable with one another. I don’t guess I should be anymore, but I am. Meeting other bloggers face to face makes me really aware of how much we tell of ourselves with the little things we share here. Anyway…
KatDoc was a life bird-blogger for me and, no surpise here, she was THE serious member of the flock. She had her moments, of course, but she made it obvious that the rest of us were just *social birders* out for a good time. KatDoc means business when it comes to adding birds to her life list. She was smiling here, on our boat trip around the back bays of Cape May yesterday, happy that she’d tallied a few new birds for her list.
These two, Susan and Delia, old friends of mine now. 😉 It feels really nice to say that. We first met at last year’s Autumn Weekend and once since then. We only had a day with Delia this time; time for an owl prowl, birding in the rain (again!), breakfast at Uncle Bill’s and a dinner with a whole gang of people that were in town for the weekend before she had to leave for home.
Susan and me. (Laugh.) I feel almost like we’re opposite sides of the same coin, if that makes any sense. She often knows what I’m thinking and’ll say it in that way that only Susan can. I love her for that and the way she can make me laugh until my belly hurts.
Meeting Lynne… well, I think I’d have recognized her as a friend at first sight even if I didn’t *know* her from her blog. I couldn’t resist hugging her any chance I got. 😉 Of course you all know it, but she is just the sweetest person in the world and funny in a quiet way that just tickled me. I think NJ was something of a culture shock for her and I’m just hoping that she won’t be scarred for life.
I’m hoping that everyone’s home safely by now and sorting through their own pics and memories. Really, I’m as anxious as you are to hear what stories need to be told first. I love stories.
Stay tuned…
#9 in my 38 by 39.
Internet access has been really spotty… so none of us have gotten posts up yet, but I wanted to share just one pic from the sunset this evening. We’re having fun and some of us even got a couple life birds! More tomorrow…
You know everyone’ll get along pretty well when you can’t even stop laughing long enough to pose for a pic. Susan had Lynne and I in hysterics…
and just wouldn’t stop her silliness. Maybe at some point tomorrow there’ll be something like serious birding. In the meantime… all that laughing you hear… that’ll be the flock.
😉
I haven’t shared very many pics from the garden this summer and seeing as the season’s come quickly to an end, I thought I might better do it now. My garden favorites, the goldenrod and joe-pye, did their thing and were promptly cut down weeks ago as part of the fall clean-up the DH insists on doing. His pride and joy, the tropicals, took their sweet time in blooming this year and are now flirting with frost.
Every day he debates bringing them into the basement for safety from the threat of frost or leaving them outside to continue the show they’ve waited so long to put on.
His dad had a passion and a green thumb for growing Angel’s Trumpet’s. We’ve not been able to grow these trees to half the size his dad could, but we don’t have a greenhouse to overwinter them in, either. He hauls them into the basement for the winter instead and practices a sort of benign neglect with a dose of water every so often hoping that they’ll go dormant and wake up the following spring.
If you know these flowers, you know how strong their scent can be on a hot summer night. We’ve not had that this year as they started blooming so late, but still they’re beautiful in their own exotic way. Each day the blossoms change shape and color, unfurling in the late afternoon light.
We try out a new variety, or color, or flower shape each year and are often surprised. This one, a double, revealed a flower within a flower. There’s still a few, new this year, that are just setting buds and will probably have to do their blooming in the dark basement if his procrastination and a frost don’t get them first.
God I love a marsh in October! I’ve been known to purposefully *get lost* and find myself there just when the low sun is lighting it with these beautiful late afternoon colors.
The DH was the latest victim of my subterfuge, but I didn’t plan things well enough to remember my big lens and have a chance at that bird-shaped blob there in the center. Yes, it’s a Tri-Colored Heron and yes, that would have been a pretty pic, but oh well. A nice find at any rate because they’re not so common here in NJ.
The signs of civilization marring the view there in the distance is the southern part of Long Beach Island, btw. Great Bay is said to be one of the least disturbed wetland habitats in the Northeastern US and is a great place to get lost and find birds.
Country-living in NJ, you ask? Bah! Not possible, right? Apparently some people here in the most densely-populated state manage such a thing. Granted, I had to drive to the middle of nowhere to find them, but…
Did you realize that there’s some market for antique tractor seats? Go figure!
The Country Living Fair at Batsto Village was an interesting mix of oddities… from yesterday’s bulldogs and alpacas (with adorable underbites) to little children carted around in a circus cage…
… to steam-fueled contraptions with the sweetest of whistles. Yes, I smiled and made that gesture you remember from your own childhood to make them sound the whistle…
😉
There were men chiseling arrowheads from bits of found stone…
and others rendering beautiful candlesticks from bits of Pine Barrens sugar sand…
… and broom-makers! Who makes brooms? Who uses brooms anymore?
… and this sweet, sleepy-eyed Barred Owl from Cedar Run.
A nice day. And I even managed to find what I hope might be a perfect gift for a flock member!
😉
🙂
Summer is like a shadow; turn and it’s gone.
The seeds of another summer spin into the air, twirling, catching in spider webs and wool sweaters, sailing high in the sky, vanishing like migrating birds.
The wind carries them; the air stills and they settle gently to the earth, waiting for winter to blanket them in snow. 
I think I see the moon reflected there in the water?
What all do you have planned?
