Bereft of Daffs

The daffodils have been busting out all over due to the crazy warm weather we had for the previous few weeks, except for here in my yard.  My daffodils are planted on the north side of my house, in the shadow of the house for most of the day, therefore they are the last daffodils in all of agricultural zone 5 to bloom I believe!

These are not my  daffodils.  In a “normal” spring, most folks’ daffies in this region begin to bloom in the beginning of April.  Mine are literal “late bloomers” generally popping out mid-to-late April.  I’ve been longing to photograph and share them – although at this point, they will seem  rather boring, I’m sure, since you’ve all been seeing them for a while now.  I couldn’t help myself, however, when I was at the Cape last weekend visiting my mother.

After we had lunch at Captain Parker’s Pub ,(I had some of their famous, award-winning clam chowder -mmmm!) I couldn’t help but take pictures of the flowers surrounding the restaurant.  My mom, daughters and sister waited patiently in the car while I grabbed a few shots.  There was even hyacinth:

Back at home, I’m still waiting for my daffies.  I had hyacinths too, but some underground critter helped itself to a meal of the bulbs a few years ago.

The forsythias in the neighborhood are blooming like crazy and I’ve really been wanting to photograph some, but I don’t have any on my property.  Same goes for dogwood and magnolia trees.  I’ve been trying to decide if there’s a place that I could take pictures of someone else’s and not look too creepy doing it, LOL.

My hybrid rhododendron azaleas have traditionally been early bloomers as far as rhododendrons go, but to have them budding in March I think is a record for them.  The buds on it are in various stages right now.

Some of the buds that were a little further ahead aren’t faring so well in the return to more normal March temps.  We had some nights this past week that went down to the 20′s.  I’m sure that was a bit of a shock to flowers that had experienced 70′s and 80′s just a short time ago.

I looked back in my archives, and found this photo from April 30th last year:

That makes these blooms almost a month ahead this year.

Hubby and I are headed to a wedding later today.  I can’t help but feel a little sorry for the bride.  After almost two weeks of above normal temperatures and sunny skies, today’s forecast is for a high of 48° and on and off drizzling rain and wet snow.  I guess that’s the chance one takes planning a March 31st wedding.

I’m hoping to get April’s photo hunt list posted tomorrow.  I’m still trying to come up with ideas for the list.  If you  have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Quick Hello!

Hello friends! It has been a while since I’ve posted, but I want you to know I’ve been thinking of you! I didn’t get to do my usual weekend catching-up with blogging – visiting, commenting or posting. That’s because I’ve been here this past weekend:

I did take a few pictures this weekend, but I won’t have the time to review them and post tonight because this starts tonight:

It is starting in just a few minutes as I type!  Hope you had a great weekend and I hope to catch up with you soon!

Creations, Crustaceans & Confections

Last weekend was a visit to my mom’s place on Cape Cod for a belated birthday celebration for my sister.  Not a big bash, but a get-together for shopping, good food, beach exploring and laughing.  For me, photo opportunities too.  The weekend was overcast, but better than the forecasted rain showers we had expected, and the temperatures were surprisingly warm.  Here is my rather random collection of favorite photos from the weekend:

Flower found outside our favorite candy store

My cupcake from Jennifer’s birthday dinner

Cormorants at Bass River Beach .. at least I was pretty sure they were cormorants; I was surprised when I zoomed in on this shot and noticed some of the birds had lighter colored feathers and longer necks than I am used to seeing on cormorants.

During a visit to another little cove along Bass River, Meghan was very interested in some tiny scurrying creatures.

At first, we almost didn’t see them, but as I walked toward some odd looking holes in the sand, a blur of movement caught my eye.  I saw them disappearing into the little holes.  What were they?

They were the funniest looking little crabs I’d ever seen!  They all had one over-sized claw and one miniscule one, and eye stalks that moved independently of each other.  That is Meghan’s finger in the background of the shot to give you some scale.

Meghan shared her find with my sister, while Sarah looked on dubiously.

I’m sure that was the last time this year we will visit the Cape while feeling comfortable in our short-sleeved shirts and shorts.  The cooler temperatures are slowly creeping in as autumn settles upon us.  Although I am still sad for summer’s departure, I do hope to bring you some beautiful color this fall.  If you’d like some tips on shooting that autumn color, be sure to have a look over at Scott’s place!  That’s all from me for now.  Hope you are enjoying your weekend!

Cape Cod Flora and Fauna

Flora and fauna – a fancy way of saying plants and critters!  Maybe that’s what this blog should actually be called, huh?  They are my favorite photo subjects, and my recent trip to Cape Cod provided plenty.

Flora:

Lace-cap hydrangeas

fiery day lillies

beach roses or rosa rugosa

beach heather

And the fauna:

gull who came close enough for a piece of pizza crust

beach-visiting golden retriever

Hermit crabs found by my daughers (don’t worry they put ‘em back!).  Amuses me that at 16 and almost 14 years old, finding and picking them up still fascinates Meghan and Sarah.

Not sure what this bird is.  I’m thinking a piper or a plover – can anyone help?  I watched this bird hover over the Bass River and quickly dive in for fish.

Osprey – I’m very happy with this shot.  This is the best shot of a bird of prey that I’ve ever gotten.  In all my visits to the Cape, with the many nest boxes you see everywhere, I never quite realized just how large this bird is. The chimney gives you a good idea of its size; according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology it is almost 2 feet tall and has a wingspan of about 5 feet.

“Karma’s Plants ‘n’ Critters”…. nah, I guess not.

E.T.A. : Turns out that my hovering, diving bird is but a common tern (ha, ha, I crack myself up!).  I did a little research and Cornell’s “All About Birds” helped me out again.  Great site they have there.

Chasing the Moon

sunset at Smuggler’s Beach, South Yarmouth

This past Thursday evening I was driving to Cape Cod to visit my mother.  As I made the familiar trek over the Bourne Bridge, along the Cape Cod Canal and on to Rt. 6 or the Mid-Cape Highway at approximately 8pm, I was struck by an outrageously gorgeous full moon hanging very low in the sky.  The Mid-Cape travels east until you get to the “elbow” of Cape Cod, so I had an amazing view of the rising moon and bemoaned the fact that a busy highway on a famous vacation pennisula would probably be a dangerous place to pull over and take a picture.  The conditions would have been perfect (except for the fact that I left my tripod at home) – low in the sky, full, beautiful color, not too dark out.  No matter, I said to myself.  I’m here for two more nights, I will certainly get another chance.

Friday came and I spent the day getting LOTS of other fun pictures such as:

pink hydrangeas,

amazing sand sculptures, and

interesting negative space – do you see the “dog biscuits” my daughter spotted?

It was such a lovely afternoon at the beach, we decided to bring some pizza to the beach to eat for dinner and await moonrise.  Certainly I’d get a lovely shot right at the spot where Bass River runs into Nantucket Sound.

The light of day was fading.  Around 7:45pm I couldn’t see the moon anywhere despite a mostly clear sky and wide-open landscape.  I didn’t think moonrise would change all that much in 24 hours, but to be on the safe side, I called hubby, who wasn’t able to accompany me on this trip.

“Hon, could you do me a favor?” I asked.

“What’s up?”

“Could you go on that website with the moonrise data for me and check the time of tonight’s moonrise?”

“Uh, okay… hang on… the navy’s site says 7:22pm for the Cape Cod area.”

Okay now I was really confused.  It was nearly 8:00, the wind was getting really chilly and my daughters were getting really impatient.  No moon anywhere.  At 8:10, we gave up and went back to Mom’s place.

Frustrated by the lack of moon, I looked up moonrise information myself on this site.   Apparently, the U.S. Naval moonrise information does not take daylight savings time into account!  The moonrise was actually 8:22 pm.  I missed what was probably a gorgeous moon.  According to the Cape tides site, the next night moonrise would be nearly 9pm.  **sigh**  The picture was not mine to have this time around.

Awesome Weekend, Part 2

As promised, this is the Cape Cod edition of my Awesome Weekend.  After our delicious luncheon  and an afternoon chatting with our BFF Renae, my girls, my sister, my mother and I made the trip to Mom’s place on Cape Cod.  We arrived late evening Saturday, so my photos that I have to share with you are from Sunday which turned out to be a sunny but windy day.  The seagulls were drifting…

… and the windsurfers were surfing!

As I said, it was a sunny day, but it wasn’t that warm!  Check out my “crew” at the beach at Bass River:

Left to right: Sarah, Jennifer, Mom, Meghan

After our windy beach visit, the sun was still lovely and warm, so I requested a little walk around Mom’s neighborhood to see what might be in bloom on the Cape.  I found some pretty sights.  These were growing in the backyard, and I found out over at Barbara’s blog that they are called chionodoxa.

Daffodils are in bloom just about every where you look down at the Cape (still not in my front yard though, hmmpph!)

These grew in a large carpet at the front of someone’s property.  We wondered if it could be heather.  Any ideas?

A sweet little pair of ducks was swimming in a little swampy pond in the neighborhood and I couldn’t  help taking some snaps of the cuties in the late afternoon sun:

Our weekend, in addition to the beach visit and sight-seeing, of course included shopping and good eats, with a very healthy dose of laughter.  Pretty awesome weekend, wouldn’t you say?

Bounty – Picture Fall, day 17

Fall is, of course, traditionally a time of harvest.  The season of bounty is celebrated.  Quite the opposite from the season we referred to when I worked at Old Sturbridge Village as “the six weeks of want” – from about mid May to the first week of July.  In the 19th century, this was the time when most of the supplies that had been preserved and put away for winter were running out, and very little was coming out of the garden yet.  I thought about going with a traditional, harvest-type picture for today’s prompt, but Cape Cod provided me with a different option:

Fall, apparently, is not only the season of harvest, but the season for horsehoe crabs to molt, or at least for the results of their molting to appear on the beach.  Tangled in the seaweed, the girls and I easily collected many shells of these pre-historic looking creatures.  The instructor mentioned in her prompt that one definition of bounty is a plentiful or generous supply; the horseshoe crab shells seemed to fit the bill!

Juxtaposition – Picture Fall, day 16

Hello!  Escaped down to Cape Cod for a quick visit this weekend, so I’m a bit behind posting the daily photo prompt and getting back to you fine folks who left me comments.  It is 9pm as I am writing this post, so I hope to get caught up with everyone soon, but not tonight.  I’m also currently having some computer issues, don’t know if it is my computer, my internet service or particular websites causing the problem, so please bear with me!

The photo prompt for Saturday, October 16, was called Juxtaposition.  The instructor was looking for a photo that evoked more than one or opposite feelings.  I thought this photo of Meghan soaking up some of the last warmth at the beach on the Cape while wrapped in her thick sweatshirt gave a feeling of both warmth and cold:

The sun was surprisingly warm, while the wind still had the coolness of the sea.   With warm cups of coffee, tea or hot chocolate we braved the autumn ocean breeze, while still enjoying the sun on our faces.

A Day Trip for the Family and a Lesson for Me!

Hubby had the thought a few weeks ago to pack up the kids and the dogs on Saturday the 11th for a family day trip.  With his schedule, weekend days off only turn up about every 6 weeks, so little family days need to be planned ahead of time.  He also thought it would be nice for me to get my mind off of some thoughts that have been occupying my mind this week (I’ve shared these thoughts with a few of you; I should get my answer tomorrow.)  It is a rare day indeed that all four of us can spend the day together, so we grabbed a few supplies, leashed the dogs and headed back down to the Cape Cod Canal Visitor’s Center, which I told you about in this post.

The beach at the visitor’s center is one of the few on the Cape that seems to be dog friendly.  Daphne and Teddy had never experienced an ocean beach before so we were curious to see how they would react.

We kept them on 16-ft. retractable leashes for a couple reasons: Teddy is not known for listening all that well when called, and we wanted to be certain they were not bothering anyone else who decided to enjoy this windy, but sunny and bright day.  Unfortunately, these are the only shots I have of the dogs near the water.  Due to my failure to 1) zero out my camera from shooting in early evening light the day before and 2) realize the camera was not in P mode, I took about the first dozen shots of the day in bright sunshine on shutter priority mode with the shutter set for 1/20 of a second!  Most of my shots of the dogs are whited out blurs of gold, black and tan fur.  In the bright sunshine and my excitement to see the dogs first experience at the beach, I failed to notice the display screen in front of my face.  So frustrating!   I realized what I had done when I went to take a picture of a crashing wave and wanted a quick shutter speed for stop action.  It didn’t occur to me to check the shots I’d already taken when I realized my mistake.  Daphne and Teddy were not overly enchanted with the beach this day, so I probably wouldn’t have gotten many more shots of them playing anyway.  It was high tide, quite windy, and their first time, so I think they may have been more nervous than excited about their surroundings.  After the beach, we took a nice long walk along the canal to help use up the energy of dogs that had been traveling in a car for 2 hours.

During our walk, I saw some interesting sights along the way, so I was constantly stopping to take pictures and then catch up with the rest of the family.

Boat of flowers at the Sandwich Marina

Strange swirling vortex of water

I don’t know if this little flag was placed yesterday or not, but I thought it appropriate on 9/11.

A crowd of cormorants

Cormorant close-up

After a good long walk and a stop for ice cream while visiting with my mother, it was time to get back in the car and head home.  The car is hubby’s Chevy Suburban, which provided leg room for the kids and a place for tired pooches to sleep their way home:

There are a few more pictures from our day on my Flickr page, if you want to have a look.  Go ahead, give it a click!

Cape Cod Camping

After a beautiful camping trip to Cape Cod this weekend, I thought I’d take the opportunity to practice my photo essay assignment that I will eventually be composing for Scott Thomas’s challenge due in September.

My family and a group of close friends visited Shawme Crowell State Forest in Sandwich, MA this past weekend for our annual group camping trip.  Shawme Crowell is part of the extensive Massachusetts state park system.  It offers 285 shaded sites for both tents and campers on 700 acres of pine forest and is conveniently located less than 2 miles from the Cape Cod Canal Recreation Area.  (Do I get my extra credit for including people in this shot, Scott?)

The Cape Cod Canal is a 17.4 mile long waterway which artificially divides the pennisula of Cape Cod from the mainland of Massachusetts.  It saves ships much distance in travel by not having to go completely around the “arm” of Cape Cod, as well as helps them to avoid the hazardous waters off the outer Cape and Nantucket Sound which were responsible for many shipwrecks during the 18th and 19th centuries.  Seven point seven miles of land was cut during the project that began in May 1909 and finished in July 1914.  The canal was originally a toll system, but when it failed to make money for its owners was sold to the U.S. government in 1928.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers improved the waterway, making it deeper, wider and safer, as well as constructed the current bridges that serve as today’s transportation routes to the Cape.

The Bourne and Sagamore Bridges connect Cape Cod to mainland Massachusetts.  The original bridges built before the canal first opened, were draw bridges.  The bridges that we travel today bear the same names as the originals, but were reconstructed when the U.S. government took over ownership of the canal.  The Works Progress Administration approved the construction of the new bridges in 1933 and as much work as possible was hand labor in order to employ as many people as possible.   They opened to traffic in 1935.

I don’t know if this is exactly what Scott is looking for; I had a difficult time showing my places of interest with only one photo each.   

Correctly done photo essay or not, we had a lovely camping trip.  This trip is a tradition with a group of friends that has gone on for more years than I care to count now.  We’ve been to many different campgrounds over the years and have expanded the trip to include our children as each couple’s family grew.  We don’t camp simply either!  We plan out great meals and all share in the work of providing, cooking, serving and cleaning,  and then retire to wonderful nights of telling stories, reminiscing and laughing around the campfire.  It is a tradition we look forward to each year and that I hope will continue for many years to come.