This little hummingbird was a surprise bonus in my flower shot!

Our plans for the weekend our pretty simple.

1.
Take the canoe out on Green Turtle Pond.
We didn’t even take it out once last year because of my muscle problems, and not yet this year. Bad us.

2.
Eat fresh figs. (They are ripening at a fast pace this year!)
Wrap them with pancetta and grill/broil them and drink Prosecco!

3.
Camp out Saturday night on the air mattress in the cabana by the pool. (For a few hours at least!)

4.
Hopefully swim some. (Although the pool temp has dropped drastically.)

5.
Maybe dress up in our renaissance garb and head to the Ren Faire.
Drink mead. Watch bawdy shows.

I’ll keep you posted on how well we do following our plans!

Shades of green at Green Turtle Pond. Taken two weeks ago.

And so it begins. The slow slipping down of summer. At first it’s the little things you notice.

The sun. It’s lower in the sky and rises later and sets earlier. It seemed like just the other day we were swimming at dusk which happened around 8:45 p.m. Now it’s around 8:00 p.m. It’s strange that you don’t notice at first, then all of a sudden it hits you: the change of seasons has begun.

There are other indicators. The pool temperature drops by about two degrees and becomes on the edge of swimmable. The cooler nighttime temperatures and the slight change in the angle of the sun are to blame.

The hummingbirds are feeding voraciously at the feeder stocking up for their big flight home. They haven’t been bothering with the feeder and have left it to the bees for the past month and half. Not now.

The other birds seem to be feeding a lot too. More so than usual. I’ve had to fill the bird feeder every other day.

The turkey with her two babies has started showing up every day at the bird feeding area in the front yard. Soon the hens and the toms will all band together and instead of three I’ll have twelve or fifteen turkeys coming.

And they aren’t the only ones. This cute little fox showed up the other day.

My garden spider is still around. I check up on it every morning. I’ve never known a spider to have a web in the same spot for so long! Don’t you think it’s strange? I call this photo Dance with Death.

It’s been a real summer this year. Very warm and humid. Not a lot of rain but enough to keep everything green without watering. The nasty storms over the past few days have pretty much passed us by, growing stronger as they move eastward, leaving us with only a little rain to show for it. We could use more.

I think I’m ready to embrace a different season. Although I hate to lose the pool, I am looking forward to autumn. To opening the windows wide instead of always having the air conditioning on and sleeping cool for a change. To cozy fires in the wood stove to take the chill off a damp day. To stews and chile bubbling away on the stove.

I have no idea if the trees will have good color this year or not. I kind of think they will. Last year was so disappointing with all that moisture we had because the trees just gave up and dropped their leaves without ever really changing. Will not quite normal moisture make for a poor showing as well?

The are predicting a very snowy winter for us which I am not quite ready to think about yet. After last year’s non-winter it could come as quite a shock!

Only time will tell what Mother Nature has in store for us!

The old toll house next to the covered bridge in West Cornwall.

I just wanted to touch again on how state boundaries are funny things. Here in New Jersey we live within a few miles of the New York border. We are constantly going back and forth between the two states. You wouldn’t even know when you were in New Jersey or New York.

The border between New York and Connecticut was palpable. Not only did the countryside change, but the architecture did too. As I mentioned before, houses suddenly sprouted elaborate weathervanes, and were covered in shingle siding and plenty of wood. Large horse properties bounded by white fences were everywhere we looked. Private schools with beautiful stately old buildings and immaculately tended grounds were numerous.

Like I said before, it all read money with a capital M.

Chatting with the piano player in our hotel bar was interesting. I started up a conversation with him after listening to his rendition of “Riders on the Storm.” I couldn’t remember the artist (The Doors). He told us that Michael J. Fox had a house right down the road from there in Sharon; Meryl Streep lived in Salisbury; and Kevin Bacon had a place right around there too. Who knew? I certainly didn’t.

Now at odds with all that was the whole casual atmosphere. Maybe it was all those people from New York City playing at being “in the country” but we were over dressed compared to everyone else. I would not even think of going to a restaurant in my bathing suit and cover-up, I don’t care if it was outside patio dining! Yet we saw many people doing just that. Even in our fancier hotel restaurant people had on shorts or ratty jeans. Very strange. Maybe we were just seeing the “tourists” but I don’t think so because people seemed to know one another like they lived in the area.

The border between Connecticut and Massachusetts was also unmistakeable. Road signs changed immediately. Signs pointing to “Joey’s Auto Repair” and “Country Furniture Store” appeared on corners. These weren’t just signs that someone had put up, but actual street signs. We wondered if people living in Massachusetts were directionally challenged.

The best sign we saw in Massachusetts was before the town of Great Barrington. I wish I had snapped a photo of it, but the first time we were already past it, and the second time I missed it completely. It read “Thickly Settled.” Hmmm … thickly settled. We knew what they meant, but still we couldn’t help but get a visual image of a town with a muffin top around its middle!

The architecture changed again and now we saw many salt-box style houses that we didn’t see in Connecticut. It all looked more New England-y.

Rick really enjoyed his two day course. It wasn’t about driving fast around a race track, but a course to achieve better and safer driving habits. They made them spin out on a wet track and learn how to recover from it, how to swerve to avoid hitting something and still maintain control. Practical things like that.

Another reason he took the course was to learn how to drive Ms Mia better.

I tried my hand at panning and failed miserably at getting a truly clean image! But after my photo class yesterday I now know what I did wrong. No follow-through!!

When class was over the instructors gave rides to the students on the autocross track to show them how a pro would do it. If you want to see the video, go to Rick’s blog here. It’s worth watching! The students drove the same course but at a much reduced speed. Rick later told me that they were also giving rides to the guests as well as the students and if I had come over I could have gotten a ride too. Since Rick thought it was a white-knuckle ride I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it!

On Saturday, I tried again to amuse myself. I had to check out of the hotel by noon so hanging out by the pool was out. Plus it was just too darned hot to do much of anything outside.

I drove back to Sheffield and Great Barrington again. I went in several antique shops (Sheffield seems to be the Queen city of antiquing!) and visited yet another covered bridge. This one is in Sheffield. Here is the Upper Sheffield Bridge.

This one was rebuilt in 1998. Worth preserving!

I drove on up to Stockbridge (home of Norman Rockwell) but the town was so crowded, there was no place to park, and it was HOT and HUMID. I ended up just driving around in a circle and headed out of there.

I ended up back at the race track around 2:30 with lots of time on my hands until Rick was finished at four. I mostly just sat in the blissful air conditioned track house and read (oblivious of my opportunity to be scared silly). Maybe you think it was a waste of time, but honestly I had had enough driving around and heat for one day.

We drove home on a road I was hoping was the roller coaster road, but it wasn’t, so I can scratch that one off my list. I was disappointed. Next time we are in that area we’ll try a different one. It’s there somewhere. Trouble is, if I manage to find it will it really be the same as I remember?

Good question! I guess I had nothing to say in the early part of last week, but the latter part of the week was spent in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Sounds like a lot but they are all within three corners of each other.

Reflections of the sun in windows at the church in Great Barrington, MA. Taken during daylight hours.

Rick was attending the Skip Barber driving school (Lime Rock, CT) and I was along for the ride, so to speak. We left on Thursday and arrived home last night. It was interesting for sure, and in some ways unanticipatedly interesting. Who knew borders of states were so finely drawn?

As for the fireworks part of this entry, we were rudely awakened multiple times in the night from 11:30 p.m. to 3:00 a.m. by fireworks. Someone in our neighborhood (we could never figure out who) was shooting off very loud fireworks about once per hour. So, it seemed like the moment we got back to sleep from the last one, we were abruptly and rudely awakened by another one. Sam, who was sleeping curled up by my side, jumped every time one went off. So did I! These were no little firecrackers, but arial displays that I happened to glimpse as I opened the window and looked out. What the? Who in their right mind is awake on our block at that hour, and why are they shooting off one or two fireworks every 45 minutes to an hour? We finally called the local police and asked them to please drive up the street. The fireworks seemed to stop after that, either from the police intervention or the people in charge of setting them off finally went to bed. So, I am a bit sleep deprived today and not thinking clearly enough for a proper blog entry.

More to come. Just wanted to check back in case anyone was wondering why I haven’t posted.

Here’s to a night without any fireworks!