Orange is the New ...

... abode for Dallas! She's moved to Orange, MA with L & R and is so happy in her new home, without her "cousins" Fluffalo and Peep. The 3 hour car journey was traumatic for her - she looked like a drooling demon, salivating and throwing up for the first 30 minutes of her transfer. She looked so ragged and disgusting in this state that one could easily have mistaken her for a ferocious, diseased black cat - I didn't want to embarrass her with a photo of that ugly mess, so here she is instead, schmoozing up to me in her new palace.

She's relaxed and even frisky again, and loves looking out the window at her new realm. What a lucky, lucky cat - she seems so settled and content. Have any of you read the story from long ago (1958) called "Boats Finds a House"? Dale still has his childhood copy!

It's a delightful story about a cat called Boats who is looking for a house after retiring from life on a ship, and eventually finds one. It's (almost) Dallas' pre-emptively written autobiography!

Darkness falls from their deck

A lovely little lantern lights the way

I Saw It, I Saw It, I Saw It

The northern lights! Ahhhh, a phenomenally mind-blowing sight, and something I've been wanting to see for a very, very long time. We saw it clearly with our own eyes, not merely through what our cameras could capture.

Whilst shopping in Biddeford after a long day of home repairs and travel, we got a text from a friend that we should go and look outside - the northern lights were visible! We started rushing home, and were lucky enough to see it clearly as we headed home - a vast area ahead looking reddish, and then a reddish/pinkish shaft and some green curtains with a bit of shimmer to them - magic!

We tried to take it all in as we drove home (in a rush), but we eventually decided to pull off the road, and stop to LOOK while we were seeing it. I tried taking some pics, but though they weren't great, the scene before us was stupendous. I think I was trembling with excitement so much that the extra care needed to take night shots totally eluded me. By the time we reached Limerick, we were no longer seeing colors, but we decided to head straight to the Sokokis Lookout anyway. It seems as if the whole of southern Maine had the same idea - the lines of cars double-parking, up onto curbs, doing U-turns, reversing, or waiting halfway across the road for a spot was chaotic, but we were there at the tail-end of the viewing window, so managed to find a good parking bay - it was practically over by the time we got there, and most cars were leaving.

But still, I saw it, I saw it, I saw it, without a doubt.

Sparkly Morning

We got some rain! And the next morning was sparkly like a freshly cut diamond - magnificent! 

Turtle Sighting

I came across this turtle with a domed shell sunning itself towards the end of September. Its sluggishness and reluctance to get back into the water reminded me that I'd come across one of these Eastern musk turtles (Sternotherus odoratus) previously. Their shells aren't as flattened as Painted turtles, which are very commonly seen on our lake. I was initially concerned that it had become entangled in a rope fragment, so I kept trying to get closer - it turned out to be a robust, stretchy Spatterdock stem.

Also very obvious from the photo is the drop in the lake level that is clear from the coloration differences, making tide lines on the stump. The lowering was scheduled for Sept 9 to allow for dam repairs (again!), but the dearth of rain recently means that as of this writing, October 11, we are still not back up to our normal level.