Look What They Did!

I mentioned in the last two posts that we had driven down along the road that goes by Sea Cliff beach, late in the day.  This is where we first parked to have our coffee and donuts, and then one day there were orange cones, and we couldn't park there anymore.  So we found a new place to have coffee - the other beach.  Anyhow, two nights ago we drove down here just to see what was going on and we were surprised that the cones and yellow tape were missing, and all the parking places were taken.  So that's fine, it's nice that people can park here again, but what was disturbing was that lots of people were walking along the boardwalk really close to each other, and very few were wearing masks.  I mean, come ON!

What a Difference a Day Makes

We worked hard around here today so decided we were due a reward - another ice cream at McDonalds.  So off we went, and on our way back home, we decided to retrace our route down along the beach at Sea Cliff, where I took yesterday's photograph of a golden stripe of sky under dark clouds.  Well...  Look at this photograph!  Not only do I have a more brilliant stripe of golden sky, but it has crepuscular rays as well.  And there is more interest with he two moored boats in the foreground.   I like that the boats seem ghostly.

Storm Clouds on the Horizon

After dinner we decided to go to McDonalds for ice cream cones.  It's another ritual we do, beside donuts on Tuesday mornings.  So on the way back home, we decided to take a detour and go down by the beach where they had set up orange cones to prevent parking.  I saw this view, stopped the car for a moment, and quickly took a couple of frames.  There were rain showers around this afternoon, but apparently they all were to the north of us, and this is a view of storm clouds in the middle of the western end of Long Island Sound.  Quite beautiful, I thought. You might want to click on the image to see it in more detail.

The Fern Bank

I was in the car, backing out of the driveway late in the afternoon the other day, and this brilliant green caught my eye.  I had just mowed the lawn so it looked nice, and it was surrounded by the top of the fern bank.  These ferns look so beautiful, back lit in the afternoon sunlight.  These ferns have been a joy since we bought this house.  We bought it in September of 1971 and there seemed to be a lot of weeds and dead stuff on the front bank and we didn't pay much attention to what was there.  But when Spring came, these beautiful ferns came out of the ground and we were stunned!  We have had so many people over the years, walking up the street, stop and tell us how much they loved these beautiful ferns.

A Billion Little Spiders

Yesterday as I walked past the side of Kathy's car, just behind the wheel I saw something sticking to the car.  I couldn't imagine what it was, so I bent down and moved closer, and got the surprise of my life!

There seemed to be hundreds of tiny yellow spiders, all together.  Notice the white "scratches" on the paint?  I wondered how the paint had gotten that scratched.  It's not scratched - those are really thin strings of spider silk.  Each spider seemed to be attached to one, and if one spider fell out of the group, it would pull itself back up on the silk!  So, off to Google.  I discovered that these are baby Garden Spiders maybe 2 days old, and their eggs were laid last fall, according to the article.  These babies are not harmful to humans.  They grow up to be large brown Garden Spiders which we have all seen hanging upside down in the middle of their nearly circular webs, waiting to catch insects.  These are really good to have around!  Better than insect sprays! 

So this morning, they had all moved around to the back of the car and were gathered on the red tail light.  It was fascinating to watch them with my close-up lens.  Now that they are hatched, they'll stay together until they mature enough to crawl off independently.  We'll see.  What an astounding thing to witness.  This happens every year, and yet I have never seen anything like this!

No Dunkin' Donuts, Week 11

Wow, week 11 of the stay at home order.  That's a long time!  Sorry to bore you with this project, with me looking out the car window each week.  I do consider it a creative challenge, though.  So today, when I looked out the windshield, I saw this tree, and a favorite Robert Frost poem came to mind: 

TREE AT MY WINDOW

Tree at my window, window tree,

My sash is lowered when night come on;

But let there never be curtain drawn

Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,

And the thing next most diffuse to cloud,

Not all your light tongues talking aloud

Could be profound

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,

And if you have seen me when I slept,

You have seen me when I was taken and swept

And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,

Fate had her imagination about her,

Your head so much concerned with outer,

Mine with inner, weather.

A Silent Memorial Day

When I first came to Sea Cliff in 1966, I soon learned that they had a Memorial Day Parade, with bands and fire trucks and marchers including veterans, children, adults and everyone in between.  But I never went to the parade.  Until, in 1985, a wonderful writer at Newsday, Leslie Hanscom, wrote a piece called "A Memorial Day for Memorial Days Past."  He described growing up in Maine where they had memorial day parades each year, which he attended as a child.  He had recently gone back to Maine and was disheartened that the parade in his town was no longer held.  That year, I went to the Sea Cliff Memorial Day Parade, and every year since.  Well this year there was no parade, of course.  But that didn't stop me.  I walked the parade route all alone, and photographed each of the memorials in Sea Cliff, where the parade stops each year.  So this flag draped statue is dedicated to John Henry Geohegan, who went to fight the war in Cuba and died at 21, in 1898.

This rock with two bronze plaques, at the edge of a park with baseball fields,  is a memorial to all who served in the Army and the Navy in WW I.  There are 164 names on this plaque.

The parade always stops at this memorial at the firehouse, for the departed members of the Sea Cliff Volunteer Fire Department.

And this monument, overlooking Long Island Sound, is where the parade starts off each year.  The three plaques honor the veterans who lost their lives in WW II in the center, the Korean War on the left, and the Vietnam War on the right.  At this memorial I saw another older man enter the park and come over to this memorial, and spend time reading names.  So there were at least two of us who set about remembering those lost in all the wars.