Placeholder, yet again

Posted on November 5, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

5 November, 2017            Placeholder, yet again

Some weeks, blog posts just write themselves. Then, in sharp contrast, there’s weeks like this. I just looked and this is my 312th blog post since I began this blog on March 2, 2011 – with a blog post with no picture! The only one I’ve ever done, I’m pretty sure. This blog post has almost no pictures, and even less text. So a few pictures I’ve enjoyed – a little bit – and I’ll let it go for seven days.

I did a post this week last year called The worst form of government. It’s not a brilliant post either, but the content is appropriate for today. This is how it opens: 6 November, 2016            The worst form of government

“…democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms…” – Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947

So anyway, vote on Tuesday.

And this is how it closes: The worst form of government

I understand that we’re seeing the worst of “the worst form of government,” at least in my lifetime. But it’s better than any other form. America will do great. Just vote. May the best candidate win.

So anyway, just vote.

I trust the process. Things will work out. Make sure you vote.

An apolitical image – the mighty James River, around 11:00 this morning:

The mighty James River this morning, not in cheerful light, but no less beautiful:

I took this picture of lichen on granite about ten yards from where I took the preceding picture, five minutes later. Lichen is fascinating stuff – part algae, part fungus. I understand very little about it. It’s gorgeous, though.

Lichen (and maybe moss) on granite within a few feet of the James River this gray and lovely morning

This week I finished a book called The Living Forest: A Visual Journey into the Heart of the Woods by Joan Maloof and Robert Llewellyn. Every hike at Pony Pasture is “a visual journey into the heart of the woods” and Ms. Maloof and Mr. Llewellyn piqued my curiosity about lichen (and about a lot of other features that tend to fade into the background if I look at them too often). Ms. Maloof’s text and Mr. Llewellyn’s photographs encouraged me to revisit some fascinating sights on our hike.

Ms. Maloof wrote about how different bark is on so many different trees, and I’ve always been calmed by the steady texture. It only occurred to me as I typed the last sentence how ironwood resembles granite. 

That’s just bark on wood. Isn’t it spectacular?

This post is thin on color and texture (and content and interest, possibly) so I’ll wind up with a couple of flashes of color.

Moss gleaming on the forest floor

And finally, brightest picture of the week, our nasturtiums continue to thrive – even today (though I took this picture Wednesday):

Evelyn’s nasturtiums are not meek or weak

I’ll close with a quote from Albert Einstein that Ms. Maloof used in the book: “What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.” I’m drawn to the concept of “…a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”

Have a great week,

Jay

Posted in Flowers, Fun, fungus, James River, Pony Pasture, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Let somebody else do the heavy lifting!

Posted on October 29, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

29 October, 2017            Let somebody else do the heavy lifting! 

Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) stretching its wings on the cross on top of Discovery United Methodist Church

That’s the one good picture I’ve taken this week. Regarding the title of this post, some readers (assuming I have more than one) may recall a blog post I did in 2014 called “Guest photographer!” I did another in the Spring of this year called “Return of the guest photographer.” Both of those posts had excellent pictures taken by my buddy Ethan. He did the “heavy lifting” for those posts. I hiked with my friend Sam at Pony Pasture one day this week and he spotted and helped photograph the biggest crowd of deer I’ve seen there. So Sam did the heavy lifting (photographically) one day this week. I’ll put it in here in a moment. Then another day this week my friend David photographed a Red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus) so he did the heavy lifting! I’ve had a light load. 

David and I were walking around in western Henrico this week when a Red-shouldered hawk swooped over our heads and landed in a tall loblolly pine at the edge of the parking lot. I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture so we’d recall it was there. I’ll insert that in a moment. But when the hawk stopped – these birds hunt by sitting still for several minutes – I said “do you want to get my real camera and see if we can get a good picture?” We were right next to my car, so I grabbed the camera and we moved for a better angle. Here’s when we first saw it. 

Red-shouldered hawk, dead center, left side of the trunk ~1/3 of the way down (it’s difficult to see but it’s there). It’s brown:

We went up around the other side and took advantage of the raptor’s calm nature for this image. I gave David this camera and he took this picture: 

Magnificent Red-shouldered hawk photographed by my friend David.

David may be holding out on me, but I think not. To my knowledge, that is the first time in his life he’s ever pointed a camera at a raptor. I’d been photographing hawks for two years and I’d taken a couple of thousand pictures before I could do that. He definitely was in the right place at the right time.

David is a lifelong cat lover. The Wildlife Center of Virginia posted an article today called The Case for Indoor Cats. They also wrote (around lunchtime today) “Happy National Cat Day! Keeping cats indoors keeps a variety of wild animals safe — and indoor cats live much longer too, and who doesn’t want that? Share a photo of your #HappyIndoorCat here!” In addition the hashtag  “#HappyIndoorCat” I tagged it “#songbirdsRsafe”. This is Dash, our #HappyIndoorCat: 

#HappyIndoorCat                    #songbirdsRsafe

It was earlier in the week when I was hiking with Sam at Pony Pasture. Sam did the “heavy lifting” (photographically) in the park. This wasn’t quite the full herd – they were scattered around the edges, and behind – but look at this group. I count eight deer:

I count eight whitetail deer in this image

They were grazing calmly in that picture. That’s how healthy herd animals spend much of their daylight hours. We’d watched them and photographed them, and they watched us, and continued to graze. Sam took a bunch of the pictures and a couple of videos. But I was holding the camera at 5:27 – after we’d been photographing them for fifteen minutes – when someone came up on the other side and they burst into flight and disappeared in the woods. Watch this eighteen second video. For the first ten seconds they just stand around. At the ten second mark it’s like flipping a switch. All eight of them – or more – bolt and leap and sprint out of the right side of the image. It was a treat to see it. Have a look – this one’s worth watching: 

Buffleheads are not in Richmond yet – and neither is the first frost. The trade-off for no buffleheads is continued gardenias. I’ll keep inhaling and photographing gardenias as long as they’re open. The buffleheads will get here when they get here. I took this picture at 8:30 this morning. On October 29th!:

Gardenia opening up on the morning of October 29, 2017. Incredible.

Here’s a picture from two hours later at Pony Pasture. Turner is by no means an adventure-avoidant animal. The opposite, as a matter of fact. But swimming is one form of adventure that’s never interested him. For Mackey (top, the black dog) and Yuki (center the white dog), more water is better. For Turner (bottom, the brown dog) the closest he likes to get to water is a drink from his bowl:

Two hours after the gardenia picture. Mackey (top) Yuki (middle) Turner (bottom)

Turner plays super-hard when he’s in the park. He pulls so steadily and so enthusiastically, my leash arm is slightly longer than my non-leash arm. But when we get home, he likes to pile up his toys and watch the world go by:

A boy and his toys

The gardenias are still beyond compare. That one near the top of this blog post is about two fork lengths away from the screen doors on our back porch – you can smell them all the time. But the days (especially today) are getting shorter and wetter and colder, and Ev cuts some flowers and brings them indoors where we can enjoy them even more:

A treat for my eyes (beautiful), nose (gardenia, obviously) and ears (they’re quiet, my favorite sound)

I’m going to close with (hopefully you’re not exhausted with all of these) a familiar “local” Red-tail. I got my first decent image of a Red-tail in May of 2015. Since then, through reading and photography, I’ve become more familiar than average with Red-tails. As you’ve no doubt noticed. A great deal of their charm for me lies in their predictability. They don’t do things you don’t expect. When I think they’ll show up somewhere, I’m usually correct. And when I’m there with my camera, it’s calm. When I’m pointing, when I’m focusing, when I’m framing, when I’m moving around for the best angle and for the best light – I always feel peaceful. Even when they fly off just when I’m hoping for an image, or when they haven’t been around in a long time, it’s all relaxing. They have an agenda, but it’s simple – pass their DNA on to a new generation. They don’t know that’s their agenda – at least I’m relatively certain they don’t – but it is. They do it by keeping themselves healthy and producing healthy offspring. Perfect for humans too! I hadn’t seen a “Westbury Red-tail” (on the cell phone tower in the Westbury Apothecary parking lot) in a while and I was happy when this one showed up Saturday afternoon. I apologize for the faint blurring; I zoomed in a bit too much. But I like the image:

Westbury redtail

It didn’t occur to me until I put this up, but this is a perfect post to see the difference between a Red-tailed hawk and a Red-shouldered hawk. David took a great shot of a Red-shoulder; look near the top of this post (third picture down). See how the breast of the Red-shoulder has a faint orange wash with scattered white stripes? Compare that with this Red-tail. The Red-tail’s breast is mostly whitish with a couple of brown spots. Coloring in both species is identical for males and females. From the front it’s pretty easy to distinguish the two.   

Have an excellent week! All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, buffleheads, cats, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, James River, Pony Pasture, raptors, red-shouldered hawks, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, roses, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), whitetail deer, Wildlife Center of Virginia | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Shenandoah Gap

Posted on October 22, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

22 October, 2017 Shenandoah Gap

Shenandoah River, S Fork, Page Co., VA Saturday, 10/21/2017, 12:45 PM

A year ago this month, I was at a property owners meeting here with my Mom. This is the South Fork of the Shenandoah River in Page County, Virginia. It’s the western border or Shenandoah Gap, a small mountain community where she owned a couple of wooded acres. When she died suddenly in January, this is part of what she left to my brothers and sisters and me. It was a bit unsettling to flash back to a year ago but, as you can see, the view – and the sounds and smells that accompany it – goes a long way toward calming unsettled nerves. Plus I had Mackey and Turner with me (last year too) so it was a positive experience.

The land itself has cash value in the marketplace. But the experiences she and Dad gave us growing up near there – they have infinite value. The feeling I get when I look at that river – and at other rivers – comes straight from the way we were brought up.

Likewise for my experience here:

I can assure you they are honorable animals

Aren’t people great?

I’ve mentioned in earlier blog posts we heated our cabin up there with a woodstove. I had my first fire of the season Tuesday evening. Our handsome orange cat Dash appreciates many things, but I suspect fires in the woodstove are at or near the top of his list:

This is a cat who desires nothing

When Mackey and Turner and I were up in the mountains yesterday we went hiking after the meeting. We hiked up to where our property is. Along the way we came to a place where a spring fed creek crosses the trail. Mackey and Turner stopped for a cold drink:

Stopping for a cool drink

Mom wasn’t a true forager, but she’d pick and eat any blueberries or blackberries she saw. This patch of creek was filled with watercress forty years ago, and it still is. You could eat it any time you walked past. I pulled some up and ate it yesterday afternoon. It was cool and spicy and crisp and tasted like fresh outdoor air:

Watercress growing in spring water

We had old, old friends up there, now long gone, named Doug and Doris. Mackey and Turner and I walked up to visit their old property. This was the barn where they kept their cow Mary Jane. Doug would sit on a stool and milk her into a galvanized bucket. I remember watching him do that in the winter, hearing the jets of milk rattle as they hit the metal, watching the steam rise from the cow temperature milk in the brittle winter air: 

Doug and Doris’s barn – home of their cow and LOTS of hay:

Doris had a butter churn that was a one gallon glass jar with a screw on top and a handle going down to a two-bladed wooden paddle. She’d fill the jar with cream that had separated from Mary Jane’s milk. When you pushed down the paddles would spin one direction and when you pulled up they’d spin the opposite direction. Butter would appear quickly. I will never forget – because this is the kind of weird thing you never forget – a time when a lot of onion grass sprouted and Mary Jane ate it. The flavor of onions in the butter was not overpowering, but it was far too strong to ignore.

Here is a picture of a couple of their sheds. The barn in the last picture is out of sight just to the left. Their house is just to the right. The pig sty was in the right foreground, right behind that little yellow “posted” sign.

Doug and Doris’s sheds; their house is out of sight on the right side

When Doris died I was surprised to learn she wanted my Dad and me to be pallbearers at her funeral. Doris was irreverent, my Dad was irreverent, there was infinite respect but the irreverence was unbroken with both of them. At her funeral there was an open casket viewing and the mourners dutifully walked past the casket to pay their last respects. She died in June of 1999, so it’s been eighteen years. But if I live to be a hundred I’ll never forget. We were in suits, of course, it was silent except for soft murmurs and the occasional sniffle. Maybe a hundred people in there, more or less. Dad’s behind me as we file past the casket and he mutters in my ear “I think that’s the longest I’ve ever seen her with her mouth shut.” I took Mackey and Turner to visit the cemetery where she’s buried on the way home. I couldn’t find her tombstone, but it’s one of these – as good a  place as any other to spend eternity:

If you had to spend eternity here, you could do a lot worse

My love of dogs and cats and of the outdoors comes in equal parts from both Mom and Dad. Mom loved bluebirds too, but Dad was a little obsessed. Bluebirds were purely “his” thing. In the basement of our old house he’d screw together twelve foot long 1 x 6’s and make a long square wooden pipe. Then at regular distances he’d make a diagonal cut, then a straight cut. Yielding two pieces of the square wooden pipe, each with a flat bottom and a sloping top, ready to have a roof screwed on. Mass production of bluebirds houses. Here are a couple of pictures I took at Deep Run Park (of copperhead fame) this week:

Bluebird with a mouthful of stuff on the roof of a picnic shelter at Deep Run

Same bird, same roof, different pose

Today is October 22 and I took these pictures this morning. Feast your eyes, because we’ll get a frost soon and this will be all over until 2018. Not to worry though – Buffleheads appear on the river at first frost. You’ll be seeing bufflehead pictures on this blog either next week (10/29) or the week after (11/5). Maybe we’ll still have flowers next week. But it’s amazing already. Gardenia and rose from today:

This gardenia bloomed in our backyard this morning. It smells even prettier than it looks if you can imagine

Same time as the gardenia, maybe 10 feet away. Can you even believe that?

Almost forgot – I took my five dog pack to Pony Pasture last week and this week. I can’t tell you how difficult it is to get all five in the frame at once. Took this picture today:

Yuki white on the left, Lola brown on the right, Mackey black in the foreground, Turner brown on the left, Luna black and white

Have a great week,

Jay

 

 

 

 

Posted in Birds, buffleheads, cats, Dogs, firewood, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, James River, People, Pony Pasture, pumpkins, Rivers, roses, Shenandoah River, Shenandoah Valey, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

A story I never knew

Posted on October 15, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

15 October, 2017            A story I never knew

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

I was hiking in Deep Run Park Friday – the same place I’ve twice photographed copperhead snakes – when a more appealing sight caught my eye. It was 1,000 origami cranes. This is just a few of them – I didn’t know what I was seeing or I would have gotten a better image. I’ll finish this story at the bottom of this post.

I didn’t anticipate this happening, but this has been a taxing post to write. So I’m going to put in a few images from this week and take these no-good dogs for a walk then go to sleep. Here are a couple gardenias Evelyn cut from the backyard and put on our kitchen windowsill. The window was open and I got to smell these while I was doing dishes. Everybody should try it!

Gardenias in front of an open window – the perfect spot

Meanwhile, out in nature – although I took this picture on the side of the road in West Creek – this honeysuckle still smells divine – in mid-October:

Sweet smelling flower blooming outdoors on October 14:

I’m on the Shenandoah National Park (SNP) Facebook page and on October 13 they wrote an entry about Fall colors. Sassafras was a tree I learned about when I was young and I’ve always been fascinated with them. So my ears pricked up when I read this on the SNP Facebook page: “The scene-stealer this week, though, is sassafras. Sassafras trees, like sumacs, are the mood rings of the Appalachian woods. In the Park this week you can see the whole gamut of sassafras shades – single trees glittering jewel-tones of both crimson and green, startling as mangoes in every stage of ripeness, or dressing themselves in classic monotones like auburn, paprika, and Velveeta orange. A sassafras near Calf Mountain Overlook seven miles from Skyline Drive’s southern end glowed a luminous light red, like a glass of Pinot Noir on the Thanksgiving table.”  

So when I was at Deep Run on Friday – both before and after I saw the origami cranes – I was photographing sassafras trees. I thought this one illustrated the SNP entry best. Two sassafras trees side by side, one still mostly green, the other, to borrow a phrase from the SNP’s description, ‘…a luminous light red, like a glass of Pinot Noir on the Thanksgiving table.” Have a look:

Mostly green sassafras on the left, mostly red sassafras on the right

There are hawks still – although nothing brilliant. But I’m always grateful to get a “double” even when the quality is lacking. These two were on the tower near Freeman HS on Wednesday morning around 11:00:

Gloomy sky but a great looking pair of Red-tails

I flew for nearly an hour on Tuesday, but my Thursday lesson and my lesson this morning were cancelled due to low cloud cover. This is the plane I flew Tuesday:

2003 Cessna 172S

Have a great week! All best,

Jay

===========

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes

I saw those cranes and knew they meant something but didn’t know what. I googled “origami swans” and came to the story of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. I found it on Amazon and bought it (Kindle) and read it; it didn’t take an hour. This is the brief summary on goodreads: “Hiroshima-born Sadako is lively and athletic–the star of her school’s running team. And then the dizzy spells start. Soon gravely ill with leukemia, the “atom bomb disease,” Sadako faces her future with spirit and bravery. Recalling a Japanese legend, Sadako sets to work folding paper cranes. For the legend holds that if a sick person folds one thousand cranes, the gods will grant her wish and make her healthy again. Based on a true story, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes celebrates the extraordinary courage that made one young woman a heroine in Japan.”

As some of you are aware, my dog Ivory and I did Animal Assisted Therapy in pediatrics at VCU-MCV for more than a decade. The first person we spent time with was named Whitney. We first met her in 2002. She had a tumor in her brain but fortunately for all of us it went into remission. She relapsed in 2007 and didn’t make it the second time. I remember a lot of people and a lot of events from my years working at MCV, but none stands out the way Whitney does. She was fifteen when she died in June of 2007.

I regret not writing more clearly about this post. I didn’t know the significance of the origami cranes until just before I began typing. So all the memories about Whitney didn’t come flooding back until just now. So I’m going to cut-and-paste a blurb I wrote about Whitney on this blog back in April. And I’ll close with that. Here’s what I wrote:

===

…I did animal assisted therapy for eleven years at MCV. While doing that work, I became very close friends with a twelve year old girl and her parents and her brother. I met her on her first admission for a neuroblastoma; she was young and healthy and it went into remission quickly. Ivory and I were still doing pet therapy when she was readmitted five years later with a relapse. We continued to visit as the disease ran its course. She loved dolphins. The last time we visited her she was in the Pediatric ICU; her head was propped up and a tube was vacuuming the saliva she couldn’t swallow out of her mouth. She had dolphin earrings on and Ivory was being present for her; I’m still trying to master that. I couldn’t take my eyes off those dolphin earrings as the jiggled slightly from the vibration of her breathing tube.

Later I took Ivory home. I went up to the Y to swim, so I’d be able to sleep that night. Everyone was gathered around the television. A Virginia Tech senior had just shot and killed thirty-two people then killed himself. That was ten years ago this week. I am still appalled to think about the way I felt standing in that Y. All these people had just been murdered. I could not get the image of those dolphin earrings out of my head. Looking at the people who had been murdered was horrible, watching my friend slowly die was horrible, the fact that I could only direct my full attention to one of those things – and it had to be one of those things – was horrible. That was on April 16 of 2007. We visited the hospital once a month. I don’t recall our May visit. She died on June 10.

Ivory and I did pet therapy for eleven years. So many people changed my life, constantly. The people who are the most unforgettable – like her – are the  ones who have taught you the most.

===

===========

Posted in Birds, Cessna 172, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, honeysuckle, People, Pony Pasture, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

 All in a day’s hike

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

8 October, 2017            All in a day’s hike

The river does not always have a cheerful countenance

I took that picture today at 12:30. It’s not even in black and white – that’s a color picture! The most notable thing about the weather at Pony Pasture today was the still air. The air was just stopped. You don’t notice the constant gentle breeze up the riverbank until it vanishes without a trace. Pony Pasture was like walking around in a big green closet. You could smell everything perfectly because the wind wasn’t blowing the smell away. You could smell the brown leaves and the green, the dirt, the water, the air, branches, sand, wood, there were pockets of smell everywhere we hiked. We saw zero deer. They may have seen us but we never saw them. I can’t imagine they like this weather – they learn a lot by smelling.

We had almost the opposite conditions Wednesday when Mackey and Turner and another buddy did the same hike. As I was coming down Riverside Drive, I saw a lone male Belted kingfisher (Megaceryle alcyon ) hunting from a low branch:

Male kingfisher on a fishing expedition

Notice the blue sky and green trees reflecting off the water? A few minutes later the dogs and I got to the river and met our buddy and started hiking. We heard a helicopter traveling west up the river and I clicked the shutter just as it was passing over our heads:

There is no end to the variety of birds you can see at Pony Pasture

We hiked along down to the golf course; the water’s been low all week and there’s a sand spit reaching out into the river. We walked out on it and found this odd little frog looking for dampness. Please correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think that green stripe is pigment – I think it’s algae. But I don’t know – it was small:

My guess that green color comes from algae. But correct me if I’m wrong.

We hiked up beside the golf course and came out into the field that’s the “Pasture” in Pony Pasture, and it appeared they’d just cut it that day. There was a tractor parked in the corner. On the far side of the field a large doe was sauntering along the edge. Fifty yards behind her, following at a leisurely pace, were three large youngsters. I don’t know if they were all hers but it’s not out of the question. They were dawdling along behind the adult, nibbling at the greenery that tractor had recently revealed. They were acting like we didn’t exist, even though Mackey and Turner were pulling on their leashes. Until my buddy stifled a sneeze and all three heads popped up like they were marionettes:

An instant before I took this picture, all three snouts were deep in the greenery

I am undeniably a person who sees more hawks than average. But Monday I believe I saw more hawks in one day than I’ve ever seen in my life. At my house, at my work, on the way to the Y, on the way home, commuting, it was non stop. I was taking pictures of one in my backyard when a second one flew three feet over my head. I was driving home from work in the morning when one crossed Patterson Avenue not six feet above the hood of my car.

Here are two pictures of the same Red-shouldered hawk, both taken in my backyard Monday, October 2. First it was perched in a tree watching me:

Male red-shouldered hawk gazing at me in our backyard

Then it hopped into a pine tree in our next-door-neighbor’s yard and faced away from me a moment. Just as I clicked it flew off:

The hawk’s in the lower left, just dropped away from the branch and headed out

I got a shaky video of it while it was on the first tree. The video isn’t much to look at but it has a good solid Red-shouldered hawk call:

Red-shouldered hawk short scream  

I glimpsed a shaded mockingbird on our bird bath yesterday:

Mockingbird slakes its thirst in our backyard yesterday

Flying is progressing slowly – I’m grasping the basics. Soon I hope to take a picture from the air. But this is one of the Cessna 172’s I fly regularly; I took this picture late Tuesday morning just before my lesson began:

N9525V – 1998 Cessna 172R – Hanover airport

Enough for this week – I got off to a late start. Have an excellent week! All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, Cessna 172, Dogs, Fun, James River, mockingbirds, Pony Pasture, raptors, red-shouldered hawks, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), whitetail deer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Two Presidents, one church, no politics, no religion

Posted on October 1, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

1 October, 2017            Two Presidents, one church, no politics, no religion

President Carter’s non-political, non-religious message

I watched a DVD of the Sunday school class President Jimmy Carter taught at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, GA on August 27, 2017. President Carter spoke about President Trump and it was a Sunday in a church so it’s tempting to think both politics and religion – two subjects I avoid on this blog – would be in the conversation. They were, but they were not the most significant lesson, and they were forgettable compared with President Carter’s most important message of the day. That message is summed up in the two white words on the red background at the top of this blog post. I’ll return to that at the bottom of this post. After a handful of pictures.

I hope no one’s heart was badly broken when they read last week’s blog post (Venomous snake video, my first fox, more) and didn’t see a single Red-tailed hawk (Buteo jamaicensis). I won’t make up for that omission with more than one picture this week, but I will include this. The most predictable Red-tails I’ve seen recently perch on the cross at Discovery United Methodist Church at 13000 Gayton Road in Henrico, VA. I took this picture on Wednesday (9/27) at 9:15 AM:

Regular Red-tail – Discovery United Methodist Church

I went to Hollywood Cemetery with a buddy a few hours later. If you’re unfamiliar with it, the cemetery is at 412 South Cherry Street in Richmond. It’s perched on a hill overlooking the falls of the James River, where it’s been since 1850. There are millions of good photographs of it, but I haven’t added any. The light was still pretty like it was in the morning and I did take this picture inside the mausoleum looking out south across the river:

Looking south across the James River through the mausoleum at Hollywood Cemetery

If you walk through that bright opening, there is a flagstone terrace overlooking the CSX railroad tracks (the main attraction for my buddy) and the James River. That’s the western (upstream) edge of Belle Isle you’re looking at across the river. Hollywood Cemetery is open 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM 365 days a year and there’s no admission and it would be a bargain even if there was. Cemeteries aren’t my favorite places to visit but Hollywood is pretty and relaxing and unpretentious, even though two American Presidents are buried there. I read in Wikipedia that it got its name from the holly trees throughout the cemetery, and they’re hard to miss.

Also hard to miss is the Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) popping open everywhere in the less fussed over corners of our backyard. I just read that it’s a deciduous flowering shrub of the mallow family. It’s native (I’ve recently learned) to India and Asia so decidedly non-native. Like I am. It looks pretty against the blue sky:

Try to look at that and not smile. I can hardly help myself.

Evelyn has our American Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) producing extravagant clumps off the fruit that unmistakably give it its name. I took this picture on Thursday (it was still September), but it looks even prettier today:

Early autumn color. I never even knew.

Our front gardenias continue to flower and perfume our yard and home even now, on  October 1. The bush in our backyard (the one with the credit-card-sized blossoms) has a dozen buds that look like they’re going to burst open any moment. So hopefully next week you’ll be seeing them here. The sun that was above the horizon for nearly fifteen hours daily in June stays above it for less than twelve hours a day now. It takes a lot of energy to produce those gargantuan blooms, and the sun is “feeding” them for a few minutes less each day. But there will be no clouds for the next couple of days so we’ll get more blooms.

Meanwhile Evelyn has Pineapple sage (Salvia elegans) gleaming in the front of the house, on the sides of the house, and in more than one spot behind the house. It’s encouraging to see this much cheerful color in October:

This flower is in our yard today. In October!

The river is low today, 3.26’ at the gauge just west of the Huguenot Bridge. You can see the web site for the gauge here: Westham Gauge. The gauge is on the north bank of the river. If you paddled across (from the south side) in a boat you could climb out and see it easily – it’s near the water. Just across the river from Huguenot Flatwater. Right now there are too many leaves to see it from Huguenot Flatwater but in January the trees will be bare and it’ll be visible. The five “low water records” there begin at the deepest (least low) record of 3.00’ on 9/17/1943. All five of the low water records fall between 9/17 and 10/21 of various years, so we’re right in the heart of dry season. The five high water records, by contrast, are scattered – one each in March, April, June, August and November. I don’t have a true obsession with meteorology, but I am more aware of it than normal. Please pardon me – spending so much time near the river heightens my awareness and interest.

Regarding those river depths – recall today’s depth, 3.26’. When it gets to 5.0’, you have to wear floatation devices at Pony Pasture. At 9.0’, the river is closed unless you have a permit. 12.0’ is “flood stage.” Are you familiar with our area? When you drive over the Huguenot Bridge and look down at the CSX railroad tracks, those are at the 18.2’ mark. Now get this – on June 23 of 1972, during Hurricane Agnes, the James crested at 28.6’! So next time you look down at those tracks, imagine them under ten feet of water. That would probably go over the top of a coal car. That’s why the buildings at the Virginia Eye Institute are on stilts. Anyway, pardon my descent into nerdiness.

I was with another friend at Deep Run park Friday (9/29) – the same park where I’ve twice photographed copperheads this year – and this honeysuckle was as beautiful and fragrant a flower as you’ll ever see. When I first edited (lightly) this image I called it “poor man’s gardenia.” Because for sheer beauty, there is no improving this. And the smell is incomparable. Maybe a more precise expression would be “gardenia for the horticulturally inept.” I’ll be the first to admit that doesn’t roll right off your tongue. But feast your eyes, since you unfortunately can’t feast your nose:  

Poor Man’s Gardenia, a.k.a. “Gardenia for the Horticulturally Inept”

I’ll close the photographs with, of course, my boys at the river this morning. We usually pose in the woods behind the Wetlands but we traipsed right through today and I didn’t get a picture until we were nearly done. Just before we got to the car we went back to the river and they were very relaxed when I took this picture:

Yuki, Mackey, Turner – and the Mighty James River, this morning

Enough of this. For this week. Let me get to the part with the presidents and the church and no politics or religion. And come back next week!

All best,

Jay

PS – Almost didn’t mention – flying is going well. Possibly a bit slow to get off the ground if you’ll pardon the expression. But I had three lessons last week and three more this coming week. This is the plane I flew Thursday (before I untied it): 

My current favorite airplane, a 2003 Cessna 172S

===========

Two Presidents, one church, no politics, no religion

President Carter’s Sunday School Class

Maranatha Baptist Church, Plains, GA Sunday, 27 August, 2017

Mr. Carter opened up his Sunday school lesson with warm introductions and conversation in a decidedly neighborly tone. He makes no secret that he’s a deeply religious man – he revels in it. And President of the United States is as political as you can get. Fifteen minutes into his chat he said “I try not to criticize President Trump” and then “I haven’t agreed with much he’s done since he’s been in the White House.” There was a lot of laughter, and it was not kind or warm-hearted. You wouldn’t want people to laugh about you that way. I was impressed to see President Carter looked pained when he heard it, and he put his head down and said “I’m not saying that in a derogatory way.” And he meant it. The laughter stopped.

I don’t write about or discuss politics, but I have strong opinions and I vote in every election. The problem right now – and Mr. Carter knows this – is not if you like one party or dislike another. It’s not if you want higher taxes or lower taxes or more fossil fuels or less fossil fuels or more money spent on health care or less money spent on health care. The problem is, many people are choosing to speak in an unkind fashion, and they’re speaking loudly, and it’s putting the focus on the anger and incivility rather than on the taxes and fossil fuels and health care, where it’s supposed to be.

When President Carter was talking about President Trump, it wasn’t about politics or religion – it was about being kind. I need to remind myself, every day.  

===========

An addendum to my addendum that I don’t often include. My experience of watching Mr. Carter’s Sunday school was my own. My friend went to the class and I wanted to discuss it with him, so I ordered a DVD of the class and watched it, twice. But I also did research for this and found two articles about it in the Huffington Post. Both were written by a woman named Lynn LaPlante Allaway, a woman who describes herself thus: “Writer, blogger, jazz violist, classical violinist, Mom to four young kids, married to a jock, I’m never bored.” The first was called Jimmy Carter’s Sunday School, written 12/21/2015. The second was How Jimmy Carter Soothed my Election Blues, written 11/22/2016. Ms. Allaway’s temperament is not like mine (I don’t play the violin, nor am I married to a jock) but she’s a talented writer and captured what I felt was Mr. Carter’s essence. I recommend both articles.  

Posted in Birds, Cessna 172, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, honeysuckle, James River, Pony Pasture, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Venomous snake video, my first fox, more

Posted on September 24, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

24 September, 2017            Venomous snake video, my first fox, more

A surprising number of people (I’m learning) are unfond of Copperhead snakes (Agkistrodon contortrix). I got some pictures and a video of one Friday at Deep Run Park in western Henrico. I’ll put them later so you can bail out if you have an irrational fear of snakes. I suspect no one has any fear, irrational or otherwise, of Evelyn’s gardenias. This one is enormous – and you can smell it from an enormous distance. Check it out compared to my Kroger card. Full sized Kroger card, not key-chain size:

I did not even know they made gardenias this big. Totally a State Fair Gardenia. You can probably smell it from your house.

I had a “good gardenia problem” earlier this week. Our front gardenia had five open blooms at the same time, and I couldn’t get them all in one picture. “Too many gardenias to fit in one picture” – that’s a good problem. The floral version of “too much chocolate.”

I took my lens cap off on six days this week, and I photographed gardenias – in our yard – on five of them. There are other flowers too, but the most noticeable are the gardenias and these gleaming nasturtiums:

Everything else fades in the background

Roses! How could I forget roses! They’re still going full power as well. The reason I forget roses is I never get a picture I like. The color never comes out looking real. I take a lot of pictures but I remain an amateur in many ways. Like getting color correct. But have a look:

Maybe if I’d read a photography book for once in my life I could get this color more realistic. They are beyond compare.

My flying lessons are progressing steadily. Getting off the ground, you could say. I finished my seventh lesson early this afternoon, but my longest lesson (in the air) has only been 1.2 hours (an hour and 12 minutes) and I’ve had one as short as a half hour. They’ll get longer as I gain skill and confidence as a pilot. It’s still early days but I’m learning fast. This is N5335J, a 2003 Cessna 172S, the plane I fly in most. I flew in it today, and this is a picture I took on Thursday:

Cessna 172, fun and beautiful and comfortable and forgiving

I’ll wait until later in this post for the copperhead. This morning (Sunday, 9/24/2017), Mackey and Turner and Yuki and I headed for Pony Pasture. As we pulled into the parking lot at 8:30, a Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) was jogging casually along the southeast edge of the lot, headed west. There were twenty cars in the lot. Plus hikers, joggers, dog walkers, more. I noticed it moving and kept my eye on it. I snapped a few pictures from the car but nothing great. Here’s the only one I got. I’ll do better. Unfortunately it has mange:

Red fox with mange, Pony Pasture parking lot, 8:30 this morning

We were in the parking lot visiting with that fox until 8:40 this morning. We wandered down the river bank and up the creek for 55 minutes until we came over a hill between the Wetlands and Willow Oaks golf course and were greeted by this pretty girl. With at least one youngster visible in the upper right: 

Adult whitetail and at least one youngster near the eastern edge of Pony Pasture this morning

Fortunately all three dogs are on leashes and fortunately I anticipate the lunge. Because the three of them combined outweigh me by forty pounds and if they decided to have a closer look at that deer, I’d be outvoted. This was about ten minutes later, when we’d put the deer behind us and got in the woods and caught our breath. You can hardly see Mackey in this picture (he’s in the center). But if you ever met Mackey, you’d be able to tell right away he kind of likes it that way. I’ve never known a dog that thrives on being in the background as much as Mackey does. He’s always there but he’s never in the way:

Yuki, Mackey, Turner

Attention: this copperhead – like the copperhead I photographed in April – is not from Pony Pasture. It’s from Deep Run Park in western Henrico. Deep Run is much more “civilized” – much more contrived, lots of asphalt, playgrounds, swing sets, soccer fields, lights, signs, fountains, etc. It’s the reduced-fat generic vanilla ice cream of parks.  In Pony Pasture, you can be in true wilderness. Deep Run, not so much. But I see way more venomous reptiles there than anyplace else. 

Well, I’m not prejudiced against reptiles, so here’s another copperhead from Deep Run Park in western Henrico. I’d been on the same trail precisely 21 weeks earlier (on April 28, 2017) when I encountered The first poisonous snake I’ve ever photographed. The one I got on Friday (9/22) was much smaller and much, much edgier. It was cooler in April and that snake was unmistakably calm. Calm people, calm dogs, calm snakes, calm birds, they all have a similar, unmistakable posture, a way of gazing at the planet that lets you know in an instant they don’t feel threatened. So they’re not threatening. The snake Friday was much different – it was radiating anxiety. I wasn’t putting my camera or my phone or my feet or my hands anywhere near it. Copperheads are super-photogenic, though. This is the snake as it was crossing the edge of the trail:

Copperhead leaving the trail at Deep Run

This is it a bit further from the edge:

Clear of the trail:

Closeup (with a zoom lens!) of the head:

Closeup (using a zoom lens!) of the copperhead’s business end:

I’m also adding a picture I took standing up with my phone. This camouflage is peerless. I wonder how often we all walk past these snakes. Look in the precise center of this image:

Look very carefully at the center of this image, the copperhead is right there

Here’s the video. This snake was so cooperative. Scary but cooperative:

Now for something a bit more civilized – gardenias Evelyn cut and put on our back porch table:

Evelyn fills and surrounds our home with beauty. Even when your eyes are closed!

Did I mention I went to the river this morning? I’ll leave you with this – taken ten minutes walk downstream from where we photographed the fox:

I apologize to viewers who tire of this sight – I just never will. Looking at that makes a lot of things better.

Have a great week! Enjoy this weather! Come back next week! All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, copperhead, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, James River, Pony Pasture, Rivers, roses, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), Snakes, whitetail deer | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

 YW84JOY

Posted on September 17, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

17 September, 2017            YW84JOY

Andrew and me, post race this morning in Manteo

I couldn’t get that thought out of my head this morning in Manteo, NC. It’s a license plate I saw, many years ago. Sound it out – you’ll understand the sentiment. That’s a picture of me with my friend and fellow triathlete Andrew, who has competed with me in multisport races for close to thirty years. Another athlete snapped that picture just after we finished the Outer Banks Triathlon around 10:00 AM today. We did one yesterday too. Here’s the sunrise just before yesterday’s race:

Saturday pre-race sunrise. Why wait for joy?

Yesterday’s (Saturday’s) race was an Olympic distance triathlon, consisting of a 0.93 mile  (1,500 meter) swim, followed by a 24.8 mile (40 km) bike and finishing with a 6.2 mile  (10 km) run. This morning’s race was a Sprint distance triathlon – precisely half as long as yesterday’s race. Today we started out with an 0.5mi (750m) swim, then a 12.4mi (20 km) bike and ended with a 3.1mi (5 km) run. I would say that these medals were the reward for all our hard work – except we didn’t do any!

Round medal – Olympic (Saturday)
Triangular – Sprint (Sunday)
Square – “Series Challenge” (both races)

I mean, seriously. We got to swim and bike and run around Manteo and the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a few hours each on two days. We saw beautiful scenery, we met positive, upbeat, cheerful people, and we had others yelling encouraging words at us the entire time. So which part was the hard work? No part, that’s which part. A person in Andrew’s family owns a cottage in Kill Devil Hills, NC, and that’s where we stayed. Here’s my car parked outside:

House where we stayed between races. With a dock on the sound. YW84JOY

So, seriously, again – hard work? No way. We ate a lot (we burned up a lot) and even that was fun. Yesterday evening – after the Olympic distance race – we had dinner at the Black Pelican Restaurant in Kill Devil Hills. This was the view from the front of the restaurant:

Beach road and Atlantic Ocean:

Just after that race – before we even went home – we refueled with cheeseburgers and chocolate milkshakes from the Olde Towne Creamery in Manteo. If you’re vegan they have sorbet and probably other stuff. If you’re vegetarian, they have milkshakes which are OMG. You can not even believe how delicious. I chose the third option, which includes giving thanks to the spirit of the cow who gave its life so I could eat what their menu describes as a “CHEESEBURGER – A true American classic chuck steak burger.” No one would ever mistake me for a connoisseur of any type of food, but I know a good burger when I eat one and this is off-the-charts good. The place is tiny and service is beyond compare. If you’re ever in the Outer Banks, go there. It’s a treasure.   

We were just getting back from the second race today when I did an arm selfie (you don’t see tons of arm selfies) of my race number with additional smiley face just before I washed it off:

It’s important to wear a smiley face while swimming, biking and running

I’m closing up on a moment – I’m running on fumes. But I can’t let a week go by without a raptor, especially an “accipiter.” Red-tailed and Red-shouldered hawks – this blog is littered with their pictures – are “buteos.” I see one or more buteos almost literally 365 days a year. I’m lucky if I see an accipiter ten days a year. It’s possible this is a female Sharp-shinned hawk (they’re noticeably larger than males) but better informed people than me believe it’s a male Cooper’s hawk. An opening sentence on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology web site says that “Separating Sharp-shinned Hawks from Cooper’s Hawks is one of the classic birding challenges.” So I’m not swearing by my ID. Believe it or not I took this picture Wednesday evening in West Broad Village almost within sight of Burger Bach just after Evelyn and I finished dinner. Their burgers are the best in central Virginia by a considerable margin. But check out this hawk:

Male Cooper’s hawk on top of a building in West Broad Village at sunset

I also can’t let a late summer week go by without a picture of the nasturtiums Ev still has proliferating in our front yard; she brought these in a couple of days ago:

Evelyn both surrounds and fills our home with beauty

And I got home too late this evening to get a good gardenia picture, but next week. Ev sent this picture yesterday. When I got home tonight there were four huge blooms on the plant – the most it’s ever had, I believe:

Gardenia picture Ev sent while I was at the beach. But I couldn’t smell it! Now I can.

I had my third flying lesson Thursday. I took this picture of the plane just before we started it up:

Plane I flew for my third flying lesson

One more race picture. Andrew took this about ten seconds before I crossed the finish line for yesterday’s race: 

There is not a single minute during a triathlon when I am not happy. You should try a short one – you will not regret it for one second.

I’ll close with a picture from Friday evening in Manteo, just as we were picking up our race information:

Sun heading for the horizon Friday evening in Manteo. 13 hours before race start:

Have a great week! All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, Cooper's Hawk, Endurance, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, outer banks, People, raptors, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!), sunsets, triathlons | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Fortunately, I don’t have to choose

Posted on September 10, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

10 September, 2017            Fortunately, I don’t have to choose

When seasons wane and new ones begin, I always feel the new season is my favorite. I remember Spring wrapping up in late June and thinking “Summer is my favorite!” Fourth of July, corn on the cob, birthdays, I love it all. As I watch summer birds disappear from  the river and autumn birds arrive, I’m already thinking “Autumn is my favorite!” Fortunately, I don’t have to choose between seasons. I enjoy the four-way tie.

Normally I put these photos in chronological order, beginning with pictures I took early in the week. I took a few nice ones, but I took this one this morning at 11:00 and I like the color. This happens to me all the time at the river. I’ll stare so intently at one beautiful scene, I’ll miss something else. As you look at this dazzling moth (unless it’s a dazzling butterfly) and the glow of the flowers, look directly below the moth and there’s not one but two bees. One at the bottom and one less distinct in between. A cheerful sight:

It’s hard to look at this and not smile

Back to the beginning of the week – this is from Monday – possibly on the same flowers. It could easily be the same bee:

More flowers, more insects – more beauty

I need to learn more about this plant. I believe it is some form of clematis. There is a native clematis and an invasive clematis. This one looks nice and smells nice, but that’s true of many native plants as well as invasive ones. If anyone knows specifics, I’d love to learn more:

Clematis at Pony Pasture

On Wednesday (9/7) near the CSX tracks downtown, I saw my first Osage orange of 2017. I was surprised and gratified to discover it – I wasn’t expecting it until October or November. Next week I’ll use something for scale, because it’s hard to get a feel for how big these are. Not quite as big as a softball but much bigger than a baseball:

First osage orange I’ve seen in 2017

So, anyway, Thursday. Certain predictable red-tails in certain predictable spots help me feel a certain predictable calm, and I make a point to visit them when I’m in the area. My camera is always in my car. The cell phone tower in the Westbury Apothecary parking lot is a reliable spot for Red-tails, and I photographed one on Thursday (9/7) at 5:00 PM. It wasn’t until I looked at this picture on the computer a few hours later that I saw the damage to its tail. I’m not certain what’s happening here – I’m open to suggestions. Note carefully also the two streamers coming off the tail:

Red-tail on cell phone tower 1/2 mile from my house. Note damage to tail, and 2 streamers:

I returned Saturday afternoon at 1:00 – it’s not even half a mile from my house. So this is the same bird, forty-four hours later:

Same red-tail as above, forty-four hours later:

It still has those streamers. I’m not sure what’s happening here. I’ll keep an eye on it. My friend Kim is a wildlife rehabilitator and she works with raptors and feels certain the bird will groom those feathers out. 

This morning I saw my first Bald Eagle at Pony Pasture in some time. It tuned me in more sharply on the change in season than any other natural phenomena. Recently, the sky above the rapids at Pony Pasture has been filled with ospreys. If there were available fish, the ospreys were catching them – that’s all they eat. Eagles love fish too, but they’re not committed to them the way ospreys are. They could never compete with the ospreys. But ospreys near Pony Pasture have vanished, or at least I’m not seeing or hearing any. It’s time for ospreys to head for South America, and they’re gone. Leaving more fish for the eagles.

This was a long shot, and the trees are so leafy, it’s difficult to see. If I hadn’t seen the eagle fly in there, I’d have never known. This was this morning at 10:00:

See the eagle hidden right in the center of the picture?

The next picture will give you an idea of how I set up to photograph that eagle. See the big mound in the bottom-center of this picture, at the edge of the riverbank? I was leaning my camera on that to steady it while I focused on the eagle all the way across the river:

That hump – in the center – I was steadying my camera on that. Aiming across the river. 

There were still pawpaws at the river this morning – a lot. I’m not sure what eats them besides me. But something must – they are so delicious and there are so many of them. They taste best right there on the river bank. You can smell the river and feel the wind and hear all the riverbank sounds, the crickets, the leaves, the water, the breeze, it is in every way a feast. Here’s a picture I took this morning – with a raccoon footprint in between. Since raccoon feet are referred to as paws, the caption for this was inevitable:

Pawpaws with raccoon pawprint in the middle, plus deer hoofprint at lower right

Snap back to civilization – I’ll close with a picture of Dash snoozing in the tea tray in the living room. This is an animal who has zero concept of the word “stress”:

Dash is a cool cat, but he always finds a way to stay warm

I hope your week brings you zero concept of the word “stress”! If you experience some,  spend an hour or so near the river – it’ll fix you right up.

All best,

Jay

Posted in Bald eagles, Birds, cats, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, Insects, James River, koans, Pony Pasture, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

SSDW – Same Stuff, Different Week

Posted on September 3, 2017 by Jay McLaughlin

3 September, 2017            SSDW – Same Stuff, Different Week

No birthdays or triathlons this week, although I did have my second flying lesson Thursday morning (8/31) at 7:00. I’m not even officially a student yet, although I’ve scheduled lessons well into the future. I hope I can figure it out!

I‘ll take photographs connected to my flying lessons, but for now my focus is riveted on my instructor and the airplane. I’m sure when you first learned to drive a car, you were a little  nervous and a little excited and a little anxious but after you drove for a few years, you were more used to it. I suspect flying will be like that. However – this is what the airport looked when I was parked outside waiting for it to open; I took this through my car windshield:

Hanover Airport (KOFP) at 6:57 AM on Friday, 8/31/2017:

Now, of course, the “SSDW” – Red-tails and gardenias, of course. My “best” Red-tail this week (I’ve seen a lot) appeared a block away from my house Monday morning (8/28) when I was driving home from work. A large female, and she was standing on the ground looking under a bush, something I don’t often see Red-tails do. When I rolled to a stop she hopped onto a low branch and looked back and forth at the bush and at me:

Adult female Red-tailed hawk, Monday morning ~9:30, almost in sight of my house, about 6′ above the ground:

I was gratified – that hardly begins to describe it – to see (and of course smell) two gardenias blooming in our front bed Friday morning (9/1) when I left for work a few minutes after dawn. Gardenias are always a treat; it’s even better to see them (and smell them) in September. Evelyn has these plants putting up a lot of buds, some are opening up. This is this week’s “Gardenia of the Week”:

September gardenia – look at that. Feast your eyes. Thanks Ev!

Evelyn has our nasturtiums gleaming everywhere:

I think about my Mom a lot. But orange always makes me think of Dad.

I neglected to open with – but I’ll include here – something that is not “SSDW.” It was raining yesterday morning (9/2) and Evelyn and I paid our first visit (I cannot imagine why we waited so long) to the Lakeside Farmer’s Market (LFM) at 6110 Lakeside Ave. Richmond VA 23228. If you live in Richmond and you’ve already been, I’m sure you’re a regular. If you live in Richmond and haven’t been, please go – it’s a guaranteed hit. Wherever I go – to work or to the Y or to a grocery store or to a triathlon or a flying lesson or a restaurant or a park – the quality of the experience is determined as much by the people I encounter there as it is the reason my for my visit. Like a restaurant can have outstanding food, but if I find the people insufferable (or, more likely, they find me insufferable), I won’t enjoy the experience. But if the people are engaging and friendly and warm and outgoing, I’m going to have an excellent time regardless of almost any other factor. The places that have both (a great experience and great people, like Pony Pasture and the Y, etc.) are the places I treasure and visit over and over. LFM has great people and it’s a great experience – I already know I’ll be a regular. Give it a try! I could have taken a better picture, but if you know me, you’ll know why I find this appealing – maybe you’ll like it too:

The Great Bicycle Pyramid of Lakeside

Since it’s a farmer’s market, check out these watermelons and corn on the cob and grapes. We had some of that corn for dinner tonight:

Think that looks spectacular? It does. But you should taste it! OMG

These grapes were just begging to be photographed: 

Almost too beautiful to eat. Almost.

This morning when Mackey and Turner and Yuki and I went to Pony Pasture, the weather was the nicest it’s been since April. There is no such thing as an unenjoyable visit to Pony Pasture, but weather like today’s makes it even better than usual – though I admit that’s hard to imagine:

Just like the seasons – every day is different, every day is perfect.

No shortage of insects today either – but we’ll see less of them as the days shorten and cool. In mid-June, the sun was above the horizon each day for nearly fifteen hours. Today it was above the horizon for less than thirteen hours, and that downward trend will continue for more than three months. A great reason to enjoy today! As if we needed one! Here’s a damselfly on the riverbank this morning:

Damselfly takes the morning sun on the riverbank

Insects and flowers go together – neither are fond of the shortening, cooling days, and it won’t be long before they’ve vanished for the year. But they’re still on bright display – limited time only! They look different when you can smell the fresh morning air, but this is a reasonable approximation:

Delicate and graceful

Delicate and graceful too, but with a passenger who makes me happy for a long lens

The pawpaws continue in full swing – the fallen fruits will squish under your feet if you walk in certain spots – but their time is drawing to a close. For 2017. The seasons at Pony Pasture are just like the river – they never stop changing and they’re always perfect. Pawpaw leaves are huge and there are hundreds of trees at the river and they keep a lot of sunlight from reaching the ground. They’ll begin to fall in a month or two and the forest and the river bank will get brighter every day. This won’t be the last pawpaw I see in 2017 (I hope) but they’re slowing down:

A ripe pawpaw near the river’s edge in early September

Mackey and Turner and Yuki are as enthusiastic – often more enthusiastic – as I am about everything and everybody we encounter at the river. I missed taking a picture of the boys when they were in better light, but this is a fun image. You can barely even see Mackey and Turner, they fade into the background so much behind Yuki’s glow. But see Mackey there on the left, the last dog? His mouth is open and his tongue is out. He was being a silly boy. I think Turner (center) was looking at a squirrel. His gaze takes on a faint but unmistakable tinge of obsessiveness when it finds a squirrel:

Three handsome boys (but two are hard to see!)

Have a great week! All best,

Jay

Posted in Birds, Dogs, Flowers, Fun, Gardenias, Insects, James River, koans, Pony Pasture, raptors, Red-tailed hawks, Rivers, Smiles (including "dog smiles"!) | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment