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Showing posts for 'Scenic'. Clear search
Weathered bright
November 16, 2016 - The sun came back out and while I was still too busy to hit the trails, I did manage a quick stroll to the mailbox. A co...
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Happy mermaid
August 24, 2016 - This was to be the last full day of my granddaughter Stasia's visit, so, on a beautiful, warm-but-not-lethal day, we wen...
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Hard travelin'
July 18, 2016 - The afternoon was still too hot and humid, but I went out anyway. There was also at least the prospect of more comfortab...
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Larch, renewed
May 02, 2016 - It sure didn't feel like May this morning, with a 40-ish chill in the gray air and, OMG!—hey, I might now be at full ret...
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Airborne capture
April 26, 2016 - When you're using a "big gun," one of the hardest things to master is the classic action shot... especially if you're tr...
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Flowers and fish
April 24, 2016 - This has been a funny spring. After essentially a non-winter, the first warm weather arrived unnaturally early but, no s...
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Super supertelephoto
April 22, 2016 - I am always one to count my blessings, but some days feature more of them to count than others. So it was that when I he...
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Fire fighting practice
April 21, 2016 - It's a rare day that I don't get outside, camera in hand, to walk and chronicle at least one facet of the natural world,...
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Wild grapes
August 25, 2015 - One of the bigger drags of my life right now is the fact that, with my wrists in such bad shape—I can barely hold my dSL...
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Still life with Jewelweed
August 20, 2015 - It was a hot, hot afternoon, but my desire to continue testing my new lens overcame my medication-induced fatigue and th...
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Two graces
June 19, 2015 - With the wheelchair, the crutch, and anything else we could think of to enable my wife to be more or less mobile, we hea...
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The graduate
June 11, 2015 - My wife was still hurting from her fall. I was still exhausted from caregiving and a brutal month of deadline work. It w...
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Gray, gray day
April 23, 2015 - The weather turned from blue and gorgeous to gray and grim with cold rain and maybe even a bit of hail and snow in the f...
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A red maple gift
April 21, 2015 - I've had my eye on the Red Maples, a.k.a., the Swamp Maples, for a couple of weeks now, and finally, my persistent in ob...
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No holding back
March 30, 2015 - Most of the Saturday Night Snowstorm Surprise has melted, and in the white's wake, you can now see the ground. True, it'...
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Neither fire nor ice
March 27, 2015 - When Robert Frost pondered, akin to T.S. Eliot, the way the world might end, the flinty sage of Derry, New Hampshire, su...
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Almost floatable
March 25, 2015 - The weather continues to trend towards warming, and the snow is steadily losing its hold on the landscape. The major hol...
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Happy spring
March 20, 2015 - In a break from a long-running tradition, the Westerly Morris Men, a local dance troupe, couldn't make the trek up Lante...
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Great floral expectations
March 17, 2015 - With every little bit of new warmth—and there have been a few episodes—you can start to see that, yes indeed, there is s...
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March mini-flood
March 16, 2015 - A recent spell of rain and relative warmth has put winter on notice that the vernal equinox is around the corner and, we...
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The (black) birds
March 14, 2015 - The day started out OK, but with murkiness and rain in the forecast—and a presentation to complete for presenting tonigh...
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Hooded, with apologies
March 12, 2015 - I take a lot of pictures, often more than a couple hundred a day, and, since I pretty much know what I'm doing and I tra...
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A touch of fog
March 11, 2015 - It never went below freezing last night—something of a first for the winter—and in response to the relative warmth, the...
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Unfurling
March 10, 2015 - The snow is still deep. I continue to need to use snowshoes to get to the compost pile. I've yet to swear off long under...
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In flight entertainment
March 09, 2015 - This was almost going to be a photo-free day—sigh—what with a deadline project that needed to be finished, but in late a...
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Here's to you, Potter!
March 08, 2015 - With the sun starting to disappear behind the forecasted rain clouds, I took off my snowshoes and walked back to my car.
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Snowbound sparrow
March 05, 2015 - Thor finally left the ridge, but, of course, in the wake of a giant winter storm, the temperature plummeted. This was bo...
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Graveyard shift
March 05, 2015 - The snow from Thor lightened overnight, but it never stopped entirely, and at daybreak, it increased in intensity. I gue...
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Thor starts to hammer
March 04, 2015 - Winter Storm Thor arrived this afternoon, and by sundown, the snow was falling fast and heavy on the ridge. By about ten...
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Left behind
March 01, 2015 - Sparta left about six inches of powdery snow in its wake. I did about half the shoveling late last night, and I got up e...
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Snowground
March 01, 2015 - The plan had been that we would bring our granddaughter back home today, but the impending arrival of Winter Storm Spart...
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Ice garden
February 28, 2015 - I managed to get out alone today for a brief jaunt, and I came home with a harvest of interesting images: a Winter Wren...
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Today, the toboggan; tomorrow...
February 27, 2015 - OK, I know... this is supposed to be a nature photo-and-essay blog—not an account of the blogger's family. But hey, my g...
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Unexpected visitor
February 26, 2015 - Woodpeckers have distinctive feather patterns, sizes, and voices, but sometimes, you can know which species is in the ne...
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Scaling Everest
February 25, 2015 - It barely got into the 20s today, but the sun was bright and reasonably inviting. We had a full calendar, however, so th...
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The snows of New Hampshire
February 24, 2015 - Today was not going to be a walking day, since we were on a mission to travel north to coastal New Hampshire to pick up...
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A brief "January" thaw
February 23, 2015 - Winter Storm Pandora did more than bring more snow to the ridge. The storm also pulled in a brief spell of warmth—a tast...
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Pandora's Sunday surprise
February 22, 2015 - I hadn't expected this: a fresh blanket of new snow that arrived in the morning as Winter Storm Pandora swept by. There...
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A genuine survivor
February 21, 2015 - I love this tree, an ancient birch sculpted by decades of exposure to wind, rain, snow, cold, warmth, birds, and bugs. I...
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A touch of warmish gold
February 20, 2015 - It started off at three below, and it didn't rise all that much during the day. But, cold or not, I got into my skis and...
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The last open water
February 19, 2015 - With Winter Storm Octavia out of the way and Pandora on the horizon, I discovered something unpleasant: I am not quite i...
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Surprise, it's spring
February 18, 2015 - It wasn't too beastly cold today, but it was a shopping and errand day, so I didn't have much time to do anything more t...
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Octavia's junco
February 17, 2015 - After a one-day, semi-respite—as if winter tundra conditions, even though sunny, constitute balmy—we were paid a visit b...
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Hail Neptune
February 15, 2015 - Maybe it wasn't a particularly smart idea to go for a walk at the height of the Second Coming of Winter Storm Neptune. T...
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Harbinger, perhaps
February 14, 2015 - Valentine's Day dawned almost unbelievably cold... well, for our neck of the woods... and it was pretty chilly indoors a...
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Keeping afloat
February 13, 2015 - It was clear and cold to start the day, with a low of 1 above at daybreak and then a slow climb out of single digits. I...
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After the latest storm
February 06, 2015 - In the wake of the latest storm, which was nothing much here, but another foot of snow in the Boston area, the temperatu...
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Jeepers, creepers
February 05, 2015 - It's possible we've had Brown Creepers at the suet feeder for most of the winter, but if so, they've certainly made them...
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Shadow play
February 04, 2015 - The storm is past, and it's cold, still, and dazzling. There's at least a foot of snow on the ground, so getting anywher...
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Holly on ice
February 03, 2015 - The Groundhog's Day storm actually had a name, Linus, and it also had a bad, bad attitude, since, instead of blessing us...
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Phil makes if official
February 02, 2015 - With snow coming down pretty hard on the ridge, I checked out the official Groundhog Day website for the much awaited lo...
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Encouragement
February 01, 2015 - There's at least a foot of snow on the ground, and there's more—maybe plenty more—if the offing tomorrow, so, even thoug...
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A cross-country track at last
January 29, 2015 - In my next incarnation, I will live in a more northern region that gets abundant snow—and this mythical place will come...
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The wind at work
January 28, 2015 - Juno has worked its way north, and though the strong winds never knocked out the electricity—praise the Lord and perhaps...
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Vanishing Lycopodium
January 26, 2015 - The much-ballyhooed nor'easter, code-named Juno, started hissing snow around nine this morning, but for the first six ho...
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A less-than-contented cow
January 23, 2015 - Winter storm Iola—the Weather Channel name is a variant of Iolë, a stunning woman in Greek mythology that Hercules wante...
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Tattered flags
January 23, 2015 - Things are supposed to go rapidly downhill later today, as a winter storm dubbed Iola is, according to the Weather Chann...
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A gathering of planets
January 19, 2015 - It was too cold to do this right, and I was a few days past the peak of this astronomical event, but I at least captured...
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Study in ice
January 17, 2015 - Ice has been a recurrent theme in the recent week's walks... and posts. This abstraction, however, was pretty much unexp...
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A tease of snow
January 15, 2015 - If the Weather Channel and the National Weather Service has any kind of street cred on the ridge, we're supposed to shor...
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Recession in progress
January 13, 2015 - There may, or may not be, a genuine thaw in the offing, but after the warmer weather and rain of recent days, the modest...
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Ephemeral Cape Cod in the ice
January 12, 2015 - There was rain in the immediate forecast, so I headed out armed only with my waterproof Fuji which, although I haven't h...
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Waiting for spring
January 11, 2015 - It wasn't January thaw warm, but it was close to the freezing mark, so it felt reasonably toasty. I headed up to the bac...
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Semi-frozen falls
January 10, 2015 - After the snow stopped, the cold returned, and while it wasn't frigid as a couple of days ago, it did fall into the sing...
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An unexpected snow
January 09, 2015 - It was a bit warmer this morning, with the temperature in the upper teens, but the sky was dark gray and foreboding. The...
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How cold was it?
January 08, 2015 - In the country, when the old geezers gathered around the pot-bellied stove in the general store during the winter, the f...
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A skin of snow
January 07, 2015 - Any lingering warmth departed last night, and as the mercury dropped, there was persistent but light snow in the air, th...
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The tough stick around
January 06, 2015 - With the recent, but rapidly disappearing, spell of warmth we've had, at least a few of the earliest bloomers have stirr...
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Time for wolves
January 05, 2015 - The first full moon of January is known as the Wolf Moon, and though it actually reached peak a few minutes before midni...
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The last shall be first
January 04, 2015 - I have long given up making new year's resolutions, for, like all too many people with good intentions, I don't manage t...
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Send in the plows
January 03, 2015 - While I worked on building up the woodpile and cleaning out the storage building, I watched the sky turn from relatively...
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2015's first flowers
January 02, 2015 - More than a month ago—28 November 2014, to be exact—I wrote the following about these shooting-star blooms after they'd...
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And so it begins
January 01, 2015 - My plan, hatched when I actually managed to stay up long enough to watch the ball drop in Times Square and sing a chorus...
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Goodbye, and good riddance
December 31, 2014 - The family emergency that mandated a halt to this humble blogging effort at the beginning of the month is not, alas, ove...
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Turning over the new year, early
December 30, 2014 - I don't remember precisely how or when I started this tradition—I think it began one year when I was usually late with m...
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A hopefully brief hiatus
December 04, 2014 - There's not much to see here, but suffice it to say that this represents the almost-full moon, which is known as either...
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Into the mist
December 03, 2014 - Bad timing is rarely a good thing, but today it all worked out. I had headed to the dump around 11, with the intention o...
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The bison's return
December 02, 2014 - There are many unusual things that you discover when you spend a lot of time exploring the backroads, and while I'm no l...
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Sudden Kingfisher
December 01, 2014 - I heard this bird, a Belted Kingfisher, working its way through a local marsh, long before I saw it. And even then, the...
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The perfect tree
November 30, 2014 - A garden center we know and love sent us a notice about a great sale they were having on Fraser Firs, whose splendidly a...
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LBJs ID'd
November 29, 2014 - Sparrows, with the exception of White-throats, have never been easy for me, and all too often, I take a quick look, shru...
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Snow on cyclamens
November 28, 2014 - It got grayer and colder yesterday as we headed towards dusk, and it started raining again. As we were finishing dessert...
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Instead of food photos
November 27, 2014 - If I were in keeping with the times, I would have taken lots of pictures of our Thanksgiving feast—the one that this yea...
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Forest by Monet
November 26, 2014 - I am not now, nor have I ever been, an experimental photographer. I don't even like to do simple things like changing ey...
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A new experiment
November 24, 2014 - In the mid-1970s, I was a biology student at the University of Rhode Island. It was my second attempt at college, and th...
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Rumors of my demise...
November 23, 2014 - It was ridiculously warm this afternoon—low 60s—and after I'd trekked uphill at Babcock Ridge and again spotted very, ve...
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Lilies to be
November 22, 2014 - Last summer, the countryside was full of exquisite wild lilies of the Day, Canada, Turk's Cap, Wood, and Tiger persuasio...
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Rocky road
November 21, 2014 - I had a little bit of time between trying to work my way through some overdue writing projects, and I wanted to check on...
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White-faced revelation
November 20, 2014 - Most of the leaves are now off the hardwood trees, and with the more-or-less end of the abscission season, a number of s...
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Still dry, despite a little rain
November 17, 2014 - There was a little rain earlier in the day, but not enough to make much of a difference in the dryness of the landscape.
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Genuine ice
November 16, 2014 - It was eight degrees below freezing yesterday morning on the maximum-minimum thermometer, and today's reading was even l...
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High times for Ginkgo leaves
November 15, 2014 - The Ginkgo, an Asian tree now found worldwide, including our area, is one of the most easily recognizable of the planet'...
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First snow of the season
November 14, 2014 - Overnight, the temperature plummeted from relatively warm to the upper 20s, and as the cold front, the calling card of t...
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Tis the season... sigh
November 13, 2014 - When I spotted this Christmas bulb dangling from a thin maple limb, my first thought was horror, as in, "Isn't it too ea...
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Almost endgame
November 12, 2014 - Sometimes, to gain perspective, you really need to use that proverbial wide-angle lens instead of the usual viewing tool...
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The last bats of the season
November 11, 2014 - One of the treats of Indian Summer, those warm days that follow the first killing frost, is the late afternoon appearanc...
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Autumn gold
November 10, 2014 - Larch trees are among our most beautiful and beautifully strange evergreens. Actually, that last name— evergreen, which...
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Dry weather pine
November 09, 2014 - There are easier places to live than in the upper reaches of a local rock pile known as Lantern Hill. I try to climb thi...
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Olympic leap
November 08, 2014 - I was heading home from the woodstove emporium—I had to procure a new chimney-cleaning brush and a mantel protector—when...
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Out with a bang
November 07, 2014 - The autumn color show has been spotty, and, because of the ongoing drought, more than a little muted. Still, once the ra...
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Genuine rain
November 06, 2014 - It really rained today—not a sprinkle but an actual, steady, all-day precipitation. To be sure, it wasn't a downpour; in...
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Blowin' in the wind
November 05, 2014 - For my left-of-center comrades, the election went badly... very badly. It was sad enough when Texas Republican and clima...
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Hope and change?
November 04, 2014 - Today is election day, and while the campaign leading up to it has been the most vile I've experienced in the four-plus-...
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The seedy part of town
November 03, 2014 - Today was column day, and, with the weather quite cool and windy, it not going to be much of a trekking day. Still, afte...
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Abscission benefits
November 02, 2014 - Yesterday, the theme was misty-day leaves; today, with the storm past, but the wind still blowing and the temperature dr...
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Nor'easter sans downpour
November 01, 2014 - I don't know why I had high hopes for this storm. Maybe, at heart, I'm a precipitation optimist; maybe I'm just delusion...
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The future naturalists
October 31, 2014 - To a naturalist, Halloween, a.k.a. Samhain in the ancient tradition, is a very special day and night in which the spirit...
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At long last persimmons
October 29, 2014 - At least a dozen years ago, we put in a number of fruit trees in the hope of establishing a mini-orchard. It was a noble...
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Sleeping marsh
October 28, 2014 - On a delightfully warm, Indian Summer afternoon, my path brought me to the boardwalk at the Henne preserve, and there, I...
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Dem bones
October 27, 2014 - Earlier this month and in September, I kept hearing persistent rumors about a cougar haunting the area between two local...
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Tiny mysteries
October 26, 2014 - What with the drought and all, it's been a pretty meager mushroom season. I've found very few edibles—actually, so far,...
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A ridge picnic
October 25, 2014 - I don't normally include more than one picture in each post, but I had to make an exception here, a story about a walk I...
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A berry for cold times
October 24, 2014 - My walking expeditions often take me by the edges of fresh-water wetlands—OK, they sometimes take me past said edges and...
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First frost
October 20, 2014 - Not long after the sun went down yesterday, I decided to check the Weather Channel to get a handle on just how cold it w...
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Stem fall
October 16, 2014 - Among our hardwood trees, the hickories are first group to drop their leaves. They turn a soft yellow—nothing dramatic,...
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Surprise swarm
October 13, 2014 - The temperature rose almost into the 70s today, and on my walk, it was back to tee-shirt weather. It was also back to dr...
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Gorgeous migrant
October 13, 2014 - There wasn't a lot of time today for much of anything, what with overseeing a tree-cutting job at my neighbor's and writ...
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High and, alas, drying
October 12, 2014 - I really was supposed to stay home all day and work around the house. Perhaps I'd get in a late-afternoon bike ride; per...
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Red-tail left
October 11, 2014 - It was one of those partly cloudy but warming days, and though a good part of the morning and early afternoon was taken...
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Just bones
October 10, 2014 - It was almost freezing this morning—upper 30s—and clearly high time to test drive the new woodstove we'd recently had in...
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All gussied up
October 09, 2014 - After way too long an absence—almost two months—I hauled myself back to my natural history "home-away-from-home": the Th...
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Basket of light
October 06, 2014 - Fall is moving in fast, and the swamp maples are taking on their finery along the shore of the millpond. But in the less...
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The hunt for Spies
October 05, 2014 - With the sun out, the day warm, and our daughter-in-law and granddaughter in tow, my wife and I drove north to Rhode Isl...
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Overlooked beast
October 04, 2014 - How have I missed this creature, clearly a watchful but benign troll, all these months? The guardian has been in plain s...
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Forgive us our tresspasses
October 03, 2014 - The weather remains cloudy, incredibly humid, and quite warm: mid-60s. I was exceptionally busy writing and getting the...
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Leaves, current and future
October 02, 2014 - Fall color is arriving early this October, and many of the first-turning trees are already dropping their leaves. The ca...
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Love letters on a beech
October 01, 2014 - The weather has turned blissfully murky, and while there have been a few showers, we've yet to have the heavy, steady do...
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Roadside seediness
September 26, 2014 - The rain gods doled out a little gift last night, and when today dawned with a sharper, less summery chill, there was ab...
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Real drought
September 25, 2014 - We're not California... at least, not yet. But the new US Drought Monitor report that came out today showed that we'd ma...
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Little and big jewels
September 19, 2014 - A minor cold front moved through last night, and though such weather patterns are supposed to bring rain, or, at least,...
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A question answered
September 16, 2014 - I spent most of today inside, specifically, inside the computer lab of our local middle school where I had the incredibl...
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After the harvest
September 14, 2014 - A day or two ago, the view from this house's back and side windows was solid green: nothing but corn. But the silage cut...
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A time to reap
September 13, 2014 - "To everything there is a season," and since we're about a week past the harvest moon, it is clearly the season for sila...
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For 9/11
September 11, 2014 - Hard to believe that it has been 13 years since the world turned upside down and fundamentalist lunatics plunged the glo...
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So it goes
September 02, 2014 - Yesterday, on a pretty morning that finally felt late-summer-warm, I quickly entered the lake and paddled out to the lin...
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A picnic for the ages
September 01, 2014 - Thirty years ago, when we'd just sold our house but the one I was building wasn't quite ready for occupancy, we were in...
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Time and change
August 30, 2014 - This was a bike-trek day, and one of my favorite stops en route is by a meditation garden created and maintained by the...
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The beginning of the end
August 29, 2014 - While my fern identification skills are not too good, they are improving, and this is a species I know pretty well. Hay-...
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Nearly done
August 27, 2014 - Summer at the lake is rapidly drawing to a close—an earlier close than usual because Labor Day occurs at the earliest po...
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Hurricane Duck
August 14, 2014 - If this were a screenshot from the Weather Channel website, it would be accompanied by lurid red and black letters and f...
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After the deluge
August 13, 2014 - We're in the throes of yet-another long dry spell, during which the vernal pools have evaporated and the millpond waterf...
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