Halloween 2013

Posted on 11/01/2013 by chick

Dear Kids,

This year you decided for yourselves what you wanted to be for Halloween. Marshall said he wanted to be a Scary Bee. Livia, taking her cue from her brother, declared that she wanted to be a bee, too.

As I was shopping for toddler bee costumes, I found some costumes for adults. It occurred to me that I could dress up, too. What a crazy idea! I hadn’t dressed up for Halloween for decades. I get uncomfortable just thinking about wearing a costume. But that’s not a good thing, and I don’t want you to feel that way when you grow up. I want you to know that you can still have fun when you’re older. It wouldn’t be enough to tell you, though. I have to show you.  So I decided to be a bee, too.

When I told your dad that I was going to dress up, he said, “I don’t want to be a bee!” Then he saw that there were beekeeper costumes. Thus the theme was born.

Marshall, I couldn’t find a good costume for you, so I bought you some black-and-yellow striped pajamas. Then I found a bow tie, stinger, and deely bopper set to go with it, plus a pair of wings to strap on your back. And voila! You were a bee. Not a scary bee, perhaps, but a cute one. You were thrilled with your stinger. You kept backing into people to sting them with it. Attaboy!

Livia, you were supposed to be a princess bee. You might not have had a crown, but it was clear that you were a princess. The costume was small on you and the Velcro at the bottom refused to stay closed, but you didn’t mind. Just like last year, you were a Halloween trooper. You let nothing stand between you and your candy. You fell several times, and you kept losing your shoe. None of that fazed you. You were certain of your task and about what you were supposed to be. Every once in a while someone would tell you that you were a pretty butterfly, and you would correct them, saying, “I’m a bee!”

Some people noticed our family bee theme and commented on it, all positively. “I love it when the whole family gets involved,” they told us. And on the way home your dad told  me that he had enjoyed our Halloween theme. He said, “It was fun. Thank you for my costume.” That made me happy.

But you two deserve most of the credit. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have dressed up or gone out for Halloween. We wouldn’t have seen the two cutest bees in the world. We wouldn’t have taken pictures, and we wouldn’t have the memories to go along with them. We would have missed out on so much. Thank you!

Love,

The Queen Bee

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A Walk in Putnam

Posted on 10/14/2013 by chick

Yesterday I went to Putnam to meet up with my friend Sprite. Putnam is located on the Quinebog River in the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. Putnam is a pleasant place, sort of touristy in a slightly offbeat way. We like it for its location (roughly halfway between her location in CT and mine in RI) and because we always discover interesting things to look at while we’re there.

Of course, the combination of river and fall foliage is always beautiful. I took these shots as we walked down the Putnam River Trail.

Cargill Falls

Cargill falls

Walk

Foliage Along the Putnam River Trail

The trail is lined with many types of trees, including this one, which has interesting fruit. My guess is that it’s a kousa dogwood.

Interesting Fruit

And then there is this tree, which looks like it produces both apples and some kind of cherry.

Two-Fruit Tree

Weird! But a closer look at its base reveals that it is actually two types of trees growing close together.

Two-Fruit Mystery Solved

The local critters often run away before I can snap their pictures, but the birds don’t seem to mind posing. I wasn’t sure what this one was, but after looking through my bird guide, I’m guessing double-crested cormorant. My friend guessed cormorant at the time, so I think that was a good call on her part!

Mystery Bird

We have always found the businesses of Putnam to be very welcoming. They go out of their way to add new things for us to see.

Halloween Niche Art

Halloween Niche Art (2)

Scarecrow Contest

Scarecrow Contest in Progress

We often eat lunch at the Main St. Grille, because they are friendly and serve great food at a reasonable price. But they close fairly early in the day, so sometimes we have to go elsewhere. On this occasion we had lunch at The Stomping Ground, which looked like a great spot to catch a live show. We were not there at the right time for music, but the “Van Gogh” grilled cheese sandwich was excellent.

No visit to Putnam would be complete without a stop at the Victoria Station Cafe for a hot cup of tea or coffee, especially when the weather gets chilly. They have both indoor and outdoor seating. We opted to sit outside to enjoy the crisp autumn air.

Alas, yellow jackets love both autumn and sweet beverages, and one of them, in its excitement over my friend’s chai, broke an unwritten rule of human/wasp relations by trying to climb into her nose. Thankfully she was able to shoo it away without getting stung. It was not the first time some sort of animal had “jumped” one of us in search of food, and we reminisced about the time a duck jumped in my lap to steal my sandwich. For the record, I’d much rather be harassed by a duck than a yellow jacket!

The scary yellow jacket aside, it was a lovely visit. I am looking forward to returning later this year.

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The Woods in Late Summer: Part II

Posted on 10/11/2013 by chick

Signs of fall weren’t the only things I found on my late-summer walks. I also found Indian pipe growing in several spots. I think of it as being relatively rare, so it was a pleasant surprise to find so much of it.

Indian pipe

Indian pipe

And I discovered this pink beauty.

Pinesap

Pinesap

At first I thought it must be pink Indian pipe, though I had never heard of such a thing. I looked it up when I got home, and now I know it to be pinesap, a cousin of Indian pipe. The way to tell the difference between the two plants is the number of flowers per stem. Indian pipe always has one. Pinesap usually has multiples.

I also discovered a new type of shrub. I think it’s probably spicebush. I only noticed it because of its pretty berries. Aren’t they gorgeous?

Spicebush

Beautiful Berries, Possibly Spicebush

But my mission during these summer hikes was to find evidence that the shrubs in the woods are blueberries. I knew that it was too late to find fresh berries, but it’s not uncommon to find shriveled, uneaten berries here and there, even well after blueberry season. I figured that those old berries would be my best bet for evidence.

Well, look at what I found near the overhang of the scenic overlook.

Blueberries!

Fresh blueberries! In September! Who could have imagined? This is the only bush I found with fresh berries (though there were some desiccated berries on other bushes, just as I had thought there would be). What a lucky find! Not only did these berries provide me with definitive evidence, but they were tasty, too. And I’m doubly glad that I ate some, because when I got home and told my husband about the blueberry bush, he said, “I bet they were poisonous.” That was his way of saying, “Who cares? You’re too paranoid to eat anything you find in the woods anyway.” Having eaten the berries, I could tell him how wrong he was. I’ve decided, you see, that if something looks like a blueberry to me, it’s a blueberry (or something similar enough, like a huckleberry or bilberry, to be equally edible). I like blueberries, so I’m going to eat some if I find them.

The summer is definitely not my favorite season for hiking, but I’d like to go blueberry picking in the woods someday. Our plan is to have permethrin-treated clothing and shoes for next year, because experts are predicting a horrific tick season. Properly dressed, I might be willing to brave the woods in the middle of the season.

Until next year, blueberries!

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The Woods in Late Summer: Part I

Posted on 10/10/2013 by chick

I usually don’t go out in the woods during the summer, because it’s unpleasantly hot and I worry about ticks. I went up to the woods three times in the late summer this year, and almost regretted it. As expected, the woods were close and humid and terribly buggy. On two of the walks I managed to attract swarms of mosquitoes and deer flies that stayed with me for the entire trek. The flies would buzz by my ears every few minutes. And if I paused to take a picture, every bug in the whole forest knew it and attacked en masse.

But there were some enjoyable things about my walks. For one thing, I snapped a picture of the approach to the scenic overlook. Now I have pictures of the woods in all four seasons.

Approach

What was interesting to me was how many signs of fall could already be seen, even though the walks took place before the official start of the season. The tiny gardens were filling up with autumnal brown leaves.

Tiny Garden with Leaves

Tiny Garden with Fall Leaves

In other places yellow leaves were already brightening the ground.

Yellow

Here I snapped a picture because I thought that the pines needles filled in the rock crevices in a pretty way.

pine1

Pine Needles on the Rock

But there’s something else to notice in the picture. On the right you can see that the pine was starting to turn yellow. All of the pines were starting to turn yellow.

pine2

Pine Turning Yellow

The first few years that we lived here among the pines, I would see the pines yellowing and think they were getting sick. Then they would get miraculously better, until the next year, that is.  Eventually the light bulb went off in my head. Duh! It’s fall for pines, too!

And there were nuts of many kinds on the ground, including some that I didn’t recognize. They will have to be subjects of an investigation someday. My favorite, though, was this colorful acorn.

Colorful Acorn

Colorful Acorn

Nothing says fall like acorns on the ground!

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Bee Story

Posted on 10/09/2013 by chick

BEE STORY

by Marshall

Bees sting everybody. They go back to the hive and eat juice. They sting the people even, even, even, even more. The people get mad and capture the bees. They catch them in a jar like I do. They bury the jar. The bees are buzzing underground far, far away. The frogs ate the bees.

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SITY: Mystery Eggs

Posted on 10/08/2013 by chick

My husband discovered one September day that the flower stalks of the astilbe that he had recently bought were covered with some sort of eggs. The eggs had just started to hatch, in fact. From a distance they just looked like a weird, purplish encrustation. But thanks to my digital camera, you can look more closely and see the larvae. Yuck!

Astilbe 1 - Copy

My husband cut one of the flower stalks and put it on the walkway. Then it was easier to see the eggs.

Astilbe 2 - Copy

And then the larvae started to flee.

Astilbe 3

Larva Up-Close

Astilbe 4

Fleeing Larvae

My husband and I feel as though we are custodians of the land to some degree. We thought that if this were an interesting moth or butterfly species then we should let it be. We would certainly never wish to harm an endangered butterfly species! But we also thought that if it were something bad then perhaps we should do away with it.

After researching on the Web, I came to the conclusion that the larvae were cutworms. And cutworms are not good, so we decided not to let them be. It was a sad end to an interesting, if somewhat gross, investigation.

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Read What You Like

Posted on 10/07/2013 by chick

According to this book post at The Guardian, many people claim to have read books that they haven’t. Here is the list of books that people most often pretend to have read.

  1. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
  2. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  3. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  4. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
  5. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster
  6. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
  7. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
  8. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
  9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I used to pretend to read books in high school, but that was so I wouldn’t get in trouble with the teachers who had assigned the books. I wouldn’t dream of lying about my reading now. I suppose it helps that I’ve read 7 of the 10 in that list.

But go ahead and ask me about Infinite Jest, which was also mentioned in the post. I haven’t read that book, and I probably never will. Oh, yes, everyone says it’s so wonderful and that David Foster Wallace was such a genius. And maybe he was. But I tried a sample of it on my Kindle a few months ago, and the first page seemed to take forever. I couldn’t connect with the text, and I had to keep going back to try to figure out what I was missing. That’s not my idea of fun. I gave up.

But I have read hundreds of other books (over 300 since I started keeping track in 2007). Maybe they weren’t all long and complex, and maybe they weren’t all what one might call Profound. But they did all, in their own way, contain pieces of Truth and Beauty. Some of them made me laugh. Some of them made me cry. Some of them inspired me to be a better person. I am better for having read them, all of them.

So don’t lie about what you read. Just read. And to Hell with what other people think about your reading choices.

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Frog Story II

Posted on 10/06/2013 by chick

I know I already posted one of Marshall’s frog stories, but I can’t help but want to post this one, too. He gave me the crayons and asked me to write it down, after all. Plus it ends on a little piece of toddler wisdom. So here goes.

FROG STORY II

by Marshall

Once upon a time there was a frog named Shaggy-Sticky. Siggy-Socky (another frog) ate him. And then more frogs came, and there was a bunch of frogs. All of the frogs, they just ate people. And then a monster ate Siggy-Socky, and then spit him out.

Then the monster ate some fruit and vegetables. But the monster was still hungry, so he ate everything. He ate houses, and dogs, and mountains, and more houses. But no trees.

Now he’s a giant monster. So Superboy, he gets food out of the monster. The food comes out of the monster. The superhero puts the houses back, and grass and dirt. We need grass around our house, you know.

The End

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Late Summer Pictures

Posted on 10/05/2013 by chick

One of the nice things about spending time outdoors is that you start to really notice the change of seasons. Not just the big seasonal changes, like the difference between spring and winter, but the little changes, like the differences between early summer, mid summer, and late summer.

Late summer means the beginning of the end for the dragonflies. Midsummer was their time, and they were everywhere, little green, blue, brown, and red beauties, not to mention their larger white and black cousins. They zipped every which way, filling the skies, thrilling me with their escapades. Sometimes they landed on me when I hoped they would, and other times they scared me half to death because I wasn’t expecting such a large bug to alight on me! But they’re almost gone now. Late summer is the time of the hopping insects—crickets and grasshoppers. This year saw some of the fattest crickets ever!

Fat Cricket

Fat cricket sitting on Marshall’s arm.

And then their are the jumpers–warty toads and sleek frogs. They in turn feed the slitherers. In late summer and early autumn you can’t walk up the hill to the side yard without disturbing at least one garter snake, usually a young one. They’re adorable. I often chase after them until they disappear into a hole or thick tuft of grass, because I love to watch them move. I don’t worry about them biting me, even when my feet are bare, as they usually are. I have never been bitten by a garter snake in my life, not even the ones I harassed as a child. Alas, they do not stay still so that I can get good pictures of them.

Garter Snake

The bees are still working as hard as ever in late summer, but there is feeling of desperation in their industriousness. They know the season is coming to an end. The jewel weed is back, and the only thing more fun that popping the seed pods is watching bumblebees burrow into the flowers and then back themselves out again. Just as they did back in April when they were pollinating the violets, the bumblebees remind me of my black cat, Mojo, who is fat and always trying to get into spaces much too small for him.

Bee 1

Bee 2

Mushrooms grow fast and rank on old wood mulch, sprouting on and around trees, following the paths of old, decomposing tree roots.

Mushrooms 1

Mushroom 2

Mushrooms are no fun to walk through with bare feet. Yuck! And if we leave them in the yard, they eventually turn into an ugly black mush, so my husband usually removes them. So that is one of his late summer and early autumn tasks—shroom shoveling!

I took a walk in the woods during the late summer season, something I rarely do, so expect to see some more pictures soon!

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Chipping Away at the List

Posted on 10/04/2013 by chick

I’ve been chipping away at the list of Top 100 Children’s Books.

My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett

Grade: B+

My Father’s Dragon is a cute story about a boy who rescues a dragon that is being exploited by other animals on a faraway island. I enjoyed the story, but I felt like it was over before I had a chance to really get into it.

Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

Grade: A-

The title of this book made me think that it was going to be a story about Native Americans. The main character, Salamanca Tree Hiddle, does have some Native American ancestry, but the story is about love and loss and telling stories. Sal takes a road trip with her grandparents, telling stories to them to help pass the time. Along the way we learn all about her family and friends in a humorous way. I could tell as I was reading that some sad things were going to happen, and while you could say the story is predictable in that way, the storytelling is superb. Highly recommended.

Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright

Grade: A+

Gone-Away Lake always brings me back to my childhood. I never experienced anything like the adventures of Portia, her brother Foster, and her cousin Julian, but I would have loved to! The children discover a swamp that used to be a lake (which is why it’s called Gone-Away Lake). And living in the ramshackle remains of what were once grand vacation homes are the elderly Pindar and his sister Minnehaha, who invite the children into their lives, sharing their stories of the past and all the wonderful things that they have learned about the swamp. Also highly recommended.

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Grade: B+

Stargirl is a teenager who refuses to fit in. In fact, she goes out of her way to be different, doing things like playing the ukulele at lunchtime and buying gifts for complete strangers. But the world expects conformity, and when Stargirl refuses to conform, well, people get a little mean.

I wrestled with my feelings while reading the book. I liked Stargirl, but I was also frustrated by her, and then I felt bad for being frustrated by her. And I felt manipulated by the author, because I knew that he was doing that on purpose, and I don’t like having my strings pulled that way.

The thing is, I think we need more Stargirls in this world. We need to invite them into our lives and encourage them in their “work.” So I applaud the book for that reason, but alas, it will never be a favorite.

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