Almanac

So inviting...we kept saying, just a little bit farther.....

Peepers started their strident song this past weekend. We first heard them at the river one evening. They were a couple of days later here at the farm....they didn't call it Northview for nothing....but you can hear them even in the daytime now.

The boss and I essayed a roughly five-mile round-trip walk on the Erie Canal towpath yesterday and kept thinking we were hearing good birds when they called. A chorus is obvious, but a single frog tuning up is very birdlike. 

How about that big dude on the left! That is some turtle for a painted

The temperature reached 88 degrees, which made our walk a bit of a challenge....as in when we were done I was done....done for that is. Toast. You could certainly have stuck a fork in and all.

However, hitting ten thousand steps nearly every day is a good deal....mornings feel pretty frisky...at least for a couple of hours.

The old canal was full of turtles, soaking up sun after a long cold winter. The Eastern Painted Turtles perched on logs, while snappers, looking pretty much like moss-covered logs themselves, oozed slowly through the mossy water. You could only tell that they were alive by their movement and the occasional appearance of spooky dinosaur heads above the surface as they grabbed a breath.

Saw the first Coltsfoot yesterday too, down near the canal road. As above, we will see ours at least a few days, if not a couple of weeks later than this. Our north facing slope is kinda chilly.

However, along the towpath we saw something delightful. I heard the classic "killy-killy-killy" call of American Kestrels and a pair zoomed in right over our heads and began interacting in and out of a nest hole in a nearby tree. Fluttering, screaming, lots of ingress and egress of the hole. I tried for a photo, but the sun was so bright I couldn't find them in the viewfinder. It seems as if there are far more of them around this year than in recent years....much like it was before their recent decline. Out in the country you can find a pair every few miles on the power wires and yesterday I found one hunting the heifer pasture right behind the house.

That should be interesting as there is a mockingbird setting up housekeeping in a rose bush there.

The first crocus bloomed on Monday and by yesterday there were a dozen in a cheerful purple carpet. Squill is  waving tiny blue flags by the garden pond. There are buds on the daffodils! 

Jade and Liz dug out the limestone steps in front of the house and discovered a wide, slate walkway leading to the house. It is about a foot deep in soil, but Jade has been digging it out.

Things are hatching in the dining room incubator. It is getting so I don't even go look when I hear peeping....getting to be old hat.

It was a treat to hang laundry outdoors for two days and do some serious catching up.

Today we are back to normal for Upstate April, 50 or so degrees, cool, wet, and gloomy. No denying that it is spring though.