Reflections of a New Addition to the Pond

Last year we had a Great Blue Heron and a White Heron join the ducks and geese that frequent our neighborhood pond. Late in the summer a Bittern showed up. I had to use a friend, Abe Lincoln his real name, help me with finding out what the bird was. He has tons of birds on his blog.

Well, this year we have had a few geese and only one set of baby ducks so far. There were eight but one now missing. There have been several Blue Herons but no White ones. One of the Blues has to have a five foot wing span. Interestingly there are not one but three Bitterns. Not sure if they is a pair amongst them or not. They are of the Heron family but they don't seem to wade out as much, they fish more from the bank.

Hail and Plants Don't Mix

We didn't get the worst of the storm and we definitely didn't get what Joplin and other communities have had to endure but never the less, we got hailed upon.

Hosta leaves are very vunerable.

The sky before it let go.

They were still getting it north west of us. This was maybe 30 minutes after the hail hit. The rains came during the hail but not like they did afterwards. The water in the pond was almost up to the pine trees and that two only took a few minutes to fill up.

This was emptied quickly when a piece of ice went through it. Also had a feeder bite the dust, replaced that today.






Had two tomatoes. One in a Topsy Turvy and the other in the ground. Wanted to see which one did the best. Covered the one in the ground but didn't get the bucket I put on it secured. Bucket ended up in the pond. Tomatoe plant was laid sideways and looked broken. Today it is standing with a few branches missing. The Topsy Turvy lid had one big hole for watering and now it has three but the tomatoe faired quite well.

Late Again With the Mid-Monthly Post

I started this endeavor back in November of last year. I haven't tallied up the days of sunshine but I do remember that November was sunny and the sun was coming up to the right in this picture. We are looking east. In actuality, it would be out of sight here, almost, unless I would pan back some. Now, it would be out of the picture to the left coming through the stand of pines surrounding an old farm. The field in this picture was part of it as well as the house I am in.

Hopefully the rains will come to an end soon but I will admit, everything is really green this year. Didn't get the flowers on the Pear trees or the Cherry trees like we normally do but the grass has grown and filled in the winter damage that everyone was dreading to have to fix. Now watch what happens, the faucet will be turned off and we will be begging for rain this summer.

Boothbay Harbor in Early Morning Light

What appeared to be a cloudy if not rainy day turned out to be quite the opposite. We went up the coast to Pemaquid Point Light House where it was windy, cold and rainy. We came back to a perfect fall afternoon of sun and warmth.

Pemaquid Point Cove

Sometime back in 1997, or so, we went on a vacation trip to Maine. Reservations were at the Boothbay Harbor Inn in Boothbay Harbor. At that time I had my AE-1 film camera. Loved it and thought I would not give up film until I got my Rebel XTi. This shot was with the AE-1. I probably took 3 or 4 rolls of 36 film in the week we were there.

Birdman of PortCityDailyPhoto ( http://pasttimeamainebackyardandbeyond.blogspot.com/) put a foggy picture up the other day which reminded me about my trip(s); we were up in Maine a couple years before this before our daughter went off to college, and the pictures I took. I keep saying I need to process them, you know scan and save and clean etc, etc. I had 4 that I blew up and framed. Sold the frames in a garage sale last year and the blown up pictures went with them. The old guy that bought them was going to put train pictures in them. Anyways, short of digging the originals out I remembered that I had taken pictures of the pictures in the frames. That is part of the reason for the blurry effect. To me, it just says Maine.

Busy busy

Strange. I'm retired and feel that I manage my time fairly well yet I seem to run out of time to get things done. I really wonder, sometimes, how I worked 6 and 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hour days plus the 45 minutes it took to drive each way and still get most things done. There are several solutions to this.

First, I was younger and secondly, I moved faster. On the rare days I was off I got up and out sooner. Now it is up by whenever my eyes open A.M. and out the door whenever I get my tail moving after breakfast or after lunch. I would use the excuse that no mater what the project is it has to be done correctly, which we all know perfection can't be rushed.

I use to live 45 minutes from work on 5 acres that had 1.5 of them in grass. A farmer used the rest. I had a garden that measured 35' x 85'. I also used 205' of ground just off the grass line to put out 4 rows of sweet corn. One year my dad and I planted from the grass line to the back property line which was in excess of 500' the 4 rows of corn....4 varieties. Gave a lot away that year. We filled two 21 cu. ft. freezers too.

Since we were there, age then was about 52, we moved to a condo and I retired when a pacemaker took me out of the field of work I was in. I was 55. Boredom set in so we bought a house. Now I can get out like I use to but the huge garden is gone. At 64 and still with the pacer, can't seem to shake it, I have the small yard that I keep perfect...most of the time and I did the raised garden thing but then gave that up. Now I put the plants wherever I want but not as many. No corn of course but I do have chives (anyone need some) and tomatoes. This year I am trying the Topsy Turvy "As Seen On TV". But, as you can see I have the backup in the ground. We'll see what happens in about 54 days or so. These are Big Boys.

Looking for Dinner

A few days ago a mother duck lost her babies in a storm drain. It wasn't long before a city worker spotted them and helped them back to safety. There were 8 and all were saved. Only 7 in picture but last one arrived shortly after this was taken. There were two males, that along with the mother, were frantically running up and down the curb quacking all along. I would have missed this had I not happened to get up from the table at lunch and catch it happening.

A day or so later another female duck was in the same area but didn't have as good of luck. I don't know if she was too trying to get some chicks out or just happened to be in the street. The geese and ducks tend to walk across the street here to go from a non-pond side to the pond behind our house.

The next day after seeing the duck lay in the street one of the local buzzards found dinner. Problem being dinner was at the corner of a very busy intesection. I figured it would either be one of the buzzards or a hawk that we have in the area that would make a meal out of the duck. Final out come though was the buzzard couldn't take the traffic and one of the street crews picked the duck up this morning, not the same guy that saved the babies though.

The buzzard flew by the hawk on the pole to say "it's all yours buddy". You should have seen the little bird to the left, just above the wire, do a 180 degree flip when it found the hawk on the pole. Below is the hawk on the neighbors deck last year.

The hawk on the neighbors deck last year.

Another First of the Month, Another Morning Picture

I didnt' think I was going to get this one posted. I saved it the wrong way and even though I could open it in a couple of my programs it was not going to open in any of the photoshop programs or the blog's. Finally with Windows Live Photo I was able to change the file name to something usable.

As you can see the day was not looking the best to start with but it turned out great. I got a lot of stuff done outside.

Today is another story or may just a repeat. More of the wet stuff. Sump pump wasn't running yesterday, first time in exactly two weeks. Today it started out slowly but he pond has risen and the water table is up again thus the pump is only off for about 10 seconds. The 4" tile is 1/3 full feeding the pit holding the pump. We aren't close to the backup but that can change in a heartbeat. The little 9GPM isn't on yet and shouldn't be needed. I have ordered a generator that may arrive tomorrow. It will only run the generator size wise but that all I need. Rain all week except Wed. and Thur. is the forecast.