Monthly adventure

 The house cleaners were here this morning. So an outdoor time was needed. And though the day started out grim and dark and rainy, it suddenly broke out into sun and wind, and after a couple of boring errands, I was able to get to Plainsboro Pond, and do the walk of what used to be known as the Island.

This is the way in from the main road, the official entrance, I suppose.  Great caution is to be observed here, because of the flock of Canada geese, who love it here, reproduce like mad, since they're protected, and make walking a hazardous endeavor, and you have to watch you don't skid.

This is a lovely walking path, water on both sides, different view every time you turn your head. Several runners today and one old party creaking along on an ancient bicycle, having a fine time.

View looking left.  A lot of people living over there have kayaks they put on the pond in season.

View looking right.  I really love to see sun sparkling on the water where the wind is whipping it up

Worlds of interest underfoot, too, this being a damp area, plenty of lichen and fungi and tiny plants

Getting near the end of the path now

And the bridge, looking like something from an impressionist painting.  Before this was built, the piece of land we just walked on was a peninsula, very safe for letting dogs run.  I had a couple of dogs accidentally learn to swim by not realizing the land was coming to an end, and they flung themselves into the water.  One couldn't wait to get back in, loved it.  The other was furious, very offended, demanded to be fished out again NOW and never willingly went in water again.

Now, with the bridge joining to a long walking path for runners, walkers, bicycles, running several miles, it's become a favorite place. No dog running now, though. It was windy today, but the trees on both sides of the path create a shelter from the wind, very welcome to this walker this morning.  Once across the bridge, I turned and retraced my steps back to the other end, because that's where I was parked.  Sometimes I do this walk the other way, park on the street you saw earlier, then start at the bridge, and end at the entrance, then loop back.  It's a couple of miles, I suppose, round trip.  Long time since I measured it with a pedometer.

Finally out in field and fen!

Yesterday was warm enough for spring, and for walking without setting your face against the wind.

So I went down to the pond, which nowadays has a posh park name, and heard birds starting up, early, still ice on the water, but cheerful.

Reminder of the, ahem, historic nature of the place, so this counts as research, not just goofing off in the sun.

Sadly, the original residents, the Lenni Lenapi, were driven away long ago, commemorated here only by the name of the trail, and by local finds of clay lamps and arrowheads.

Looking at this whole small world of mosses, and wishing I knew more about them. Is there a Little Golden Book of Mosses and Lichens?

Home again, so long since I've been here.

June walk by the pond, sunday morning before it gets too hot

I don't do well in heat, so I took a walk this morning before the sun got too hot, along Plainsboro Pond.  Happy people, dogs, birdsong everywhere, lovely time walking.

Before the entrance to the one-time island, a couple of bluebird boxes, currently occupied by noisy families of house sparrows.  I used to tend bluebird boxes in another park, and learned they're put in twos like this so that interlopers, usually barnswallows, in fact, take one and tend to leave one for the bluebirds.  Sparrows have no such sharing ideas, evidently.  

I could hear their young shouting away inside the box, not old enough even to look out yet.  The cold spring must have delayed a lot of breeding, since I have young birds all over at home, still being fed, pretty late for them, and not the second brood either.

This is how you cross into the park, which used to be an island, until they built this footbridge to connect to the mainland (!)

waterlilies on the pond.  a second before this, I saw a large snapping turtle submerge

Wild roses everywhere

Mosses underfoot and shadows of the foliage falling on them

Kittenbird in tree studying me, too young to be worried

More wild roses and grapevines here and there

The wild grapevines were a happy discovery today, which I explain about here

If anyone's interested in knowing how to use them for drawing, let me know, and I'll tell you more than you wanted to know...

 

A gift of a day, walking required

Now that the winter prep is done, all set for cold weather of which we've had some, gloves and coats and all, suddenly today is a warm day, high 70s, sunshine, so winter is on hold, and a visit to the Pond was called for.

Whenever I take pix of the bridge across the pond, I think, hm, who needs Giverny?  I like to come here in all seasons, following on the advice of a naturalist, Jenny Hanson, who led a group I joined several times, of local nature walks.  

She used to say it was valuable to cover the same ground repeatedly throughout the year to observe all the changes, because it wasn't really the same ground at all.  She was quite right.

Birds flitting about, a few last crickets still chirping, and the usual flotilla of Canada geese pretending they plan to fly south, we wish, but they fly as far south as the next town, then wheel around and come home again, acting as if they've been far away.
 
Overhead, two turkey vultures sailed and sailed on the currents, never flapping, just making tiny wing adjustments to keep moving in wide circles.  

Home again, a pair of mourning doves rummaging in the emptied planter boxes maybe for seeds. And the last climbing rose, which I planned to pick for the house before the frost got her, vanished. Today I looked down from upstairs, and there it was, all bitten and torn up, on top of the fence.  Turns out squirrels like roses, too, who knew.

So a lot of earth critters were out and about today. Lucky us.