Category Archives: Snapshots

Garden, Snapshots

Lest it frost

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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.

Birds, Snapshots, Wanderings

Great Bay Marsh

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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.

In the neighborhood, Seasons, Snapshots

Tapestry

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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.

Snapshots, Whatever

Some fall color

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I think I see the moon reflected there in the water?

I’m going to make an earnest attempt this weekend at getting myself organized for Cape May later in the week, but the weather is going to be beautiful, the trees are in perfect color now and there’s a bird walk on Sunday at Sandy Hook, plus a neat fair in South Jersey at Batsto that I’d like to see. I think maybe I need to prioritize and make a couple lists. Lynne? Help?

What all do you have planned?

Snapshots, Wanderings

A cranberry bog through the seasons

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Cranberries grow in the Pine Barrens regardless of whether they’re cultivated or not; those that grow along the borders of swamps are not as large as their cultivated cousins, but I’m sure they’re just as tasty. Cranberry farming is said to be among the most respectful of the environment; pesticide and fertilizer use is minimal and the harvest during the month of October is quite the agricultural spectacle, in my opinion.

During the summer months, a cranberry bog is a carpet of tangled vines. When the vines are in flower in early summer, pollination is assured by placing any number of perilous beehives among the bogs. There’s often nice numbers of dragonflies and butterflies, too, that feed on the wildflowers that grow along the dikes.

At some point in late summer, the bogs are flooded via the system of dams that interlaces the bogs. The water protects the tiny fruit and makes harvesting much less labor-intensive.

This man here is making some adjustment to the water level in the bog. The color of the berries just astounds me! Typical of fall, the vegetation along the dikes was covered in spider webs and there were millions of spiders everywhere… ballooning in the air, crawling over the farm equipment, climbing in my hair. Eeck! There’s not ever much in the way of birds here, save the Turkey Vultures and at least 30 Killdeer stalking the dikes.

This is one of the scary-looking machines used to harvest the cranberries; I think this may be some type of conveyor-belt thingy, actually. Specialized machines… things that look like tractors for water are driven through the bogs to beat the berries off the vines so that they float to the top. The berries are corralled to one corner of the bog and then collected and transported to the Ocean Spray processing plant that’s in a nearby town.

After harvesting, the bogs are drained so the vines can be pruned (or picked-over by hand for any that were missed by the beaters!) The bogs are flooded again in late December or early January to protect the vines from freezing and further irrigated, if necessary, to keep the water from freezing over. In spring the bogs are drained again and the honeybees brought back into service and the cycle starts anew.

If you’re interested in witnessing this spectacle, Piney Power has a schedule of harvest dates and directions to farms that are visitor-friendly. Two of my favorite places are Double Trouble State Park in Bayville and any of the farms along Rte. 530 near Whitesbog Village. There’s some great pics of the harvest at that link also. Enjoy!

In the neighborhood, Snapshots, Whatever

Thank God we don’t have to do that

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“It’s anticipation. Hope, you know. You’re always hoping to catch more fish, hoping to make a living, you know. And that’s what keeps people going. That, and not having to go up the road… I watch all the commuters, computerized people. They have their coffee and their briefcase or their computer, they stand in line waiting for the ferry or the bus. And some guy’s fallen sick, there’s a space, you know, like birds on a wire. I said, “My God, no matter how bad it gets, thank God we don’t have to do that, you know.”

–Richard Nelson, a fisherman with the Belford Seafood Cooperative

I found this quote from a local fisherman reprinted last weekend at the seaport museum and thought it worth sharing. Most people in this area that make any kind of money have to go to NYC to do it; they have the big houses, fancy cars and all the problems that come along with that lifestyle. I wonder how they’d feel knowing the clammers feel sorry for them.

😉

In the neighborhood, Snapshots, Whatever

Skywatch Friday

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As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.
–Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Sailboats and cormorants in the harbor at Keyport NJ

Autumn comes to the shore with an apologetic smile. Neither the sky nor the sea has even been as blue as on an October day. Before the winds tatter and strip the trees they first tidy up the sky, pushing the dust and pollen of summer somewhere off to the edge of the world. The sun no longer warms as much, the days are shrinking, another summer is slipping away.

Have a great weekend and visit here for more Skywatch posts.