My Breathing Space Continues...

Enjoying the view from the cabin deck at low tide...
Oh the peace and quiet and solace of nature... the poetry of Earth.
Good tidings! I am still on mini-vacation (tis so hard to tear myself away from this sanctuary splendour)
Will be back soon... I promise!!

A early morning walk

The University's Fall break (timed with the November election) gave us a bit more time to enjoy some balmy November weather.

Along the dikes, separating Lake Hartwell from campus, we didn't see anyone else until late in our walk. But we admired a cormorant diving, several great blue herons, a green heron, and gulls recently arrived from the coast.

The camera caught a striking reflection of fall color surrounding the sand spit, which we hadn't noticed, being focused on the herons, but was a nice surprise.

I've been wishing I had a chipmunk photo -- this one gave me a perfect opportunity, foraging for seeds along the dike's rip-rip banks.

Nature & gardening blogs

I've been enjoying reading other people's posts on their nature and gardening blogs. We share a community that wouldn't have been possible in immediate time in a pre-internet age.

I'm mindful, however, of the correspondence that keen naturalists and gardeners had via (very slow) posts that traveled by horseback, carriage, ship, and courier. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, William and John Bartram, Asa Gray, Andre Michaux, Mark Catesby, John Jame Audubon, Lewis and Clark, among many others on this continent (North America), corresponded widely with fellow observers throughout the world, not to mention the VERY many others in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. And they all depended on much slower transmission of observations and thoughts.

But I''m grateful for the ability of the internet to connect us (in a much humbler way) in real time, with our observations of nature and experiences in our gardens.

A warm fall day

It was absolutely lovely in the garden this morning; the fall color is still bright, as the leaves come down and sprinkle the landscape with color. But it's unusually warm, the kind of "Indian summer" day we used to have in September and October, not in mid-November. On the front steps, there was a sudden emergence of hundreds of winged insects -- they looked like ants and I'll have to figure out what they were. In any case, it's not the time of the year to be hatching!

I did my favorite program this morning for a garden club in a nearby city (this permutation was Gardening for Nature). Actually the location was in a semirural area west of town. In what used to be rolling farm fields, subdivisions and shopping areas have popped up and lakeside houses now dot the nearby shore of Lake Hartwell. They were a great group, amazingly energetic with their outreach and volunteer activities. It was not only gardening and planting activities that they were involved with, but also community action projects. They mentioned a local hospital that's created a garden area that patients receiving chemo could look at through the expansive windows. What a lovely thing -- when my mom was in extensive rehab, the ability to go outdoors, and visit in the courtyard garden at the hospital was so significant to both of us, but probably to me most.