Early "wire rope" bridge - Reigelsville, PA - Friends of the Delaware Canal Luncheon
When the American Shad come up the river from the Ocean to spawn, you know it's Spring. These fish are credited with "saving" Washington's starving soldiers at Valley Forge. Alosa Sapidissima are the guests of honor (so to speak) at the local Shad Festival.
The farmhouse for the farm that was made into a housing development that my parents live in.
A tree downed by the ice storm blocks the Delaware Canal towpath near Washington Crossing, PA.
My neighbor finally put his Christmas tree out at the curb for pickup the last day of March. Another sure sign of Spring.
The eatery at the side of the Perkiomen Trail is once more open for business. A nice sign of Spring - I'm kind of attached to this one.
Hard to see in the photo - but the surest sign of Spring to me, are the "return of the turtles" that climb onto logs to sun themselves!
In the past week, the Daffodils have exploded into bloom. I was overjoyed to see these guys!
A Forsythia bush at the Morris Arboretum.
Pots filled with Tulips greet the sun at the Arboretum.
In Wordless Week: Day 5, the
old photo is from a 1971 Surflight Theater playbill - my brothers and I were attending
a summer stock theater show (maybe "Peter Pan?"). I'm sure we were told to "ham it up" for the photo! I have many fond memories of playing on the beach with some of the people in the photo, as well as of the shows - they may have been off-Broadway, but they were always well-done and entertaining. Joseph P. Hayes, the man that owned and operated the Surflight was a true entertainer, and he would go on stage before each show and introduce the story. He always closed with "...and the lights go down and the foot lights come up!" and while saying that auditorium would turn inky dark and the stage would become brilliantly lit.
The woman in the second photo is my
(honorary) Aunt Bea. She is the one in this blog post:
The Spring time photos were taken during a class I took on "Wildlife Photograph" at the Morris Arboretum. I learned (and relearned) some things about taking photos - and actually dusted off the old "it uses film!" camera in order to use its much better (telephoto) lens. I had to find a place to develop the film - it has been so long since I've done that!
The Virginia Bluebells (in Wordless Week: Day 4) were located along side the Schuylkill River Trail near Betzwood (the home of the Steel Balls - Gosh has it been 4 years already since that memorable trip with Karla and James?) Every year the Bluebells carpet the Valley Forge Historical Park near Pawlings Road and every year, I make a point to go see them. :) Along that trail is the "Buttonwood Bridge" in Wordless Week: Day 2.
The duckweed-covered turtle in Wordless Week: Day 1 was spotted on the Delaware Canal near the town of Yardley, PA.
Last weekend I made the annual trip to Long Island to go fishing with my younger brother and my Dad. We had perfect weather, a nice drive/ride, and caught a ton of fish. The photo shows my dad holding a nice size Porgy (The name “porgy” comes from an American Indian name meaning “fertilizer,” a common use for these abundant fish during Colonial times.) They are quite good tasting but boney. This year we went a day early and visited the lighthouse at Montauk. More on that later. :)
I hope you enjoyed the photos. The spring weather and the flowering trees were so nice, I wanted to bottle it up and send all of you some of it!
I know I've not posted in a while - I've been "out of commission" for a couple weeks but am feeling much better each day. Today, I managed to walk four miles in the pleasant Indian Summer sunshine and am very pleasantly tired now.
While most of you know, I had several pulmonary embolisms (emboli?) and was (literally) knocked off my feet for the better part of a week - and forced to go to the "Three A-Em Acupuncture Spa" (otherwise known as Mercy Suburban Hospital) and turned into a human pin cushion. I'm still bruised from the various needles used to inject or pull out fluids. The food was okay - but the wee hour awakenings for blood pressure, blood samples, and injections of blood thinners kind of sucked.
Umm.. some of the nurses were kind of cute - but I didn't really care all that much - I just wanted to go home and take a shower pretty much from day one (hour one?)
I was greeted by a substantial pile of extra-special "good mail" when I returned home from the Spa. A long hot shower and couple nights of uninterrupted sleep were total bliss! I've been "faithful" taking my medicine - and have been given the green-light to return to work full time - and told to build up to where I was with my walking.
Today and yesterday the weather was perfect - and found me outdoors walking (oh-so-slowly) but steadily... passed not only by women passing baby strollers loaded with hundreds of pounds of baby, baby supplies and baby toys... but also by turtles, burrowing moles and even little ants.
But I felt marvelous - I took some pictures - but first I have to thank everyone for their get well wishes and for the extra-special good mail which I opened Friday and today - enjoying my birthday more that I have in years.
So what do you think is in those boxes, envelopes and behind the gift wrappings?
I've not been walking much the past couple months - The strain from shovelling snow on the back, the stress from work and financially, along with a case of SADs (Seasonal Affective Disorder) all joined up to give me a really bad case of "I don't feel like it"s for a few months.
But today, the first day of Spring, there was no way to avoid the call of the outdoors. It was bright, sunny and 78F!
So, a little stiff from the lack of walking, I started off slowly, tortoise slowly.
I decided that four miles or so would be a nice distance to strive for - and the soft dirt towpath on the Oaks Reach of the Schuylkill Navigation System was just the place to go. I hoped to see some birds, and the earliest of the spring flowers in bloom.
On the other side of the canal, a willow tree begins to turn green. The Forsythia bushes are just starting to blossom - I always like the yellow bushes in full bloom.
I didn't quite expect to see the canal turtle hanging out on the branches sunning themselves! These guys were really big but not very energetic. I guess they need to warm up a bit before they start working on getting some food and producing little turtles.
I think this was the biggest turtle I saw today, it was the size of a basketball. Just in front of the big one, is a little one probably saying, "Hey! I was here first!" On the bank to his left, you will see the first of the buttercups in bloom.
This turtle enjoyed laying on his branch with his feet sticking out into the air. In the video below, where I toss some sticks at him to get him to move a little, he continues to have an alert expression but stubbornly refused to show much sign of life.
As I plodded tortoise-like down the path, I saw turtle after turtle. This one looks as if he as escaped a huge batch of "turtle soup".
The turtles may seem to be rather drab, olive and dark green, but I caught this one rising to give me a closer look - his breast plate is a very vivid red.
Not everything round was a turtle. Here is a porcelain insulator from a power line. I looked around and was a bit baffled - the only nearby electric line didn't use this sort of insulator.
The white chin-strap ducks are once more migrating to the northern climes. I saw many of them along the banks of the canal, most of them formed up in groups of two and all of them ravenously hungry. The only time these geese seemed perturbed was when a pair of very large hawks flew overhead. Try as I might, I couldn't get a good picture of them - they had a mostly white underside and wings that looked to be about 5-6 feet wide.
In addition to the turtles splashing about in the canal, I saw some fish too. I don't know what kind of fish this is - I'm really only a saltwater fisherman.
I spliced together some videos I took while doing my tortoise walk. I admit to throwing sticks at some turtles to see if they would take a splash for you. I winced when I accidentally hit one - but he seemed none the worse for it. The Canadian Geese definitely have a "pecking order" as you will see when the one male chases off the other one - I enjoyed his nonchalant investigation of soggy leaf afterwards.
Tomorrow I hope to extend my walk to five miles and pick up the pace.
Turtle — Spends most of its life in the water. Turtles tend to have webbed feet for swimming. I think the turtles I have pictured are all "Painted Turtles".
Tortoise — A land-dweller that eats low-growing shrubs, grasses, and even cactus. Tortoises do not have webbed feet. Their feet are round and stumpy for walking on land.
Terrapin — Spends its time both on land and in water, but it always lives near water, along rivers, ponds, and lakes. Terrapins are often found in brackish, swampy areas. The word terrapin comes from an Indian word meaning "a little turtle.”
