End of Driveway Excitement

We now have this at the end of our driveway. Such progress! For the past six months, we realized the inevitability of construction lapping at the end of our driveway as the town crew moved slowly up Jeremy Swamp Road. They seem to be hopping all over the place: first one end, then a centerish (disconnected piece) and then our end- skipping the middle... Promptly at 6:30 every morning, the booming and beeping and pinging and LOUD GUY TALK would filter up the driveway from the street. We're fortunate that our house is set back from the road! (We hear it anyway.)
This greeted me when I attempted to leave the driveway yesterday morning:

I could barely squeeze past, and this was in addition to both of our next door neighbor's cars (waiting for the school bus) and a large dump truck and the aforementioned bus. Quite the busy intersection! I had remembered to bring my camera along so I snapped these pictures. As I said to the amused town crew guys, "How often do I have this much activity at the end of the driveway?" Everyone seemed busy staring into the big hole...

(That's the police officer bending over. Nice shorts.)
In any event, I don't know that we needed a wider road or so many attractive drains and pipes added to our lives, and as a friend suggested, it will only permit more traffic and people and their cars to attain higher speeds. It's already dangerous walking up our road to the dirt road where I walk most mornings. Here are the drain basins:

This was the right side of the driveway. It was like this for the entire Labor Day weekend. I guess the chains were there to discourage us from stealing the cement forms.
The weird upshot of all this construction was that I chose to take lil' Robin the Good on an alternative walk. I bundled her into the car (good practice for her auto-phobia!) and drove her three minutes up the road to the State Bridle Trail, where we've been walking every day since. And it's beautiful! Wide and quiet and winding through some amazing properties. Robin seems to enjoy this walk more than the dirt road, so it's our new routine.
One last shot. Y'know, this equipment is really big!

Dog and Pony Update

I haven't featured our fluffy barnyard friends recently so I decided this was as good a time as ever. Let's check in with Maggie the Mexican Pony and Jules the (Perfect) Dog.
This is what greeted me in the field today:

Maggie spent a good part of the night shellacing herself in mud. Do we remember that Maggie is a BLACK horse? Here's a detail of her back end:

She looks like a brown and black zebra! After thirty minutes of currying and brushing, she looked marginally better but wherever you touched her, puffs of dust arose. In addition, she has thoughtfully whacked her foot on a frozen chunk of mud (I am conjecturing...) and took a big piece of her hind hoof off. Ouch. No pictures of the damaged foot- it's too pathetic!- but here's her other side. It's a bit more presentable:

At this stage of the winter, with all the fuzzy coat, it's almost impossible to clean them. Maggie resembles and old sofa in a basement rec room.
And Jules? Yes, the Perfect Dog continues his winning ways.

There he is, contemplating his very favorite activity. (Hint: it has something to do with chasing small round things.) Maybe he's waiting for snow. He does like snow, unlike the rest of us. But in the meantime, Jules has made himself super useful by providing logs for the wood stoves. Most mornings, he selects a log or stick from our walk and carries it back home. Our neighbors find this highly entertaining, especially when he chooses an especially long branch and he looks over his shoulder, expecting me to pick up the other end and help him carry it home. We then proceed up the road like a yoke of oxen. How perverse is it that he makes me work on our walks?

But there's a new twist. Jules is pretty smart and he figured out how to correctly train me. Several times recently, he picked out a log that was a bit too wide around to fit comfortably in his mouth. He struggled with lifting it and I'd try and help but I found myself carrying his log, with Jules glancing approvingly at me. I have become a log valet for the dog!

Jules Pees on Heavy Equipment

Yes, that's a picture of Jules peeing on the heavy construction equipment up the road. On our walk the other day, Jules and I heard some terrible crashing and creaking and general large engine complaints. We turned back as it was way to noisy for our tastes. (We like peace and quiet so that we can pursue contemplative internal thoughts... that is until I sing (radically off tune) for Jules, to encourage him forward and to ward off bears, mountain lions and the like.) But I promised Jules that we'd investigate just what was going on over the weekend when the equipment was silent.
I actually remembered to bring my camera! And this is the first thing we saw:

A large pile of rocks, extricated from the ravine near the Plaster House (it's really made of stucco). There's a stream at the bottom, but they had this big honkin' bucket scoop type thing cantilevered out over the gorge.

That's the machine in repose. It's big and sort of intimidating, but I suppose that why Jules peed on it, to assert dominion over it.

Yeah, he's also peeing on that bulldozer. What a dog! I still can't figure out what they were doing besides rearranging large piles of rocks, but I tried taking a picture of the ravine...

Hard to gauge, but that's really steep. I enjoyed the skimpy piece of thin plastic hazard tape. Now there's something to grab ahold of if you chose to fall over the edge! I think the road was in danger of collapsing or something equally dramatic.

Here's my handsome dog looking up the road, ignoring the gigantic jaws of death hovering only a couple of feet away. I think he was entertaining the idea of peeing on this, too but I pulled him back in the other direction, I'll have to go back this week and see if they're finished with the project.

A New Leash on Life

People don't believe me when I say that Jules and I wear out our leashes. This is the one I "retired" this morning. We go through a new, twelve foot long leash every two months or so. Reliably! I should have bought stock in this company. But what with dragging the leash every day along the paved road, and the dirt road and it gets wet and muddy and covered in snow; I'm honestly surprised we don't wear them out more frequently. By the time I notice that we need a new one, it's been knotted and re-tied in an effort to reinforce the frayed wreck that it has been reduced to. At this stage, I'm always afraid that Jules will run after a squirrel or something and simply break the leash. Tomorrow, we start on a new one.
Here's the little weasel himself:

A shot from this summer that I never used- I thought we could all use a picture of warmth and green. No, I promise, I will not mention rain, snow, fog, and weather what- have- yous.Suffice it to say, Jules is always happy no matter what the weather. Look at that smile! I don't know what he's graduating from, but I'll bet he aced all the tests. (A random balloon that blew into Maggie's pasture last summer.)
And on a rather different note, my artist's book proposal, "Better Guns and Gardens" was selected for inclusion in a show this November at Artspace in New Haven. I need to send a big "thank you" to a good friend, Joan Fitzsimmons (a wonderful photographer) for persisting in suggesting that I submit to this show. I had read the call for entries and had been dismissive, until a great idea for a quirky mash up presented itself to me- hey presto! on my morning walk with Jules. So you see, there is a circular logic to this posting. I get the best ideas on my morning walk with Jules, wearing out those leashes.

And Now For Something Completely Different (and a "What Is It?")

Here's something completely different! I am inviting you to accompany me and Jules on our morning walk. (In case you think we really haven't been doing anything except work on my studio...) This is the beginning of the dirt road where Jules and I go every day. These pictures are from a week of so ago, which explains why there are more leaves on the trees.

 The same stream that runs through the bottom of our property follows the dirt road. It's very pretty in a typical New England rugged rocky, forested way. It looks similar to where I grew up in the central part of the state and I suppose the familiarity of it is a solace.

The road is gradual; a bit of hilliness but nothing too steep or taxing. I let Jules set the pace. Some days, he briskly trots along, only stopping to sniff or pee infrequently. Other days? He stops and carefully analyzes every fern and tree branch for evidence of other visitors. We've seen coyotes, bobcats, blue herons, deer and droves of wild turkeys. So far, no moose or bears (I am eternally thankful for that!)
But here's the "What is it?" About half way out on our walk last week, Jules was investigating something deposited by another animal and I'm sort of wool gathering when my eyes rest on a tree right in front of me.

Hello! What's THAT? And strapped to a tree no less! This is why I brought the camera along, so that I could document that camouflage woodland anomaly. I googled it when I returned home. Weird. But I did figure out what is is; see if you can guess.

So we continue on, and we finally emerge to where there are a few houses, before the road turns dirt and empty again. While this isn't a great picture, it's such a pretty spot. There's a really old red mill (turned into a house) and several rough bridges and a dam with the above mill pond. The mist rises off of it in the morning and reflects all the autumn leaves. Spectacular.

Again, not a stellar photo but the leaves on the pond almost looked solid, as if you could walk on the water. That mossy ridge to the right is stonework at the top of the dam and where the water spills over. Jules and I are really lucky to have such a nice walk!

Okay: the odd box is a hunting camera set up by someone (probably with a gun) to monitor animal traffic in the area. That's creepy on so many levels. I mean, first of all, it's an unfair advantage for the hunter to know the comings and goings of the woodland denizens. Secondly, it's creepy that I am on their camera (as well as other woods walkers that I know), especially the first time I saw it when I pushed my face right up to it and got a great big look at it. They also have images of me taking pictures of it. Plain and simple, I think it's icky that this thing is out in the nice peaceful woods, anyway. Can't we get away from technology anywhere? But here it is a week later and it's gone. Either set up in another location or at home where "they" can watch all us animals on their computer.

Where Have I Been?

So much for the fabled "good intentions"! I planned on blogging on the first anniversary of my blog, I planned on blogging on April Fools Day (a perfect date!) and I planned on blogging waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more consistently/persistently but I guess I've been "busy". (Note all those pesky parentheses).
Anyway, one of those things that commands my time on a regular basis is my ritual morning walk with my personal trainer, Jules. Above is one of the many spectacular sights we encounter along the dirt road that is now "ours". (More parentheses...) Jules and I are definitely proprietory about our road. I grumble when the (very occasional) car uses it for short cut purposes and I smirk when I run into runners. We are especially insenced when stupid people dump grabage and building materials like in the following picture. I mean, what gives? Dump your trash on a road or a shopping center, not out on my walk!

Really! Jules and I often bring a small plastic bag a pick up bottles and sandwich wrappers but the above is serious amounts of construction refuse. And although it doesn't appear obvious from my picture, that's down a really steep slope so who ever has to clean it up has to rappel down a percipitous hillside. Aren't human beings great???
Let's end on a beautiful springtime vision. Only a bit further down the road from the top picture is this scene. (There are also ducks on this pond, but they fly noisily away whenever Jules and I draw near).