Instead of skipping Nature Notes yet one more time because I have no new photos or observations to add (I did see a hawk on Sunday flying over our home, to add one new comment), I decided to post a photo from last summer in three different ways.
It can seem like a different photo if you crop it differently.
This is probably the one most people would pick … and indeed, I posted a similar version of this butterfly photo last summer.
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Little did I know early last summer when I purchased pink verbena because I wanted some color in my front yard that the verbena would survive frost, snow, a hurricane and live longer than the mums, the snap dragons or the nasturtium.
The verbena looks handsome among the fall leaves – those orangey brown pine-like leaves are from our bald cypress tree.
Truly the only pink in our front yard now is from the verbena – mostly brown, some green, and these dots of verbena pink.
In other nature in my yard news, I got a photo of a female and male cardinal together. They often travel together, but I don’t usually see them this close.
And I got a close shot of the cardinal – he looks like a proud guy, or maybe he has just eaten a lot of the black sunflower seeds in our bird feeder.
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A tufted titmouse enjoyed the bird feeder I refilled two days after Hurricane Sandy came and went. I am rather burnt out of talking about post-storm problems, but in quick summary, most of Highland Park now has its power restored. We had wonderful utility workers from Florida who did much of the fixing (PSE&G was maxed out – I understand nearby Edison had workers from Ontario, Canada). So thank you, Florida and Canada. A few homes reportedly did not yet have power, but they’ve been promised fixing by today. We shall see. Meanwhile, back to the birds.
I was pleased to photograph a bird new to me – thank you, Michelle, for identifying the tufted titmouse.
I’ve been seeing more blue jays recently than I have in the past. No signs of cardinals right now.
Help yourself, Mr. Blue Jay.
I will try my best to continue filling my bird feeder through the winter.
Before Hurricane Sandy storm hit hard
Here is my street last Monday, as Hurricane Sandy had begun to blow its winds but still hadn’t damaged Highland Park, NJ. Note the tall maple tree on the left. Little did I know that this series would be the last time I would record that tree in an upright position. You can see photos of the maple tree on past blog posts.
You can see the skies are gray, and all is wet, but unless you listened to the news you would have no inkling this was the beginning of a devastating storm. And behind the car on the left you can see the full grace of the tree that would soon be no more.
I like taking photos of the foliage each fall. This one of the block before the storm will have to do. See, at this point we were hoping that the storm wouldn’t be a big deal after all. Well, you can’t be right all the time.
I wasn’t the only one outside at this point. You can see one of my neighbors crossing the street in the far left of this shot.
At the other end of my block, all looks peaceful, right? Currently, four days later, there are still down live wires in front of the house with the white fence. It is difficult to enter our block by car, because we have live wires at both ends. Hope they fix it soon. The PSE&G truck just sat there in front of the live wires today.
During the Storm
The night of the storm, Monday night from about 4 pm to 11 pm, was really, really scary. If you weren’t scared, then you were a master of denial, which can be quite helpful at times like these. I was watching this tree in my neighbor’s backyard (see the tree above in photo day after storm that is now broken off and leaning) sway back and forth, back and forth. I decided it was less scary to watch the swaying tree than to look at pictures of the devastated Jersey Shore on my computer. We still had power at that point, but we lost it a bit before 9 pm.
After Hurricane Sandy storm hit hard – the morning after – Hurricane Sandy Trees
I woke up the morning after the storm and went to explore. Uh, oh, the big tree a few doors down was no longer up. Luckily, it had hit only a lamppost and had injured no person nor any house.
Many were taking photos, including this young reporter who has just started her journalism career with her school newspaper. She is unsure whether she wants to focus on photography, drawing or writing for the newspaper. This photographing of the down tree is a good start.
Crews have finally begun to remove parts of the down tree – it is now cut into pieces, and one can pass through on one side of the road with a car.
We were lucky on our block about where the big tree fell. These homeowners were not so fortunate. This giant old tree hit wires and their house. I saw another house in Edison that had a corner of the house chopped off by a fallen tree.
Not to feel left out, North 8th had its own adventure with this giant tree. Looks like the tree barely missed the house (but I could be wrong about that).
Finally, here is why North Fifth still does not have power. The library, where many in our community would go when power goes down, is still closed. And my friends on North Fifth are cold, as are North Tenth, Dennison and a good part of the South side by South Adelaide. We had our power restored on Wednesday evening at about 6 pm – wow, was that a happy time for us.
Lessons Learned: Count Your Blessings
Thankful for my family. Thankful for no damage to our property. Thankful for fabulous, helpful, friendly neighbors. Thankful for smart phones existing and for car radios. And for heat in cars. And the fact that our stove burners worked even if our crockpots, rice cooker, warming tray, toaster, oven, dishwasher, washing machine, computers, lamps, coffee grinder and pencil sharpener did not (daughter asked, after we lost power: how will we sharpen pencils? I replied: we have some artsy pencil sharpeners upstairs that will work. We never did do any art work during the lack of power period).
The Jersey Shore communities are not so fortunate. More on this topic in a later post.
I plan to include this post in next week’s Nature Notes.
UPDATE: Part Two: Many Problems Post Hurricane Sandy (please read and share)
Mount Greylock in the Berkshires has a lot of goldenrod on top of the mountain. And many happy butterflies are enjoying themselves.
We also visited The Mount in the Berkshires, where Edith Wharton lived for a while with her husband (before she divorced him) and his dogs. There is a pet cemetery near the garden that has lots of tidy flowers, many of which are butterfly-friendly, like this butterfly bush. The Whartons allowed their dogs to sit at their fancy dining table along with distinguished guests (is that natural? as this is Nature Notes).
We saw this red mushroom besides the trail that we climbed to the top of Mount Greylock.
Way back in January, my daughter and I went for a walk on the Meadows trail near Donaldson Park. The trail was cleared back in 2006, and it is a nice stroll through the woods. I like this photo and wanted to share it; it looks a bit like the branches of the raspberry bushes in my backyard. It was a snow-less winter in New Jersey, and I think this photo reflects that sort of empty brownness that we had instead.
I haven’t been able to get into nature much recently myself (other than my yard), as I’ve been taking care of my father who is 82 and has needed a lot of help lately. We are working on getting him a new living situation. Balancing work and my regular family duties with this has taken a lot of my time and energy.
What kind of a bird has a speckled breast? I found out that some thrushes do, but this bird is a juvenile robin. Makes sense, since last summer I asked the same question about the speckled breast. Thanks, Michelle, for identifying my young robin.
Just last week I saw baby robins in a nest; when my daughter and I checked on Saturday, they were still in the nest, cawing away, and just a bit bigger. She counted four baby robins.
Do you know of a bird with speckled breast?
The photo shows a blue robin egg. Then the robin babies are born, and they depend on mama and papa robin. After a while, the baby robins get more feathers and fly off from the nest. A young robin is a bird with speckled breast. The mature robin has a red breast. I’ve seen robins with worms in their mouths. I’ve also seen them eating my raspberries.
I caught this squirrel with a strawberry in his mouth (is it a wild strawberry or one of our garden strawberries – not sure, but it looks like the wild kind). So I grabbed my camera and decided to do Nature Notes. I confess, I haven’t been doing much observing of nature, though I have been gardening. My peas did very well in their cage this spring; I saw a deer walk right past the gardening cage (but the deer did take a chomp out of the tomato plants that were outside the cage).
I did not plant this tall lily in this spot behind my pink rose bush. I used to have similar lilies in a different part of my garden; I probably pulled them all out by mistake when I was weeding. Or they died a natural death. So I was surprised to see a lily blossom elsewhere in my yard.
The raspberries that grow on old can are now ripening in our backyard. The ones on new cane are usually more abundant, and we get to enjoy those in August. Last year wasn’t a great crop; maybe this year will be better? I read somewhere that one should prune the raspberry bushes so they have space in between them. I tried to do some pruning last year. It is hard to photograph a raspberry – the camera doesn’t realize you want to focus on that tiny berry.
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In my front yard many pink Mexican poppies are in bloom. My husband remembers the days when he had to mow the front lawn – no more.
There is also purple salvia growing behind the pink Mexican poppies.
The tall green plants behind the Mexican poppies in this shot are lambs’ ear. I originally planted a few that I transported from my mother’s garden in Newton, MA. That was in 1998, so these have been reproducing for over ten years. I’ll probably pull most of them out soon and replace them with summer plants, maybe cucumber plants that I grow among the flowers.
These flowering chives are growing in a pot in my backyard, but since they are in a pot, I could easily transfer them to the front.
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I call this photo “Azalea, meet Andromeda.”
My neighbor’s dogwood tree is once again flowering. My dogwood photos from 2008 are one of the most popular posts on this blog.
Dogwood blossoms are a pleasure, but one needs to be fast with the camera or the dogwood blossom season will be done.
One downside of the abundant blossoms in our area is my stuffed nose. Any of you allergy sufferers? A friend of my daughter’s hates spring because of allergies. Sigh.
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