Poppies are here!

Our poppies finally opened up. Really beautiful flowers. It is too bad they don't last very long. Then again, that is what makes them even more special. Close-up to follow. Sorry my focusing was a little off.

First Visitor

My mom came to visit—we were happy to have our first visitor to the new house. One of the things we did was go to Fillmore Glenn, a state park near Groton. We hiked for a few hours and came across a lot of spring growth, including these white flowers that were verywhere. Here is a solitary one with Blanche in the background.


Here we are at the base of the trail, sitting near the basin of a waterfall. It's still early in the season so a lot of the trails were closed off for safety reasons. I imagine a lot of trees fall during the winters here and they nbeed to clear it out.
Unfortunately, it meant that a lot of the nicer vantage points were not available. We'll go again though as this is only a 15 minute drive from the house.


Birds never stay still long enough for you to photograph them. This time I was lucky and managed to get little birdie in a pensive moment.


Our 13th president, Millard Fillmore. The dude this park is named after. The park is much prettier than the plaque.


This is a replica of the log cabin Millard Fillmore was raised in. Mom and nancy were taking a peek to see if 'ol Millard had his knickers on. Methinks he didn't!


After a long hike even Fiona needed some time to relax and cool off. That or she really wanted someone to pet her belly!

Why Live Teleivision Is Great

I forget how to do the HTML so please copy this link and see a very funny incident that happened on the BBC in relation to the Apple Records vs. Apple Computers lawsuit:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=386136&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=&ct=5

May Garden Pics

Had to mow the lawn again this weekend and finished on Monday night. I took the camera out and took some pictures of the garden and then headed towards the back of the property where I entered the old Lehigh Railroad bed which is now a private trail for the residents who live along the property lines. I went as far as the first tressell and took some pictures of the swamp that has been created by beaver dams.


These are the three crabapple trees that line the front of the yard.


A close-up of the flowers on the crabapple tree.


Standing in front of the crabapples lookig towards the back. There is another crabapple tree. Can't wait to play "baseball" with them ;)


Looking towards the front of the house, standing besides the pines. The vegetable garden is growing. I think there is garlic growing in there now. I still haven't decided if I am going to plant any vegetables and start rabbit/deer proofing the fence.


I am behind our property , standing on the railroad bed that now functions as a trail for local walkers, hikers, motorcross and snowmobile riders. I wish they wouldn't take vehicles out there, especially the snowmobiles in the winter. I might have to make it more difficult and pull some logs out to impede them.


I am standing on top of a neighbors tiny bridge. This is a view of the mouth of the pond/swamp that has been created by beavers and thir dams. In the winter I could see trees that were being gnawed at by them. Little beaver must have moved on to other trees and decided that the ones I saw were too thick.


The next few pictures are of the pond. The houses you see atop the hill are on my block, if you made a right out of my driveway.





A lot of the trees that were once growing have been killed by the beaver dam. The birds (they flew away before i could focus) love this tree. I saw many birds-blue jays, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, and a lot of others i didn't recognize.

Buyu, I'll miss you

I was saddened to hear that my friend Rich's bird, Buyu, recently passed away.

Here is a favorite story of mine about Buyu.
Rich had this blue phone in his room, the same one we used to make our prank phone calls on. If Buyu was waddling around on the floor, playing with us and you touched that phone...you'd have an angry bird biting your hand. Why? Well it is actually very sweet and shows how smart she was. She figured out that every time the phone rang it would get answered. Not the same for Buyu though as she "rang" a lot but somebody didn't always come by to chat with her or give her rubs on the back of her neck. I think she was jealous of the phone and would attack anybody or thing that paid attention to it and not her. The best part is that she found a way past that by using her incredible powers of mimicry. You would have a hard time distinguishing her "phone ring" from the actual phone. Her voice is ingrained in my memory. I can close my eyes and hear her now, singing her greatest hits like "Fuck Off," "I love you," "give me a cracker," and last but not least "cubruck erroo" which I think was her way of saying hello, how are you?