Good Morning Moon!

The moon this morning when I left for work.  It's shrouded behind the trees but was big, full and bright.  I was treated to a beautiful pink view out the window at work this morning when I arrived.  No picture but trust me, it was gorgeous.


 

My Mom and I started this jigsaw puzzle two weeks before Thanksgiving and continued working on it when she visited for Thanksgiving dinner.  It's a stretch to think we are halfway done and I have my orders not to touch it until she gets back.  I'll make sure to take a picture when we finish it.

If it's as cold where you are as it is here, I hope you are keeping warm.

Lookout Bambi!

Today was the first day of rifle deer season, specifically buck hunting.  The does need to be wary beginning on Saturday.

When I left for work this morning, it was raining hard.  The closer I got to work the rain turned to big snowflakes.  Later in the morning, Mr P was looking out the windows toward the back of our property and saw this doe.  You can see the dusting of snow on the ground which is still there because the temperatures never got above 34 degrees during the day.

Behind the first doe, four more followed for a total of five.   I'm sure the herds need thinned out but hate to think of them being hunted.  Oh well, buck season lasts for two weeks and I'm unsure how long doe season lasts.    

Thought I would throw in a picture of the table (sans food) set for our Thanksgiving dinner.  My Mom was our guest for the day and we enjoyed the usual dinner - turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes with a baked sweet potato for me, corn, brussel sprouts.  In lieu of pumpkin pie for dessert, there was a delicious coconut cream pie.
Mom and I worked on a jigsaw puzzle that we started a few weeks ago while Mr. P watched football on the TV.

We had a little celebration at the library tonight to wish one of the regular Tuesday night volunteers a happy holiday season.  M will be in attendance at the Annual Library Volunteer Dinner on Friday evening and then leaves for warmer climes the next day until next spring.  There was hot cider and pumpkin roll and the librarian gave her an adorable crocheted robin to take along to remind her we will be awaiting her return in the spring.
Stay warm and have a good rest of the week.

The return trip

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the return trip of my recent walk would follow and so here it is.

Can you see the groundhog looking out from his den?   On the trip out, there was a rustling sound off to my left when I stepped off the two lane highway with the wide berms onto another side road.  This groundhog was out of his den and there was a black and white cat facing him down.  I couldn't believe a cat would take on a groundhog but they were staring at each other and preparing to square off.  I called out to try and chase the groundhog back into his den or send the cat along its way. No luck.

Animal lover that I am, I envisioned a nasty fight breaking out and bloodshed.  Next step was to throw a stone close to one of them.  After several tosses the groundhog retreated into his den and peered out at me.  The cat didn't budge and in fact, crouched down making throaty, threatening noises at me.  That decided it .  The cat was on its own!  I continued on my walk expecting to see a maimed or dead cat on the return trip.

Imagine my surprise when, on the way back, I saw the cat gone and Mr. Groundhog staring up at me from his den as I lectured him on not fighting in the future.


Another picture of the turning point on the walking route.  The horse farm that was in the last picture in the previous post (on the right) is now off to the left of this picture.  The road curves to the right somewhat as you can see and there is a rise in the road just out of sight.

Here we are, around the curve above and up the rise, walking towards the two lane highway with the wide berms.  That highway is just visible at what appears to be the end of the road in the picture below which intersects with the highway.  Mr. Groundhog was almost at the end of this road on the right hand side just down an embankment.

Well, we've walked along the highway and turned onto the road which intersects (eventually) with the street where I live.    Some areas of the road below have heavy tree cover which makes for slow snow melt in the winter because the sun doesn't reach the roadway to melt it as quickly as the areas that see the sun.  However, it's one of the cooler spots on our walk in warm weather because of all the shade.

Finally, we're on the home stretch of our walk.  My driveway is the first one on the right hand side as we continue down this street.  You're welcome to stop and put your feet up,  have a cold drink of water or if the weather is cold, a hot cup of tea or coffee.
I hope you enjoyed walking along the route that my walking buddies and I follow.  Today's walk was especially nice in the balmy, sunny weather.  

Snow flurries are forecast to begin early tomorrow morning which could make my morning commute to work interesting but later this week nice weather is to return.

A book I put on hold at the library was ready for pickup today and I can hardly wait to begin reading it.  The BBC television series "Call the Midwife" is based on the book "Call the Midwife, A Memoir of Birth, Joy and Hard Times" and I've been waiting a while for my turn to read it.  The series I watched on public television was delightful.
I hope everyone had a good day today and a good week this week.

The Walking Route

On a recent Friday, I took the day off work for some appointments that were rescheduled due to Hurricane Sandy.  My appointments were in the morning and the day was absolutely gorgeous.  After lunch, I decided to take advantage of the nice weather and take a walk along the usual route taken with my walking buddies, R and R.

This post will be part one - the trip out with another post being the trip back.

This picture was taken at the top of my driveway as I turned left onto the street.  You can't really tell but the area on the right before the pine tree is very swampy with lots of wet, mucky mud.  Cat o nine tails grow there during warmer weather.  I point this out because last weekend when R and I headed out at 6AM in the semi-dark, a car was plopped in the swamp.  The mishap had occured hours earlier and the driver had crawled out of the car in knee deep mud, let the homeowner know he was sitting in his swamp and departed for home on muddy feet.  Neither one of us was eager to use our flashlights to look in the car to see if someone was needing help so we turned around quickly and sought assistance from Mr. P.  We were able to continue our walk knowing all was okay.
At the tee in the road which you can just see at the end of the road in this picture, I made a left hand turn.


Off to the right hand side of the road, there has been some logging taking place.  This picture is for  Anne who loves heavy equipment at  www.frayedattheedge.typepad.co.uk

This is part of the road traveled once the left hand turn is made off my street.  As you can see Friday is trash collection day in our area.

At the end of this road, a two lane "highway" with fairly wide berms needs crossed and traveled on for a short distance.  At the end of this piece of highway, another left hand turn is made towards the Alpaca Farm.  There will be no pictures of the alpacas unless I get in the car and make a visit to the farm which is open to the public and also has a gift shop of items made from alpaca hair.  

The left hand turn takes me to a rise in the road and at the top of the rise, is a barn and farmhouse just beyond the pasture on the right which is my turning point in the walk.  The barn used to house a lot of horses, both the homeowners and horses being boarded.   A terrible fire several years ago burned the barn and there was a loss of many of the animals.  We would see some horses out grazing after things were somewhat reconstructed but now we see very few.  

While we don't see the horses any longer and there are no other farms on the walk were we would see sheep or other livestock, we do see a few regulars - cats, dogs, chickens and a goat.  In my next post I will show you the critter I came upon on my walk on this particular day who caused me to chuckle.

Yesterday's walk was in very cold, windy weather with a few snow flurries thrown in for good measure.  Today's walk was the same minus the wind and snow.  Flurries are forecast for Tuesday of this week.

Hope everyone in the US had a nice Thanksgiving and good weekend.  

Unscathed and blessed

Hurricane Sandy hit the eastern seaboard of the US last week and we were in it's path.  Fortunately, this area was relatively unscathed.  The rain came down, heavy at times, over serveral days.
My work was canceled on Monday and Tuesday of last week.  Unnecessary travel was discouraged.  Everyone waiting in anticipation of what would happen next.

 The second picture below shows the water level in The Puddle Pond towards the end of the onslaught.  The water flowed out the outlet pipe, into the stream which you can see in another picture below and then out into a much larger pond a neighbor has on his property.

Our main worry was the roots of the trees getting saturated and the wind then uprooting them.  The only casualty was a tree that fell on the path to the pond which was easily moved.  Any others that fell came down in the woods and caused no problems.

Our thoughts are with those in New Jersey and New York who were hardest hit by this monster storm.  Having helped a close friend's family in 1972 to clean up in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes, I can remember vividly the smells, mud, junk, etc that was present afterward.  I can't begin to imagine what the feeling would be to have no home to go back to.

Directly below is the 1st of the month picture of The Puddle Pond.  You can see how high the water level reached.

Mr P took many walks down to the Puddle and around the property during the storm and the photo below shows the rain falling.  You can also see at the top of the hill the work that continues on those  power line towers. Most of them have been completely erected but the electric lines themselves have not  yet been re-strung.  What a big, imposing eyesore they are compared to the towers they replaced!  Work on them is at a standstill probably because of the muddy ground and the possibility of getting their heavy equipment stuck.

Here is a portion of the stream that runs along part of our property and you can see the water running fast and furious.  Normally, there is very little water flowing down this stream and it's quiet. 

Deer hunting season began here recently (bow and arrow) and the bucks are in rut (mating season).  The forsythia planted down at the Puddle has suffered quite a big of damage from bucks rubbing their antlers to remove the "velvet" which is itchy.  These plants should revive themselves next spring but they certainly took a hit.

Last weekend the last of the ripe figs were plucked from the fig tree.  A batch of fig preserves had been made previously and gifted to several people who were interested in trying it.  There were enough figs in the final picking to prepare one more batch of preserves.  One of the gals I volunteer with at the library, who also happens to have a fig tree, insisted I would be able to get enough figs to make another batch of preserves.  Her insistance was self-serving in that she wanted to sample the preserves.  Do you hear this MW?  Your pint jar of preserves will be hand delivered to you on Tuesday evening.  The two jars in the back are the leftovers from the processing of the last neck pumpkin.  The rest of the pumpkin was baked into two pumpkin pies.  

The pumpkin along with a jar of the preserves is for OnlyDaughter, OnlySonInLaw and Grandsons #1 and #2.  I don't know if the boys will want to try the preserves but they will surely eat the pumpkin bread their Mom will make.

My walking buddy, R, and I went on our walk yesterday heading out in the dark.  Daylight Savings time ended and the clocks were turned back an hour overnight.  Our walk this morning began in the semi-light we usually have about halfway through our walk.  The downside is that it will be dark shortly after I arrive home from work in the evenings making it much harder to get out to walk.

 I'm looking forward to watching "Call the Midwife" tonight on PBS.  What a delightful BBC series!

I hope everyone had a good weekend.  The Williamsburg posts will return sometime this week.