I received this from Helen Morrison today:

 I see that several people have been leaving bottles at my garage for the Cabot kids' trips.  It is so wonderful of people to remember to do that.  I wonder if you would put a "thank you" on the JP blog? Thankyou.

There you have it - a big thank you for helping the Cabot kids out.  I've asked Helen to let me know if the students are planning a scheduled pickup any time soon.  I'll keep you posted.

We've had some questions about the beach, which unfortunately is still closed.  To date we have no further information for you on the cause.  The results of the tests taken Tuesday in all three ponds should be back either tomorrow or Friday, so we'll post it here for you as soon as we get it.  Hopefully, the cause will be found and steps taken to correct the situation.


I couldn't resist taking a night picture of my "blooming maple" tree.  I have runaway perennial sweet peas that have found the perfect trellis - a small maple.  I had no idea when I planted the sweet peas many years ago they would scatter so far afield; and once established, they are nearly impossible to remove.  I've dug them up several times and transplanted them to a better location, but they nearly always send up at least one lone shoot where I dug them out.  These in the maple are white, but I have some lovely lavender ones that nod at me outside my office window.  They were transplants, and seem to be happy in their new spot, but they have cousins crashing the party in various other spots.  They are nearly as unruly as the Japanese lanterns . . . 


I was surprised when I looked at the picture of my daisies.  Nearly every one has an earwig perched on it.  They apparently come out in the night - and maybe they get dew or honey from the flowers.  


While I was outside, I could hear the loons calling down on the pond.  At first it startled me - I was in nearly total darkness, at the end of the house, and it sounded like a woman screaming; but then I heard it again, more clearly, and I knew it was only the loons keeping in touch with one another in the darkness.  It's interesting to listen to the night sounds in total darkness.  I'm not outside in the night often these days, but when I was a kid, my cousins and I used to love sitting on a dark porch or in a hammock on a summer evening, listening to noises - distant hoots and howls, an occasional bellow from one of the cows, or the squawk of a hen crowded off her perch.  When I was older, it was sometimes my job to sit quietly by an open window or door in the cow stable on a moonlit night and wait for a troublesome skunk or porcupine to show up.  My grandfather would never send two of us on that detail; he knew we'd be talking and laughing and scare away any marauding critter, and also it was safer to have just one of us "on duty."  I would sometimes hear a shuffling, but usually I'd just be aware of something moving below me in the barnyard. The cattle were all in the pasture for the night, so when my .12 gauge shotgun went off, only the grackles roosting in the barns and silo were disturbed.