Farming/Nature

Where’s Waldo?

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I first spotted him on December 21, 2018, in a torrential rain storm. It was a Friday morning and I was getting ready for work. Easy to remember too, because we were enjoying unseasonably mild temperatures in the low 60’s, but in a two day period between December 20 and December 21 we received over two inches of rain. Our back yard, the shallow patch of woods beyond and the vernal pool in the empty lot next door, were all very wet, pooled everywhere with standing water. I stared at the big white pine in our back yard with concern.

Farming/Nature

The Acrobatic Nuthatch

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Around this time of year my face is pressed to the window by our bird feeder watching the nuthatches scrabble up and down the tree trunks. The white breasted nuthatch is a fairly common visitor in these parts. I remember seeing them as a child, and, less commonly, the red breasted nuthatch which is smaller with a very cool eye stripe and, obviously, red on his breast. 

My mom hung a log sheet on our ice box, as dad called it. There we kept track of the bird species that we saw throughout the winter at our feeder. We all took this very seriously, but clearly some of our wisenheimer friends did not as they frequently added exotic species to the list.

Farming/Nature

The Ongoing Quest

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The other day I was talking to a friend about the good old days and the college experience. This was back in the time before social media and cell phones, in fact we didn’t even have a regular phone in our dorm room. And that was freeing if you wanted to have your parents believe that you were studying in the library around the clock. So without texting or calling, much of my time was taken up by looking for my friends. A typical day might involve me coming back to the dorm after class, napping like any college student must do to keep up her strength for the nightlife that ensued.