Isolation Adventures: May Flowers and Water Fowl

We woke up this morning to a heavy, wet late snow, which made it the perfect day for the fish chowder and biscuits I can smell Mom making in the kitchen. It also seemed like the right time to share more flower photography with you. It’s hard to believe that I was writing and eating orange juice popsicles outside in the sunshine a week ago.

I’ve been trying to get out regularly for at least a short walk before the dreaded black flies set in here in Maine. I’ve never experienced black fly season, but they say its purpose is to make you grateful for mosquito season later in the summer….

Violets and dandelions have been popping up all over in the grass out back, and pachysandra under the big spruce.

Grandma’s azalea are beginning to bloom at the front of the house, in her favorite pink.

I was simply charmed by this little tableau!
maybe wild strawberries?
the fiddleheads of ferns

Leaves Emerge

This time of year, as beautiful and delicate as the flowers are the budding leaves just emerging on the slender tips of the tree branches. Bright light green against the darker ground or trunks of trees behind, they can be quite striking.

I’m particularly excited to have finally gotten a good shot at these remarkable red tree blooms, which are usually too far overhead for my little cell phone camera to capture in any detail.

And I have also finally managed to capture the emerging beeches, as they unfurl from their buds.

Loons at Lunch

I’ve run into them a couple times now. I like to go for a walk with the first half of my lunch hour, just to the far side of the pond and back on the little dirt road. Twice now, in the little outlet cove at the near end of the road, I’ve had a fairly close encounter with a loon pair.

I guess I’d never been so close to a loon before. I had no idea they were so big — torsos longer than my forearm and extended hand. I stalked them from a couple different angles until they’d had enough of me and headed for the far side of the pond.

It wasn’t the last time I saw the loons, and I’ve definitely been hearing them. By day, the call of the loon is plaintive but melodic. At night, though, their eerie cries will make even a cynic believe in ghosts … and they’ve been quite rowdy some nights, haunting me well past midnight!

I haven’t managed to snag any more loon snaps, but I did get this little yellow guy late this week: