Progress

‘Just came in from a walk.  All by myself.  That’s right, as of this week, I am confident enough again to go out on my own.  Hurray!  It feels like progress.

     My destination was the pond, where I sat on one of the benches and saw pretty much the same cast of characters as last week:  Canada geese, a pair of hooded mergansers, even more swallows on the wing.  Walking on, with the pond to my right, I startled a pair of wood ducks off water to my left.  They took flight with whistles and a flurry of wings.  Which in turn startled me, as they lifted off from a body of water I’d forgotten about.  It’s only been there since a flood after a pond repair last year, but the overflow constitutes a substantial amount of water.  Since it’s really just the woods under water, it provided great cover for the shy wood ducks and, apparently, for me.

     In the same new overflow pond, an expanse of shell counted as my first turtle sighting of the year, a snapper.  It wasn’t one of the whoppers of Thurston Pond, but it was good sized all the same, with a shell maybe a foot across.

      Losing the light, I took a path out of the woods that looked like it would be well away from the flashing red lights that had lit my whole visit to the pond but close enough, maybe, to see what the lights were about.  Our area’s been under a wind advisory all day, and we briefly lost power this evening, to the sound of transformers blowing.  Did the flashing lights have something to do with the wind?  Quite possibly. 

     I stepped out of the woods to find caution tape blocking the sidewalk down the block to my left, and a diagonally-parked fire engine blocking the street.  Three firefighters were standing near it.  Calling something toward me.  I looked the other way and was startled to find the other end of the block also strung with caution tape.  To wit, I was in the middle of a cordoned-off area.  Zipping back into the woods, I tried to keep my whistles and flurry of wings to a minimum, and took another route home.     

     In the various woods near here, trout lily foliage is working its way up through what’s left of last fall’s leaves.  This is going to be a good year for trout lilies; those brown-mottled leaves are popping up everywhere.  Trout lilies are hearty and unpretentious, wildflowers for the masses.  Spring beauty is also now appearing, both foliage and a few as-yet-unopened flowers.  Spring beauties are small and dainty, harder to find.  It’s too early to tell if they’ll be plentiful or not, but we know we can count on trout lilies either way.

     It would be good if lots of flowers bloomed soon–I saw a black swallowtail butterfly on the wing in Sugarbush.  The weather forecast for the next few days doesn’t hold much hope of warm temperatures, either.  Here’s hoping the swallowtail finds lots of yummy things to eat.

     Even in people’s gardens, there isn’t much blooming yet.  The hellebores by the easement to the pond are coming out.  There are violets here and there, and more and more daffodils.  On the north side of Rumsey, where the front yards have southern exposure, the gardens are about two weeks ahead of the gardens on the other side of the street.  My friend Janice is an authority on this.  She lives on the south side.

     Rabbits have been chowing down on the tulip plants in our front yard but, so far, not on the miniature tulips coming up in the back yard.  The new bulbs I tucked in out front seem to have overwintered successfully.  The new flowers I’m most eager to see are the orange hyacinths.  Until coming upon the bulb packets at the nursery, I didn’t even know hyacinths came in orange.  They’re not all the way open yet, but the color seems more peachy pink so far.  I hope this new color smells as good as hyacinths of old.        

          When the power came back on yesterday, we discovered that the lights in one of the bathrooms no longer worked.  No problems with the circuit board.  Resetting the GFCI in the bathroom changed nothing.  But when Cory picked up Rascal this morning, he said that resetting all the GFCIs resolved a similar problem at their house yesterday.  My husband, therefore, just reset all of ours and, huzzah, the bathroom lights are back in business.  Regaining what you’ve lost feels like progress.

15 April 2022