{"id":799,"date":"2008-05-08T03:39:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-08T03:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=799"},"modified":"2014-10-01T03:27:21","modified_gmt":"2014-10-01T03:27:21","slug":"beach-plum-bliss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=799","title":{"rendered":"Beach plum bliss"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/beachplumclose.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197835057762586898\" style=\"FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/beachplumclose-300x249.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">I went for a walk over the dunes at Sandy Hook again this morning. Through the holly forest and into the locust grove to look for spring migrants. Then I headed to the shoreline, turned right at the surf and retraced my steps through the dunes and sat to savor the blooming beach plums and flirt with sunburn. Then back to the bay to watch the osprey pair and be greeted by a pair of willets.<\/p>\n<p>The beach was still winter-empty, but for the birders and a dandelion yellow kite invisibly anchored among a small group of school kids. Twin Lights lies behind towards home and ahead in the haze is the NYC skyline. All around me are the beach plums, humming with happy carpenter bees. The harsh calls of common terns compete with the laughing gulls and the throaty noise of brant lingering on the bay. There are hawks overhead and the rumor of a phalarope on the salt pond at the end of the fish<a href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_YcXlERVmPdE\/SCJ3oBsC0SI\/AAAAAAAABdQ\/YoAcG3Ye3wQ\/s800-h\/willets.jpg\"><span style=\"font-size:85%;\"><img decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5197848449470615842\" style=\"FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/willets-300x212.jpg\" border=\"0\" \/><\/span><\/a>erman&#8217;s trail. There&#8217;s only an hour or so before I need to think about getting to work to see clients and decide I&#8217;d rather spend it here in the dunes instead of chasing some bird I&#8217;d hardly recognize without my scope and a field guide. It feels today like spring is edging closer to summer and I have my <\/span><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">ritual visit with the beach plums to attend to. There&#8217;ll be time for chasing birds another day; now I just want to sit and admire the way they ornament an otherwise still mostly barren wash of dunes&#8230; and the sun, I want to feel the sun work its magic on me. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I went for a walk over the dunes at Sandy Hook again this morning. Through the holly forest and into the locust grove to look for spring migrants. Then I headed to the shoreline, turned right at the surf and retraced my steps through the dunes and sat to savor the blooming beach plums and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/?p=799\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Beach plum bliss<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,27,20],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somewhereinnj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}