By the first of March, and often earlier, the world is all agog concerning signs of spring. The welcome accorded winter during the holidays is no longer extended to the remaining snow-storms, and we meet with a frown the last cold wave of the season. ~ Charles Conrad Abbott (Days Out of Doors)
Sometimes life gets so frustrating! We haven’t been out for a walk in over two weeks. Blaming this on our health problems, car trouble and stormy weather. But on the bright side, we’ve managed to tackle a few neglected projects around the house.
Connecticut’s covid positivity rate is hovering around 3%. My sister worries because there are 72 new cases at the college this week and 4 of her students are isolating. All students and faculty are vaccinated and boosted so hopefully no one is very ill. Still, it’s concerning.
I’m looking forward to spring and the return to our walking adventures soon!
8.29.21 ~ Harkness Memorial State Park Waterford, Connecticut
Last weekend I went with Tim to the Connecticut MG Club’s ‘British by the Sea’ Gathering. I liked the blue MGB GT (above), the color, knowing nothing of cars… Tim, however, was hoping to see a Triumph Herald, his first set of wheels, but came away disappointed.
He did enjoy looking at the 1947 MG (above). I couldn’t help wondering if he has a thing for red vehicles from 1947! (Take a peek at the 1947 Ford Pickup he was admiring a couple of months ago in this post: with fields of lavender)
This tiny Wolseley Hornet Mk III (above) caught Tim’s eye because he said he had never heard of Wolseley Motors before…
I was amused by the sticker placed on one of its windows, indicating the auto was actually its actual size. 🤣
The above buggy was made in 1937 and had only three wheels.
After we browsed for a while I noticed some flowers peeping over the hedge surrounding the nearby cutting garden. We took a little detour to get a few end-of-summer snapshots!
Back at home…
“Tall Sea Tale” by Charles Wysocki
… on Monday I started and finished the above 300-piece puzzle in one afternoon. With all the practice I’ve been getting during the pandemic it seems I’m getting faster and am developing a marked preference for Charles Wysocki jigsaw puzzles.
On Wednesday the remnants of Hurricane Ida arrived, and by the time she left Thursday morning, had dumped 5 inches of rain on us. When I looked out the window early Wednesday afternoon I spotted a mourning dove hunkering down for the storm in one of the arborvitaes.
Each time I looked over the next several hours he was still sitting there in the same place and position. Finally, just before dark, he was gone. We heard some thunder rumbling in the night but thankfully no tornadoes or flash flooding in our neck of the woods.
At about 4:00 pm the storm started up again, but with lighter rain and wind. I guess it was the eye of the storm we went through. My daughter called from North Carolina and while I was talking to her the blue jay came by for a third time today. This time I put down the phone and picked up the camera and then got back to Larisa, who completely understood her distracted mother.
Turns out the reason my new friend looked so bedraggled is that he is molting!
He seemed happy to pose in one of the arborvitae trees. Then I remembered an experience I had with a blue jay over a decade ago. It had appeared and called outside my window just before I got an unexpected tornado warning. I wrote a post about that here: my first tornado warning!
When my sister called, a little after my daughter had called, I told her about the new blue jay story. To Beverly it was obvious, our mother was looking out for me again. Our mother’s nickname was BJ and she had made the same connection back then in 2010. (Beverly got her own bird visit recently. A cardinal built a nest in our mother’s andromeda bush outside her kitchen window.)
rain from Hurricane Henri
We never lost power and the weather is much calmer. I decided it was safe to take some chicken out of the freezer to thaw in the fridge for supper tomorrow. Since I woke up at 3:30 this morning I’m feeling tired and ready for bed after all the day’s excitement. Good night, dear readers! Thank you so much for all your lovely comments today! đź’™
The sun is almost out and it has stopped raining and the the wind is still. A strange period of calm. Tim says we are in the eye of the storm. According to the experts, the storm made landfall at 12:30 pm at Westerly, Rhode Island, about 17 miles east of us. The city where our daughter was born. Where we go to see bigger waves at Napatree Point. Where we used to go to see Shakespeare-in-the-Park. (Wilcox Park) We will see if storm conditions return.
Early this morning as the rain started up, a bedraggled blue jay landed on the railing of our balcony and peered inside. I wished him luck in the storm and off he flew. I forgot all about him. Well, he just came back and gave us another look. He looked just as disheveled as he did earlier. After checking me out he flew into the arborvitae and gave an unusual call, a clear whistle. I did some research and found that it might have been “an alarm for a low-intensity threat.” Interesting…
We still have power. The storm track has just changed again, a little more to the west. The eye, what’s left of it, is over Block Island and is very close to us now. It might make landfall right over us! The tropical storm is disintegrating as it travels over our cooler waters. We’re getting heavy rain and 46 mph winds from the north, which are pushing the the storm surge from our coastline out to Long Island’s north shore. The full moon/high tide/storm surge combo won’t be quite as bad as they thought it could be. It’s fun watching the news people on TV standing outside in familiar spots, getting drenched from the wind-driven rain and with dramatic waves crashing behind them. Honestly, this is no worse than some of our nor’easters — so far.
I was going to post the latest predicted storm track but the the image wouldn’t save for me, so I went to WikiArt to find a painting…
It’s 6:15 am, we have wind and rain, temperature 74°F (23°C), Pressure 30 inHg, wind moderate at 20 mph. The outer bands of Hurricane Henri have arrived. The worst of it for us should be between 9 am and 4 pm. Yesterday afternoon the track started moving east again and when I woke up this morning it had moved again back to a predicted landfall east of us in Rhode Island, just over the state line.
My sister Beverly and I were reminiscing on the phone last night. Back in 1991, when she called our old New England Cape Codder grandparents after Hurricane Bob, Grandfather scolded her for worrying. “This house has been standing here since 1880 and it isn’t about to fall apart now.” He was 86 at the time and taking care of our grandmother, who was quite ill with dementia, at home. It was good remembering his calm and steady approach to life.
If we don’t lose power I will post weather updates from time to time. I think Grandfather would approve! 🙂
At 5:00 pm yesterday our cell phone alarms went off in unison to alert us that the hurricane watch is now a hurricane warning. (Even though Henri hasn’t even become a hurricane yet, but it likely will.) We’ve watched the projected path move more and more to the west. For a time the eye was due to go right over us! But now it looks like we will be on the windy side of the storm. All campgrounds in the state will close at 4:00 pm today. Eastern Point Beach will be closed at 6:00 pm and Groton is opening its shelter at that time. We will stay put unless ordered to leave — it will “only” be a category 1 storm. It is recommended that residents along four streets close to the beach evacuate. So now we wait and see!
Woke up this morning under a hurricane watch. The path of Tropical Storm Henri is inching ever closer to us. Bob Maxon, my favorite weekday morning meteorologist, tells us that the last hurricane to make landfall in Connecticut was Gloria in 1985 and the last to make landfall in New England, was Bob in 1991. Right now Henri is making a beeline to Narragansett, Rhode Island, one county away from us. Last night it was aiming for Buzzards Bay, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. (Even though the outer bands of Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy hit us hard in 2012 it never made landfall here.)
This may be the first time I ride out a hurricane with my husband at home. Both times in the past his employment kept him at work for the duration. For Gloria, the kids and I evacuated to my parents’ house, 45 miles inland. I was pregnant with the baby I lost a month later. For Bob, we evacuated to a friend’s house about 8 miles inland. It was only three months after my mother died. This one will probably arrive as a category 1 hurricane so we probably won’t need to evacuate. Tim’s retired now. I suppose we will be glued to the TV and our laptops until we lose power…
Between the humidity, alarming pandemic numbers and medical appointments, it’s been a very long week. But Sunday evening we did take a saunter through the heaviness at Avery Point and enjoyed taking a few pictures. My blogging motivation is pretty low so I’ve been dragging my heels about getting around to sharing them.
“Erdoded Stacks” by Matthew Weber
“Thru The Black Hole” by Nick Santoro (Champlain Limestone & Vermont Marble)
I do love my beach roses and the light this time of year is flawless…
I also saw signs of autumn approaching, reminding me of the pleasure I had last year exploring the woods, taking so many pictures in the cool, crisp fall air.
Rough weather ahead for Sunday! Time to batten down the hatches…
Tropical Storm Elsa cleared up in time for us to have our supper down at the beach. Didn’t see any storm damage, although other parts of Connecticut got some flash flooding. We had 4 inches of rain. The winds weren’t too bad but it was still pretty breezy down by the water. The wildflowers on the rocks looked freshly showered.
We had two gulls to keep us company. They waited politely and posed for pictures but never got a bit of food from us.
ring-billed gull
herring gull
herring gull feet
After we ate we took a walk over to look at the island where we saw the great blue heron the other day but he wasn’t there. Instead, we saw a Canada goose hanging out with the American oystercatchers. If only I could get closer!
And as we passed by the song sparrow’s thicket we saw one of them. When he faced the sun and the wind he looked fine, and when he turned and faced away from the wind his feathers ruffled.
It was good to get out of the house. Still trying to wrap our minds around the latest COVID-19 news, that 4 million people have died of it worldwide. (Probably many more than that.) Even though things seem almost back to normal around here, the fact is that most of the world is still in a very precarious situation.
We worked on a jigsaw puzzle during the storm… Now it’s back to the heat and humidity and thunderstorms…
