House Cleaner day adventures

The house cleaners were back today, so it was once more time for me to figure out an adventure to have so as to leave the house to them, without being underfoot while they go through the place like a family of whirlwinds.

Bitterly cold, also windy, not conducive to nice strolls, and it was grey out when I was making plans, not conducive to feeling like going out at all.  But still she persisted.  And I realized I still had not done the Annual Witchhazel Hunt.

Ah, here's a good thing to do, I thought. Usually I walk there, since it's on the edge of a local park, where the bus shelter is, which structure may account for its survival after a lot of severe weather.

But nowadays in extreme cold, that's a bit too far to walk. But why not drive there on my way to other destinations, self, I asked myself.  Parking lot right there.  And I did, and found that I was not quite too late to catch some of it in bloom.  I was a bit late to the party, since usually the first or second week of January is the best time.  But, as you see, I did score a couple of twigs, and scurried back to the car to get warm again.

I noticed that I'd got two species. Witchhazel grows a bit like forsythia, masses of branches coming up from the ground in parallel, so this may be two species that are just growing as close neighbors.  I picked the twigs off what appeared to be one bush.

And you'll see one set of yellowish flowers, one of the classic red wild starburst design.  You'll see how tiny these are, imperceptible if you don't know they're there. And you can see further down the stem, the bell-like shapes that appear after the flowers have blossomed and gone.  The flowers will smell interesting once they get warmed through in the house. It's always such a treat to find flowering shrubs in the depths of the winter, and this winter definitely has its depths, what with one thing and another.

Then came a couple of dull errands, dvd back to the library, Target for a couple of vital things I forgot to ask Handsome Son to pick up, including paper tape, that invention that people are now using to tape the top of the face mask so as to avoid fogging up your glasses.  This is very important right now, since as soon as I leave the house, the glasses, warm from the house, fog over instantly, and it's not just fog.  It's almost instantly ice, which is a different thing to get rid of.  Not good for driving.

Anyway, after that, off to find new views, and I decided to go up to Cranbury, since I was halfway there already, left Target by the back way, headed up a country road, to the old village of Cranbury where half the houses are Revolutionary period, complete with plaques to prove it, and the graveyard holds locals for three centuries. Including the person who was the first traffic fatality in the region.  Fell out of his carriage after a very good day's trading and celebrating in Philadelphia, a real own goal if ever there was one, he probably thought as the wheels passed over his helpless form.  Poor guy.

Anyway, that's for another time when the weather's nice enough to stroll about and take pictures for your viewing pleasure.  Today I thought it would be good to watch moving water with sun sparkling on it.

So I went here, the park on the banks of Brainerd Lake, moving water, complete with all kinds of ducks and fishing birds.  Many diving ducks today, too far for good pictures, but the very good part about this place is that you can sit in your car with a perfect view. There are benches near the water, where I like to go to and read in good weather.  

Handsome Partner, after he had lost a lot of mobility, loved to come here, and I could help him do just the few yards from car to bench where he could enjoy being out of the house, and with plenty to see on and around the water.

And this is where I came to sit after I'd made the arrangements after his death, at the funeral home just a few yards from the park.  It was a calming and helpful place that day, as well as many others.

I hadn't planned on birds today, so I didn't have my binoculars with me, so I'll have to look up the waterbirds by memory.  I think there were coots and some other species, all swimming together.

I came home to a clean house, feeling much better about everything.  Amazing what a bit of sunshine and fresh air, however frigid, will do for a person.

Field and Fen lives up to its name for once

A couple of mild winter days is all it takes for me to get out, walking up a storm, observing, collecting, and generally liking the season and the freedom to see it.

I'm reading one of Tristan Gooley's books, and getting a raft of great ideas from it, some of them even useful.

The lost art of reading nature's signs : use outdoor clues to find your way, predict the weather, locate water, track animals--and other forgotten skills

This is out in ebook form, and I'm reading it via Hoopla at the moment. I tried to give you the full link showing the cover, but Blogger panicked and said, no, no, not secure, don't go there, sigh. Very readable prose, and though he's based in the UK, his observations are interesting for other parts, too.  He's walked and observed all over the world in practically every natural surrounding, and lived to tell the tale.

I already started noticing things about trees and mud and wind that I hadn't put together before.  Anyway, if you make art, you'll like these ways of seeing, and if you like walking, you'll like his approach, and if you're an armchair hiker, it's still fun to read. Some of his tracking skills are vital for readers of detective stories, where you have to see whether there were three people or four carrying another, or whether the bike or the car came by first..

I do a modest amount of tracking at the Preserve, since you can see traces of deer, fox and other animals, from footprints in mud, and scat and munched trees and shrubs, and this encourages me to continue.

Winter is a good time to observe the effects of weather on trees, since their skeletons are in view.  Around here the effects are as likely to be those of the power company as the weather, but you learn to allow for that, too. 

And yesterday I went in search of witchhazel, and may be a little early, since there were just buds, nothing open yet, but I brought a few twigs home in the hope that the indoor warmth would push them on a bit.  They're the reddish ones on the right, which will open into tiny shaggy blossoms, red and yellow, ragged petals.
A bit of fluff from a bird came home with it, so I left it in place.

In the same glass there is another shrub, too, the one with the yellowish cruciferous blossoms, and I'm hoping that maybe Quinn, or Judy, with much greater knowledge than I, can suggest what it is. Is it related to witchhazel? different blossom form, though.  And my searches have not turned up a possible name. 

I'm particularly happy to see anything that blossoms in January, anyway, even earlier than my six snowdrops, which I hope will return this year, despite being trampled on by the builders, and having equipment and materials shoved around on their territory.