Birds in England

(If you are unable to see the slideshow, click on this post's title to bring up the post directly, or, alternatively, click here to view the photographs. Thanks to Shy Songbird for identifying that issue, and thanks to both Shy Songbird and John at Hedgeland Tales for correcting my identification of some of the birds!)

Wildflowers in England

If you are unable to see the slideshow, click on this post's title to bring up the post directly, or, alternatively, click here to view the photographs.

While I remain "on hiatus," I am given to understand that there are those who would like more photographs of the trip to England.  It seems I took over a thousand photographs (OK, I often bracket exposures, but just the same . . .). I will not burden anyone with even a fraction of that, but will post some as I manage to cull them.

Gather Ye Blossoms While Ye May (Part Two)

Central Park Conservatory Garden

The sun returned, and we went in search of blossoms once again.

Gather Ye Blossoms While Ye May (Part One)

Japanese Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

The calendar turned to April, and we went in search of blossoms.

Crabapple

Country Sojourn

At Buttercup Farm, the woods are a tangle of brown and gray.

Fall, Interrupted

In October, we like to look out at the hills and watch the color coming on.

Innisfree in October

In autumn, Innisfree Garden, so lush with blooms in spring and summer, begins to reveal its bones.  The stands of yellow flag have been cut down, the bed from which peonies once spilled out has been returned to bare ground.

Birds Have Their Seasons

Birds have their seasons in the Hudson Valley, as everywhere else.

Goodbye September, Month of Mosquitoes

September wasn't the best of months in the Hudson Valley.  We were grateful to have been spared the ravages Hurricane Irene and heavy rains wrought on nearby communities, but the weather has been sodden, bringing with it, as the proprietress of our local bakery is wont to say, “Mosquitoes the size of American bald eagles.”

Maine's Great Clepsydra

“Clepsydra” is really a meditation on how time feels as it is passing.

—John Ashbery

John Ashbery’s poem, Clepsydra, begins with the phrase “Hasn’t the sky?”  The question, opening out to anywhere, lured me into the poem.

Hasn’t the sky?  Returned from moving the other
Authority recently dropped, wrested as much of
That severe sunshine as you need now on the way
You go. . . .

Clepsydra is the Greek word for water clock.  John Steinbeck used it also, to describe the action of the tides:  "Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra."

High Noon with a Great Blue Heron

Dateline Thursday, July 14, 2011, 12PM.

Just back from the Adirondacks, I set out for Innisfree Garden with my camera, too-short telephoto zoom lens, and binoculars, a bottle of water, floppy hat, and all-important three-legged folding stool ready to be stashed in the pockets of my photog vest.  I figured, with my luck of late, the camera would stay slung over my shoulder and the stool stashed, but I consoled myself that Innisfree is always a nice place for a walk.

Searching for Birds in the Adirondacks

—for Jan & Ann

While at magnificent Elk Lake in the Adirondacks this year, I had cause to think of John, that consummate birder, over at Hedgeland Tales.  I was thinking particularly of a post about butterflies he’d written when “birds were scarce” at Nene Washes (which looks to be a wonderful nature reserve in Cambridgeshire, England).