Yucky, soggy, rainy day

After two kind of nice days, we're being pelted with heavy rain.  I know, it's better than snow.  But still.

Nothing to do.  Don't want to go out, second walk is a washout (but we did get in a nice first walk), and I'm feeling my PTSD acting up as I listen to the rain banging on my windows, and the wind driving it hard.

So what's on the radio?  A used La Boheme, which I recall was nothing notable at the time it was fresh, back a few months.  I'd much prefer the actual matinee performance today, which happens to be Damnation of Faust, but for some unknowable reason, the big house is replaying a not so stellar performance from the recent past.

I notice, looking out the kitchen window, that the big construction project that went on all week is not having any positive effect.  For reasons also unknowable, the town decided to install a large storm drain type receptacle in the street a couple of blocks from here, which is at the bottom of a hill.  Runoff from the hill causes a large amount of water to flood the very busy street at the foot of the hill.  So I can see why someone thought a drain might alleviate the problem.

Guess what?  It's not working.  The very busy street is still flooded.  And due to the disruption of the street and area around the new drain, the flood is mostly mud.  Charming.  My tax dollars at work.

In the course of the construction project, I had opportunity to notice that most of the gendarme around here are late middle aged and very overweight.  And how much do they get paid to stand around, or sit on their butts, all day while people are digging up the street?  And why is it necessary to have a rather large SUV parked ON the sidewalk, with the motor running, spewing exhaust fumes, all day? 

One morning the attendant gendarme insisted on "helping" us cross the street on our way home from our first walk.  Ok, so big whooppee, he stopped a couple of cars that would have stopped anyway.  Then we had to creep past his SUV, parked on the sidewalk, with its motor running, spewing exhaust fumes, by climbing up the neighbor's 45-degree sloped front lawn.  This is not helpful.  Besides, we're pretty good at getting across all by ourselves.  After all, I lived on a state highway for 18 years.  This very busy street is a piece of cake, compared to that.

I need sunshine.  I need less wind.  And I need a second walk.  And a third, and a fourth.

Failing that, here's a shot of a couple of shore birds taking a walk the other day.  Apparently you don't have to be birds of a feather to walk together. 

Ok, so, Patterns

No, I didn't find the list.  What I did was go through a whole lot of pictures, and found some that sort of fit the subject matter.  These are all from a visit to Plum Island back in November.

This is not the Plum Island made notorious by some novelist (Nelson DeMille, in fact) a few years back.  It's not in Suffolk County, NY, for starters.  There's nothing at all sinister or mysterious about it.  And it's not really an island at all, tho it might once have been, presumably, which got it that name.  I never realized it even had a name, until a couple of weeks ago, when I was watching a video about Sandy Hook's history. 

This is the usual place we go, where you cross the road to get to the bay side of the Hook.  At high tide, there's not much there, it's mostly under water.  So the first thing is to check the tide charts before making the drive out there. 

Then, you can never quite count on it being the way it was the last time you saw it.  Depending on the weather and the tides, the configuration is different every time.  Some days there are interesting patterns, other days, not.

These are some of the ones I liked.

I imagine someone could explain how the water does that, shapes the sand differently in different places or at different times.  I'm not that person, however.  All I can do it look at it, and marvel at what nature can do when it's in a reasonably good mood.

Thank goodness that's over and done with

I really don't care much for the holidays.  Too much of the same people, over and over and over.  I need a new cast of characters.  Or to move Thanksgiving to August, to make more space between it and Christmas.

Before the holiday thing took over my life, I was working on a set of photos of patterns.  I'm kind of a pattern person, my brain sees patterns everywhere.  And the broken patterns, like those screens full of O's, with one Q stuck in the (not literally) middle.  I can pick out the wrong letter in a snap, without even looking.  Also, for that matter, the one missed note in a symphony.  It's not just my eyes, my ears do it, too.

It's going to take some time to backtrack, and find the pictures I was intending to post, so I'm not doing that now.  The list is on one of these post it notes that are laying all over my desk, I just have to find the right list.  Not now.

What I will put here is a photo I finally got a chance to take, tho I've been walking over and past it for months now.  I think it happened in the fall, when the leaves were first coming down.  And I always meant to stop and shoot it, but I'm usually attached to the dog at this point, who is dragging me down the street because something out there requires his attention.  Besides, it really doesn't look like much in the sun.  Or in the non-sun.  It's invisible at night, too. 

The perfect lighting is when it's raining in daylight, and the light is muted and soft, and there's enough wet to let it show up well.  We had a day like that, very recently, so after I brought the dog back home, I grabbed my camera and went out to get the shot.

I never really noticed, until I was looking at the picture, how interesting the texture of the sidewalk is, too.  You'd think concrete is just concrete colored, wouldn't you?

Dreary, wet December day

The picture says it all.  We got soaked on our (short) first walk; had a relatively nice, longer walk (our usual first walk route) around lunch time; got soaked again just now.  Still waiting for my socks to dry, two coats hanging in the bathroom, dripping.  Found my old Lands End Squall hat, and it is just the thing for this weather.  Even has ear flaps.  Almost matches my Squall jacket (they're a couple of years different in vintage).  Which I realized is over 20 years old.  Still works good.

All out of bird seed, have to make a bird seed run this week when I go out for groceries.  They've been super hungry, it's been kind of colder than usual for this time of year. 

Hope we get to see the full moon on Thursday, but it will probably still be raining, or maybe snowing, depending on the temperature.  Right now we're in the mid-50s, so rain, if that holds. 

There was a whole herd of deer next door the other evening, before the rain.  I guess someone put out pumpkins for them to eat.  Now what's left of the pumpkins is covered in blown leaves - the lawn peeps here use blowers, not rakes.  Very few poeple do their own, and even those use blowers. The pile of leaves behind my fence is up to my waist. 

They blew next door, and put a lot of leaves under my fence and into my back yard, which I had just raked.  I grabbed a guy and yelled at him, so he blew them back out of my yard, but also cleared away the leaves I intentionally left in the bed in the corner of the yard.  For the birds and other critters who need a spot to hide.  So I went out the other evening, also before the rain, and re-imported enough leaves to cover the back corner.  I prefer to leave the beds natural.  I can clean up any excess in the spring.

Did I mention the noise of the blowers gives me a headache?  I like raking.  I'm just sorry I have to use a metal rake now, I wasn't able to find a bamboo one, like I used to have.

At least we may finally be done with the lawn equipment noise for the season.  One can only hope. 

I really should be shredding

It's that time of year.  Another season worth of files can be shredded.  But if I do that, it will make a lot of noise.  And at the moment, doggo is sleeping, and I don't want to wake him up.  We just did a 3 mile hike at Thompson Park, including a section of ups and downs on the Reservoir Loop that we haven't done before, and another trail that got me a little bit lost, on the way back.

All that to say, doggo is tired.  So am I, but if I take a nap now, it will be hard to get to sleep tonite.  Besides, doggo is sprawled across my part of the bed.

So.  We met this little guy on the trail today.  He had just found something tasty to eat, and wasn't interested in moving aside to let the big scary dog and his attached human go by.  Eventually he moved enough for me to get doggo to walk on by, but he really wanted to get up close and personal with the little guy.  I reminded doggo about the "no hunting" signs that are all over the park.

It's mostly leafless now, but...with all the leaves on the ground, it's somewhat harder to follow the trails, as it isn't always apparent where the trail is as opposed to the not-trail.

Some areas get wind-cleared, but then in other places, it's up to doggo's nose to tell us where to go.  Lucky for me, he has a good nose.

I figured we'd go to Thompson today, because this week has afternoon high tides at the beach, which reduces the amount of places available to walk.  We were at Sea Bright yesterday, and noticed there has been a lot of beach erosion on the ocean side, and a big flooded area at the corner where I used to live, which NEVER flooded while I lived there.  I'm not taking either as a good sign.  The place where my Mom lives just rebuilt their bulkhead on the river, last year, which is lucky.  There's pretty much no beach on the river side anymore (there used to be a nice one), and I think the parking lot and eventually the building would be threatened by the higher waters in the not so distant future.  The bulkhead will put off the inevitable for a few years, at least.  Mom is 93, and she's not moving.  So I hope it all holds off a while yet.

Last time we were at Sandy Hook, one day last week, we got to explore an area new to us, where we had previously turned back due in part to a higher tide, and a plethora of birders, who are horrified that anyone would dare to take a dog out in nature.  So I got a pic of some Brant Geese, but I think the pic is more notable for the texture of the water than for the geese.  Wild geese (ie, not Canadas) seem to be camera shy.  (also keeping in mind I'm doing all this with a dog attached to one arm)

My recent favorite, tho, was this guy giving us a WTF look.

He had a bunch of friends nearby, so we prudently decided to go another way.

Gets exciting around here, some days.

Too busy lately. Or something.

Probably or something.  I've been out all over the place, taking lots of pictures, but just not in a mood to write and post or any of that share kind of thing.  Lots going on, not all of it good, but this, too, shall pass.

However, here I am now, and I'm going to go back to a day in October (the 26th, to be precise), when I figured we'd go to Pablo's Park for a short walk, and no, I didn't need to drag the camera, it's really overkill for the little park, and we're there all the time, yadda, yadda.

So what happens, I end up getting some really super pics on my phone, which, as long as I don't try to do anything with too much small detail or too zoomed in, really does ok pics, for a phone. 

We haven't had very much of what I'd call "fall color" around here.  And things like the ginkgo trees didn't even bother to turn golden, they just all of a sudden dropped ALL their leaves, still bright green, on the same day.  So it's kind of been a bust of a fall, imo. 

I don't have any mountains near here.  And our weather has been weird, to put it mildly.  It even snowed two days ago - Monday we had 65 and sunny, Tuesday it was low 30s and snow.  No accumulation, but plenty of shock and dismay.

But, going back to October 26, Pablo's Park.  Here you go.  The park has a pond in it, I think it's called Derry's Pond (there's a marker with the name on it, on the bank at one end).  The park used to, back in the days when I was a kid, be a Christmas tree farm, a fact I learned one day from a woman who I met walking there, back when Pablo was still with me.  She told me that when she was a kid, and we are around the same age, in the winter the pond would freeze over, and there would be ice skating.  Kind of like Kearny Park, up in north Jersey, where I grew up.

So I guess the pond isn't very deep, but it has frogs and turtles and snakes, all doing the pond kind of thing.  I'm good with that.  Pablo being a warm weather doggo, we never got there in the deep of winter to see if anyone still skates on it.  Of course, it hasn't been awfully cold to actually freeze much over, in recent years.  So who knows?

My point, tho, is that the shallowness of the pond makes the water look black, which in turn makes it act as a big mirror.  Which is the best part, aside from the turtles.  So here are my four favorite pics from that walk without a camera, and pretty much the best fall color I found this year.  Hope you like!

We've been all over the place lately

Since we're no longer going to the dog park, due to certain people being rather nasty ugly to us, we've been exploring other places.  One of them is Thompson Park, in Lincroft.  It's big, and in the course of several visits, we've not even covered half of it yet.  I keep hoping we might get over to the other side of the reservoir, but it's a really long hike over uneven terrain, and frankly, it's going to have to wait for cooler weather. 

That being said, here's the closer side of the reservoir.

Kinda scenic.  The trail is kind of fun, too, lots of ups and downs, tho we did get into a section I don't think I want to do again, too narrow and slippery and close to the cliff edge.  With the added feature of a couple of rather large trees to climb over, since they are laying across the path.  No problem for doggo, but I have short legs.

There are other, not so challenging trails, too.  This one is nice, makes me think of old mansions and stuff like that.

And actually, the whole park used to be the grounds of an estate, I suppose belonging to the Thompson family, hence the name.  This is what the visitor center looks like, and I suspect it used to be the house on the property.  Having a dog with me, I can't really march into the building and ask about the history.  One of these days, I'll have to look it up online.  Meanwhile, I'm busy trying to learn the park, so we don't get as lost as we did the first time we went there.

We see a lot of deer in the park, of course depending on how large the human population is at any given moment.  Doggo likes to lunge at deer.  My shoulders do not appreciate that.  We're working on reducing the lunging, but it's not an easy thing.

And some of the trails are kind of narrow, in places, just one dog wide. 

He's up for almost anything, as long as he doesn't have to get wet.  This is cool with me, last thing I need is a wet, smelly dog in my car on the way home.

And of course we always carry a bottle of water and his collapsible water bowl with us.  If I know how long a hike we're having, I'll leave it in the car, and we enjoy a water break before heading for home.  One thing I've learned about the parks around here, they generally don't have fountains.  The nice thing in Thompson Park is they have trash receptacles at reasonable intervals, so you don't wind up lugging bags of poop too far.

For the Birds

Bird pics today.  I'm figuring out how to get doggo to stop long enough for me to get a couple of pictures, now and again.  Believe me, it's not easy.  And I'm having to straighten my horizons again, something I mostly got over back in the olden days (several cameras ago).

But.  We went to Sandy Hook, now that it's local summer, and no fees, and dogs are mostly ok (not on ocean beaches till Sept 15, tho, so we stayed bayside).  First time for bandit.  These are walks I did a lot with his predecessors.

One of his mad dog lunges kind of sprained my left thumb, so it my typing looks shaky, that's probably not got anything to do with anything.  But it's kind of swollen, and sore.  Yes, I put ice on it, and took some advil-substitute little blue pills (tiny sized, for old folk who can't swallow big things anymore).

And actually, my typing is coming out sort of garbled anyhow today, so I'm not doing anything official or work-like or important to people other than myself.  Which was happening before the sprained thumb, so.  Day off was declared early.  Five miles walked was also declared early, but what the heck.

So.  Birds.

Bird up a tree.  Yellow beak, so I think it's a Great Egret.

Next, Turkey Buzzard.  I had a discussion with a couple who said they are from the Netherlands, on holiday, who said they had seen black buzzards, but this one has a sort of red head, so I'm going with Turkey Buzzard.  He wasn't thrilled to be having his pic taken, and so turned his back on me.

This one, I believe, is a Snowy Egret.  Black beak.  I wasn't able to see his or her feet, since it was standing in water.  But the black beaked ones have bright yellow feet.

And finally, the Black Burrower.  This seems to be a very local type, but I see it a lot.

Oh, wait!  You mean that's not a bird???  Hmmm.

He kind of liked the beach, but again refused to go in the water.  I like that. 

And if I can get him a bit better controlled in these escapades, I can get better pics, I hope.  There's room for improvement.  It's also a kind of hazy day, so I can't be credited entirely for the not prime pics, this time.  And, come to think of it, it's hard to get close to the birds with the dog attached to me.  They like to fly away when they perceive the threat, whereas I apparently am not as big a threat, without him.  But still.  It's something we'll be working on, as time goes on.

Promises, promises

I said I'd post something, so here we are.

Over the weekend, my kids and granddog were up from VA to help kill off some of the landscape - a weed-tree that was banging on my house, and another, bigger weed-tree that was banging on my power and internet lines.  Much success on #1, mostly success on #2.  #2 still needs some close to the earth trim out, but I can't do it now, we just fell out of this month's time period when it's ok and legal to dispose of yard waste.  I can't afford to have the town yard waste nazis fine me for putting debris out on the wrong part of the month.

We won't even discuss the chunk of #2 that is entwined in my internet line, and may come down at some future date thru force of decay and gravity.  It's way too high for anything I own to be able to reach it.

Anyhow, we also did the obligatory taking out of grandma (my mother) to dinner, which was nice.  Nice restaurant, decent food, and a good view.  And we got to feed the ducks at her place, before going to dinner.  Win-win.

More importantly, it was the first ever meeting of Bandit and my granddog, Kaylee.  They got a bit rough, Kaylee is getting older (she's 8 yo), and Bandit is just a puppy, so his idea of playing is somewhat different than hers.  But with a lot of refereeing by the humans, they figured out how to get along, and actually posed for a couple of pictures.

They both like sticks.  This is a particular stick, which isn't actually a stick, it is a root that my son dug out from under my patio a few years ago, which I've saved because Kaylee always enjoyed banging into people's kneecaps with it.  They shared nicely, I think.

And later, back in the kitchen, they both patiently did good sits while they waited for treats.

Kaylee is about double the size of Bandit.  Maybe plus a bit, as she gets older and doesn't race around as much as she used to do.

After they left, Bandit spent the rest of the day searching for her.  He didn't want her to go home.  But once "car ride" is mentioned, she's all for it, and can't wait to get in and go. 

He also got some training in, with Anna.  She's really good at it.  He now knows "paw" really well, which he never got before.  He'll turn into a civilized doggo at some point in time.  I hope soon.

Been busy lately

Everything has been flying by, the last couple of weeks, no time or patience to post.  But we're getting around, from place to place, visiting more parks and people, and trying to not go to the dog park so much, because frankly, some of the people there make me crazy.  Tho I have to say, the regulars are for the most part very nice, and some days it feels like a safe space.

Not so, today.  So we didn't stay long, and instead went to Pablo's park, which has finally dried out enough that I didn't come home with mud caked all the way to my ankles.  We met 5 dogs there, and Bandit jumped on two of them, was indifferent to two others, and made friends with the smallest of them all, along with its little kids.

No turtles today, but plenty of tiny frogs.  None of which stayed still long enuf for me to get pics.

Path in Pablo's park:

It's peaceful, when there aren't kids on bikes blasting thru. 

On Friday last week, we also had a bad day at the dog park, so we left after a very short time, and took a later trip out to Hartshorne Woods, which is at the top (and bottom, technically) of a large promontory that over looks the shore, and has an old gun battery at the top (18 ft canons, they're impressive, and could apparently shoot an awfully long distance).  We started at the top, and went about halfway down, mainly because of my lack of confidence in being able to get back up the hill (this varies from day to day, depending on how I feel, and the temp/humidity combo).  We (mostly) used the paved walkways, which does make it somewhat easier (maybe).  Until you get down to the river, tho, there's not much scenery other than trees, but just as you're leaving the battery, you get this view down the hill, overlooking the ocean.

 Clouds, sky, ocean, in that order, top to bottom.  It's WAY far down.  Bandit isn't into getting wet, so it's just as well we didn't go all the way down.  And all you get at the bottom is river, the ocean is on the other side of the Sea Bright/Sandy Hook peninsula.

We also one day did the other side of Thompson Park, away from the mass of people, and it was nice.  We even were surprised by a deer, which with Bandit is one of those shoulder-popping experiences, as he launched himself after the deer, nevermind being on leash.  At least he went forward this time, so he didn't spin and land me on my tush.

Yes, all the parks kind of look alike, but they each have different smells, which is, I think, why we go to more than one. 

On my wish list, I want to start Hartshorne at the bottom, where the trails climb up to the battery.  Tried it once with Pablo, and it quickly got too steep for him.  Then, when we tried to go down that side from the top, he got scared of the woods.  That's the side away from the water.  It's a big park.

That's probably the best thing about Monmouth County.  They've got good parks.