The Eastern Bumblebee (Bombus impatiens) is known to have slumber parties on the flowers they visit. This one was stationary on these asters for so long that I realized I could go inside and fetch my camera and it would still be there on the same flower --- et voilà! Sluggish indeed!
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!
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| Darkness falls from their deck |
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| A lovely little lantern lights the way |
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.
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.
We got some rain! And the next morning was sparkly like a freshly cut diamond - magnificent!
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.
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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.
Ghoulish tentacles
Like green fingers beckoning
In water's dark depths
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| Freshwater sponge |
Such exquisite fruits! Hawthorn is also referred to as thorn-apple on maine.gov's broadleaves page, which is interesting since my first observation of these made me think of crab-apples.
This exquisitely marked Watershield leaf looks so much like a tribal mask!
This floating island covered in sphagnum moss looks like a miniature magic kingdom - I wasn't able to capture the fairies with my camera, though.
I paid a very low price for this fantastic New York Sirloin steak last week - $4.87 for 1.6lbs of beef.
That's because it had been packages and mislabeled as 'pork blade Boston butt roast,' at $2.99/lb, and I had luckily stumbled upon it. The other steaks in that section were marked at $8.99 per pound - I was delighted and quickly snatched it up. It tasted even better knowing I'd scored a bargain.
What a lovely late-blooming beauty the New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) is! It's an important late season food source for songbirds and some generalist nectar-feeding insects.
