Unlike that old 60’s song that goes ... Hey 98.6, it’s good to have you back again…
It’s NOT good to have you back. Again. Just when you think summer is over (like last week with all the rain and temps in the 60’s) it comes back to slap you right in the face. WHACK! Not over yet, thank you very much. ouch. That hurts. I am so done with summer. Especially since the pool has not gone above 71 degrees in spite of the hot temperatures. Not fair! Look at yesterday’s weather stats taken from our weather station.
Maybe Earl will have something to say about that this weekend. Will he impact us or or not?
And for those of you who are too young to remember the song, go here to hear it. For some reason I am having trouble inbedding videos into my blog.
I leave you today with a few early morning shots of Green Turtle pond from our Sunday canoe paddle-around.
The mist was still rising from the surface when we first go there.
After the mist cleared the surface was like a piece of glass.
Last night just as we were preparing dinner, Hailey started barking and looking out the sliding screen door in the sun room. We looked out and didn’t see anything and told her to be quiet. A few minutes later she was barking again. This time I stepped outside on the deck to take a look. Sure enough, I saw a big black object down by the back fence in the woods. I went to get the binoculars to take a better look and when I got back the object had moved. Yes, for sure: a bear. A big one. It was on the inside of the fence, in our yard and seemed very intent on eating or digging something up. It must have heard us talking, but didn’t even raise its head.
Rick pulled out the grill and we continued with our dinner plans, all the while having a bear in our woodsy yard munching away on his dinner. Life here is so weird sometimes and what is even stranger is that it doesn’t seem all that strange to us to have it include bears at close range.
Today would have been my mom’s 84th birthday. Happy Birthday Mom wherever you are. We still miss you like crazy. It hardly seems possible you’ve been gone from us for three years now.
Bella, sweet Bella, turned two years old yesterday. She got toys and bones. She was like a little kid going from one to the other.
My friend Carolyn arrives later today to spend the weekend with us. Included in our plans are the Renaissance Faire tomorrow (so I am airing out my wench costume), canoeing on Green Turtle Pond, attending our neighborhood block party for a while on Sunday and hopefully taking a dip in the pool since it’s supposed to be hot again. A full and fun weekend!
We’ve had four days of rain in a row this week with yesterday finally clearing up and being lovely and should continue to be so through most of next week. It’s supposed to be back in the mid 80’s again. The difference is that instead of getting in to the high 60’s at night, it now dips down to the 50’s. The pool does not like 50 degree nights. No sireee. It didn’t like all that lovely rain either. So, it remains to be seen if we are brave enough (and hot enough) to get into 72 degree water; a full ten degrees off from where it was.
I’m starting to think about what we need to take with us to the cabin and gathering stuff up and putting it in the spare bedroom. Trying to decide what our meal will be. We’re looking forward to it! If you want to read the cabin blog entries from past years, I’ve now created a category called “Cabin” over on the right hand side of the blog. Clicking on that link will bring them all up. Enjoy!
This is what my shoes looked like the other morning after walking through my dew-laden grass.
Fall-ish leaves stuck to my shoes. Not something you would expect in the middle of August now is it? With our dry conditions this summer some of our trees are showing stress and dropping leaves early. I am not sure what this means for our fall colors this year. Hopefully the colors will still be good, although I am anticipating them to be earlier than usual. Normally they are at their peak around October 17. Since we will be taking our annual trip to our cabin in Colorado in a few weeks and returning the first week of October, I hope we don’t miss the show. We are hoping to catch the aspens changing at the cabin and then our New Jersey fall when we return.
I think we’ve broken the dry spell. Since yesterday morning when we shopped in the pouring rain at the farmer’s market to right now we’ve had a little over 4 inches of rain! And it’s still raining. It rained pretty much all day yesterday and it’s been raining since I got up. Any more and we are going to have to let water out of the pool! Our thirsty grass and plants have got to be happy. Drowned by now probably. I can hear the rush of water in our little creek behind our house from the deck. When this stops I am going to walk down and see just how much water it is carrying.
The wildlife is feeling fall in the air too I think. We hardly ever have deer in our yard although they frequent our neighbor’s yard quite a bit. When I looked out the other day in the late afternoon I saw this little family group in my front yard. A young buck with nubs for antlers, two does and a fawn. Please forgive the bad photos—they were taken through the screen and window.
They were flighty and hard to capture with the camera. I just love the color of our deer. They are not brown; more like a rich butterscotch color.
Not ten minutes after the deer were in my yard the turkeys came.
We see turkeys pretty much every day. We have three little groups that visit. One hen by herself, one with three babies and a larger grouping of hens and assorted size babies. They seem to be everywhere this year! HAH! I just looked out to see what the rain was doing and the same group of turkeys is out in front! Pretty wet turkeys I might add.
August is a funny month here. You would think that August would be the hottest month, but it’s not. July is. Right about mid-August it starts to change. The pool starts to tank on us seemingly overnight. Before we left for the shore last weekend we were swimming every night in luscious 82 degree water. When we returned four days later the temperature had dropped to 76/78 at best. Even though we’ve had warm days and nights this past week the temperature hasn’t budged. Now with all this rain it’s sure to bring it down even further. The sun is just not hitting it for the better part of the day. It’s sad but we’ve had a good run with the pool this year. In fact, probably the best pool year we’ve had. It’s beautiful at night, isn’t it?
In fact the whole summer has been wonderful. A little hot maybe, and we’ve certainly had our fair share of humidity; but it was all good. Given that, I am ready for cooler sleeping weather and the crisp air and golden light of fall. Instead of sitting around the pool with the tiki torches glowing at night, soon we’ll be sitting around the wood stove watching the glowing coals of wood.
Whew. Summer is packing a punch this year. Even though I’ve been enjoying this weather from a pool perspective, it’s getting a bit old. Lots of sun and no rain. It’s starting to feel like Colorado around here, and that is not necessarily a good thing since no one here can water their lawns because most of us are on wells in the country. Even people in larger towns do not have the in-ground sprinkler systems that are absolutely necessary there. Our lawn is crisping up and there isn’t much we can do about it. We water our new landscaping in the front only as needed. Where is the rain? I am tired of seeing the relentless sun every day!
The season is starting its decline though. The sun’s angle is lower week by week. Areas of the pool that used to stay in the sun until late afternoon are now shaded. Soon that will lead to a cooler pool temperature than the steady 82 degrees that it’s been maintaining for a over a month now.
At least one person is benefitting from all these brown, crispy lawns. A man who owns a company spraying lawns green with dye is making lots of money. Can you imagine? What does that say about us culturally? We’re so into our green perfect lawns that we would dye them green and potentially harm the environment? He states that his dye is safe for children and pets but I have to wonder. Unless he’s using food coloring! Will the grass need its roots touched up as well?
The other morning I was in the computer room when I heard Bella bark. I thought she wanted to go out, but when I got to the sun room she was looking up at the screen door. Clinging to the inside of the screen was a large green bug. mom, there’s an intruder in the house and i don’t know what it is! Me either, Bella. Never seen one like this before. When I tried to capture it to take it outside it emitted a noise not unlike a cicada, only it wasn’t a cicada. This got everyone’s attention, cats and dog alike. what is that thing? I took this video so I could try and identify it later on.
Bella was very intrigued by it. I think it was injured to begin with because it could not fly away.
The next morning there was another one clinging to the outside basement wall of the house. I took photos and headed off to Google it. I typed in “green bug that looks like a grasshopper but is not” and came up with a solution. Meet Mr./Mrs. Katydid.
We’ve long thought the the cicadas were getting back up from something else like crickets, and here is the proof. But why haven’t we ever seen one before?
The turkeys come around every day and I usually give in and feed them some sunflower seeds and cracked corn. I have one that comes all by itself early in the morning and it just stands there looking at the house, willing the front door to open and for me to come and throw a few handfuls of food out. The other day around midday the big turkey family came (three hens and assorted aged babies) and I went out to feed them. The dumb clucks left instead of hanging around to eat the food and I figured the squirrels, birds and chipmunks would make short order of it. When I looked out an hour later this is what I saw instead.
oops. I’ve done this countless times before without bear visits. Trust me, this was not intentional! Not the same little cub as in the previous post; this one is probably a yearling.
what do you mean this isn’t my food bowl?
who is that crazy lady hanging out the window up there talking to me?
i think i heard something
Right after I took this photo the cub ran off into the shelter of the woods and halfway up a tree. I don’t know what it heard that spooked it, but it was afraid of something. A few minutes later it decided it was safe and back it came.
I’ve been keeping my eye on these grapes growing by the side of our street. Concord grapes. They are tasty and sweet but have a lot of pits! If we don’t get some rain they will just turn into raisins on the vine! I hope not as I plan to snatch them the minute they get ripe.
We had a full weekend with a picnic to Bear Mountain, dog walks, farmer’s market and pool time. On Saturday night we did something we’ve talked about doing for a long time. We “camped out” in the cabana for a while. After our nighttime swim we brought out the air mattress and pillows and just lay there listening to the cicadas (and katydids!). We both fell asleep and sometime later I felt Rick shaking me awake. Time to go back inside before the dogs miss us.
(taken this way on purpose! I happen to like warped nighttime photos.)
Sorry for the rambling post about a mishmash of things. I just sat down and started typing and this is what came out!
I have more to share this week with photos of our drive to Harriman State Park and Bear Mountain on Saturday and the surprise we got on Sunday morning while washing Mia, so stay tuned!
No, I am not talking about the TV show which I have never watched. (Hey, I don’t watch all those Jersey shows!)
I am talking about our pool. Our recent weather. Our true summer. Simply Jerseylicious.
Tonight Rick and I sat around after dinner thinking about swimming. Neither one of us really felt like it. No energy. I said to Rick I think we should at least go out and test the pool temperature and go from there.
Hello!
The water temperature was absolutely perfection as well as the cicada background symphony.
We swam lap upon lap. Just one more we promised each other, yet neither one of us could stop.
There is something to be said about swimming at night. Sans suits. Cicadas singing. The rest of the world recedes.
We swim until we simply can’t anymore, promising each other to get up and swim again before we’ve even had our morning coffee.
The days of summer are all too short and soon the pool will be a distant memory.
Welcome, I'm Lynne. I use this web site to capture my experiences, thoughts, rants and raves, and most of what is going on in my life that I don't mind sharing with others. I am a recent transplant to New Jersey and loving every minute. Join me on my adventures!
All images and words on this blog are my own unless otherwise noted. I hope you enjoy them, but please don't use any images or text without my approval. Thanks!
If you’re new to this site and wish to read the blog entries in chronological order, click here.
