On Saturday I was at home, and it really felt like we were in mid-summer - hot in the sun, pleasant in the shade. Blue sky filled with huge clouds. Scents of the early roses, cut grass, growing things. The gardens are spectacular this year - every time I look there is a new Beauty somewhere. The Foxgloves especially captured me last week - they have been busy crossing and scatttering and finding their own Perfect Places to Thrive - my definition of NICHE. As we sat in the shade after some soul-satisfying work in gardens and yard, Ron and I agreed that this is our very Favorite Planet. It is incredibly beautiful, amazing, and hospitable most of the time.
Yesterday I woke up in Fernville - the place of our lovely old rustic cabins, in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State. It was cool (53 degrees in mid-afternoon), spitting rain, and at least another three weeks from the fullness of leaf and warmth we had 162.5 miles south of here. (To be honest, it rarely gets as warm up here as it does at home - which is fine with me, although the leaves do come out fully eventually.)
.JPG)
I spent the morning with some wonderful people, co-leading a birding trip by canoe on the Osgood River as part of the Great Adirondack Birding Celebration. My co-leaders Dave and Bernie are always great company and the folks saw many quality birds (meaning: not-all-that-common-to-most-people bird species). We saw a pair of Grey Jays with 2 immature young, some Palm Warblers, Nashville Warblers, and Yellow-bellied Flycatchers, among many others. To top it off, some of us went to another site to see a pair of Black-backed Woodpeckers at their nest cavity tending their young, who we could hear peeping in the nest high in an old spruce.
