Back in VT with the Mergansers.

8-17-17 VERMONT: Now August is half gone. We got back from Maine Tuesday afternoon, settled in, put stuff away and started laundry, and I opened my new Moultrie game camera that arrived while we were away. I finished getting it set up this afternoon, I think.

We picked up the dogs Wednesday morning, our first chance to get them. They were incredibly glad to see us, as always, and we were as glad to see them.

Before we picked them up from the kennel, I took dozens of pix of a flock of six female Hooded Mergansers that had taken over the pond, eating fish and crawfish, and making themselves at home. The males, none were in the flock, are very distinctive, but the females are a bit harder to ID. They were back again this morning, but the dogs chased them away before I got any new pix.

We’re off to Pine Restaurant for an Anniversary dinner tonight, and tomorrow we have dinner with Dave and Gail at Elixir.

New blooms: Casablanca lily, white phlox.


Casablanca lily, a true lily not a daylily, opened while we were in Maine. We could have told it was open by the aroma if we hadn't seen it.

Early in the morning in Southwest Harbor the day after the sunrise in the last post. A different sunrise.

Camden, Maine. We stopped for a quick visit on the way back to Thetford. It was still foggy as you can see. It's a beautiful town with pretty real estate, pretty boats, a waterfall in the center of town, and cute shops. There's also a lot of slow traffic crawling down Route 1/Main St.

The morning after our arrival, we awoke to find a bunch of ducks on the pond, six swimming and diving, eating fish and crawfish.

A good look at the conformation of this lady.

They hung around for a long time. The ID, female Hooded Mergansers, has been confirmed by my expert consultants.

That one in the back is eating a crawfish.

Southwest Harbor, Maine.

8-14-17 SOUTHWEST HARBOR, MAINE: We drove here on Saturday, running into bad traffic in Portsmouth, NH and southern Maine, but arriving here in time for a boat ride to Ilsesford, on Little Cranberry Island for a seafood restaurant dinner. Lobster and tuna were the popular choices.

Sunday was sailboat race day. I haven’t done one for many years, and the technology has changed, and so have I. It was hard work scrambling from one side of the boat to the other when tacking back and forth. It was a long race with many legs, upwind and down wind. I got to see a lot of the area from the water. ‘Ranger’ is a beautiful boat. Dinner was at a fav of mine here, XYZ, a Mexican restaurant.

Today opened with a pretty sunrise, and later we went cruising in Ken’s powerboat, Mutiny. We toured both Southwest Harbor and Northeast Harbor, and we went up Somes Sound to Somes Harbor, which is smaller than the other two, but has a bald eagle in residence.

We saw osprey nest in Southwest Harbor on top of a navigational aid with some almost mature chicks.

Carol has a large, mesh cylinder in her kitchen where she is raising Monarch butterflies from eggs. She adds milkweed cuttings as needed to feed the caterpillars hatched from the eggs, who eventually form chrysalises and hatch out as butterflies. At present there is one egg, several caterpillars of varying size and one chrysalis. A number of mature butterflies have been released in the garden. We wonder if they will join the butterfly migration in the fall.

Tonight is Carol’s birthday bash.


Bald Eagle lives in Somes Harbor.

A bit of Ken and Carols gardens.

Carol raises Monarch butterflies. We saw eggs, caterpillars and a chrysalis. This adult male has been released to the garden.

Monarch caterpillars eating Asclepias incarnata, butterfly weed, a kind of milkweed, in the brooding container.

Lobster pots add an extra dimension to sailing techniques.

Osprey chick in Southwest Harbor on top of a navigational aid. They are almost mature.

Monday morning sunrise.

Southwest Harbor.

Somes Harbor near the upper end of Somes Sound.

Birds and Butterflies.

8-11-17 VERMONT: Summer is slipping away, sunset is now earlier than 8 PM. We had another shower overnight and heavy dew this morning. My shoes got soaked on my early rounds.

We did go to and look at Katy and Andy’s pasture milkweed, but saw no monarchs and no caterpillars. They had monarchs a few weeks ago for several days and identified small caterpillars on their impressive stand of milkweed. Yesterday there were no caterpillars that we saw, and almost all the milkweed leaves and plants were intact, without signs of being chewed on.

I did see a Swallowtail butterfly, either a Black or Spicebush Swallowtail. There’s a pic below if anyone has a ID to offer. Later in our pasture, I saw a Painted Lady butterfly where the mint is in bloom and where the milkweed grows.

The Indigo bunting has been back at the feeder a lot this week, and I finally got a nice snap and one with a gold finch sharing the perch.

We had dinner at Tuckerbox last night with Ken and Jane, and are scheduled for dinner tonight with Ann and Roger and Dave and Shari. Tomorrow we’re off to Southwest Harbor for a visit to Ken and Carol.

New blooms: white star clematis.


Indigo Bunting, again, finally an acceptable image, and the last one that I'll harass everyone with, except for the one below.

Yellow bird, blue bird.

The black-eyed Susans in the garden finally opened.

Black swallowtail or Spicebush swallowtail. Anyone?

Painted Lady.

Canoe Two.

8-9-17 VERMONT: There was rain over night day before yesterday and another shower in the late afternoon today, no big accumulation, but enough to keep things green. Today was in the eighties.

Yesterday we got the canoe in the water again, just above the Ledyard Bridge in Hanover and paddled into the cove by the Montshire Museum, which was filled with mallards and then across the Connecticut to Mink Brook and upstream in the brook in very quiet water. We saw a blue heron and cormorants also. The paddle back was into a bit of wind.

Today we ran errands and picked more blueberries and tomatoes.

Yesterday we had dinner with Katy and Andy at Samurai Soul Food, and heard that their pasture has lots of monarchs—we’ll check it out.

New blooms: liatris, blue lobelia.


Ms. Mallard giving us the stare down.

Blue Heron also giving us the evil eye.

We got our ducks in a row once...

And twice.

Mink Brook, Judy's paddle in the corner.

Boston and Maine.

8-7-17 VERMONT: Saturday we went to Boston for the day to visit granddaughter Maggie who’s been living and working there since graduation. We picked her up after work in Brookline, not far from where we used to live in the early sixties, that’s the nineteen sixties, which we visited with her. We went to her apartment, met a couple of her roomie’s and her pet rats.

We spent the afternoon at the harbor, explored Quincy Market, bought her a couple of early birthday presents, watched the whale watchers sail away and had dinner at Legal Sea Foods, which left everyone stuffed, like some of the entrees.

We got back about 11 PM to the unimaginable delight of the dogs. Thanks to Janet and Bill for giving the dogs dinner.

Here, it’s August, which means the beds are getting overgrown, the plants are leggy and sprawling, and weeds are everywhere. There’s also a ton of pruning to be done. I’m still picking blueberries and tomatoes are getting ahead of us. Judy and I have been walking on the dogs on the road for a couple miles almost daily in an attempt to improve our pathetic level of conditioning. There was one rain shower that gave us 0.2 inches, but we need more. After the soggy June and July, it’s now too dry.

I looked at a bunch of milkweed plants and all the leaves are intact, none of them has been chewed upon by caterpillars. No monarch butterflies sighted since that one male passed through.

Next weekend we go to Maine, to visit Ken and Carol.

New blooms: more phlox, more hollyhocks, monkshood, Indian pipe.


Maggie and me, you don't have to tell me it's an improvement.

Quincy Market on Saturday.

Harbor for whale-watching and boat tours, sailboats and condos.

Dinner at the Harbor was excellent. That place is a gold mine.

Gus says to Maizie, "Just because it's called golden rod, doesn't mean we're related."

Ruby-throated Hummingbird, female, taking a break on meadow rue.

Kingfisher, male, still terrorizing our crawfish. Doesn't he have tiny feet?

The Indigo Bunting has been back at the feeder, here sharing with a song sparrow.

I have to include a flower on the Garden Blog, this is a cluster of Indian Pipe, not a fungus, but a 'green' plant without chlorophyll. It is a parasitic plant, a myco-heterotroph, that feeds on fungi that are, in turn, symbiotic with trees. Is it demeaning to call it Indian pipe?

Meanwhile, Back at the Garden.

8-3-17 VERMONT: It’s been a while since mentioned the garden, supposedly the subject of this blog. The weather has finally dried out, and I might have to start watering soon. The beds here are so packed with established perennials that it’s hard to get something new going, even in what seem to be open spots in the spring.

The hollyhocks I planted in the spring are struggling, the Casablanca lilies are also getting overwhelmed, the Asclepias have disappeared from the wall bed, but are holding their own by the pond.

Speaking of the pond, it has stayed fairly clear for mid-summer thanks to the treatments with probiotics and the darkening dye that suppresses algae growth.

The kingfishers have been at the pond everyday, a family of three, parents and, what I guess is, a yearling. Fortunately we have a lot of crawfish and shiners. The indigo bunting has been back at the feeder a few times, but hardly sits still long enough for a photo.

Blueberries and tomatoes are plentiful and the basil is overwhelming us, in fact all the herbs are doing well this year except rosemary. Last year rosemary was gigantic.

The pasture is turning yellow with the various kinds of goldenrod starting and the mint beginning to bloom. I have seen no new monarchs or monarch caterpillars on the milkweed. There are generally less butterflies this year than other years.

New blooms: helenium, first aster.


Canadian Tiger Swallowtail poses very obligingly.

First Phlox.

The kingfishers, three of them, Momma, Poppa and a yearling have been at the pond almost everyday. Here, she eats a crawfish.

Ornate Tiger Moth found his/her way into the kitchen, but got helped out into the night, which made both of us happier.

Hasty shot of the Indigo Bunting who is quite camera shy, which explains the poor pic.

Helenium means it's August.

Gentian is moderately shade tolerant and stands in at six inches.

Hostas dominate the front yard. I cut all of them, that border that path, in half this spring and planted those removed pieces elsewhere. I might need to do that again next year.

Canoe Morning.

8-1-17 VERMONT: We got the canoe out of the barn for the first time in ages, lashed it to the top of the Subaru and headed for the boat launch at the confluence of the Ompompanoosuc and Connecticut Rivers. The launch site is next to the remains of a washed-out bridge over the Ompom. First we paddled downstream, passing under the Route 5 Bridge and then under the Railroad Bridge to get out into the Connecticut.

The water was very clear and still before the wind picked up from calm to a gently breeze and riffled the surface. There are a number of flat, reedy islands in the wide, shallow estuary. We paddled around a few of them looking for birds or other wildlife. We saw a couple bunches of female mallards.

We decided to go up the Ompom, so headed back to the launch site and past it to a big, shallow reedy lake. There were more ducks and a blue heron stalking along the water’s edge. Going under the I-91 Bridge, we disturbed a colony of swallows and entered the Canada geese domain. There were at least three dozen, avoiding us in the cattails. When we got to the Route 132 Bridge, we turned around and headed back to the launch, pulled the canoe, put it back on the car and headed to town on errands.

New blooms: gentian.


Early in the paddle, the water was as still and clear as glass, here at the railroad bridge where the Ompompanoosuc joins the Connecticut.

Mallards all busy grooming.

One of several low, reedy islands in the shallow Ompom/Connecticut estuary. There's a handsome farm on the NH shore.

Train whistling by as we paddle back to the Ompom.

Great blue heron at the edge of the water.

Canada geese.

Paddling through the reeds.