Digging RI

It was a beautiful day for a walk, sort of a preemptive strike before the excessive caloric intake to come later in the afternoon. I took these photos with my iPod, because I didn’t feel like weighing myself down with the big camera.

On my way to the beach, I passed yet another ridiculously big (and out of place) house being built. These behemoths are destroying the neighborhood.

Look carefully at the center of the above photo and see the dot that is a man swimming. He was wearing a wetsuit, and it looked like he was having a blast in the waves.

Dogs kept arriving with their families, delirious to be on the beach. I wonder of these dogs have ever seen a beach before. They sure were excited.

Here’s a shot looking back at the parking lot. They are still shoveling up all the sand that washed over during Hurricane Sandy and pushing it back on the beach.

And here’s some of the sand that’s been returned to the beach. It’ll take a while to settle and pack down.

I had to take a picture of one of our neighbors’ trees, a locust. The branches looked really gnarled in the November light.

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers, and best wishes and sincere thanks for reading to my friends in other countries.

In my previous post, I wrote about our hike to Zealand hut. The next day, blessed with more perfect weather, we headed for Mount Willard. As you can see, there was still plenty of snow on the trail, and once again, crampons were necessary.

This is a climb straight up. It takes about an hour and a half if you are pokey like me.

The views are definitely worth the slog, and it was warm enough for us to eat our lunches on the rocks. This was our view: Crawford Notch way below us.

This red squirrel scurried over almost as soon as we took out our sandwiches. He or she must get a lot of hand-outs.

It was a great two days in the mountains. Thanks to my friend and most excellent guide for another amazing time!

Recently, I spent a few days in New Hampshire, hiking with friends. It was just lovely; blue sky and clean, white snow. It was a bit slippery on the trails, so crampons were a must.

The first day, we hiked to Zealand Hut, one of the huts in the Appalachian Mountain Club system. I have been there before, and there are several things I love about it, including the waterfall and the way the hut is tucked into the mountainside.

Here’s the view from the hut.

The streams were still running, and so clear you could easily see the rocks and leaves on the bottom. There was plenty of ice forming at the edges, though. We saw several beaver lodges and dams, and I wondered whether the beavers were still active, or  settled in for the winter.

A wonderful hike in wonderful weather.

In my next post, climbing Mount Willard.

I love how the grasses – and many other plants –  look this time of year. There’s something about the way the sun strikes them  from within, giving them a luminous quality that is not evident when the plants are still green.

These are wild asters in the neighbor’s wildflower meadow.

Also in the neighbor’s meadow, the gaillardia has a final fling.

More asters gone to seed in an undeveloped patch down the street.

These wild grasses grow where the foxes and coyotes like to prowl.

A graceful end to the growing season.

I was sick and tired of all that “storm talk” so I decided to lighten up and post this.

I recently took the above photo of a spellbinding moon. I thought you would enjoy it, despite the fact that it bears no relation to pumpkins, except for the time of year, and maybe the fact that it does look kind of like one.

It seems that many of you are interested in my post about the “pumpkin crisis of 2010.” I know there are infinitely more pressing issues in the world today, but in my little universe, this is significant.

I have been happily using One Pie pureed pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie FILLING) for years.   Nothing else will do. But in recent years, I have been contending with unexplained shortages of this product, which, according to this article in Yankee magazine, is no longer made in – only distributed from – West Paris, Maine. In the 19th and 20th centuries, there were over 100  canneries in the state, including the cannery near Waldoboro, ME, where One Pie was born. Now, it is processed in Illinois.

I don’t really understand why there’s a shortage, since there are plenty of cans of One Pie squash on the shelves, but lately, this has happened every year. The company does not have a website, so I can’t email for answers.

In previous years after Thanksgiving was over, the product magically reappeared, so I stocked up big time and now have enough to get me through the season.

Yes, I do realize that theoretically I could make puree from whole pumpkins, but I really couldn’t you see, because I have a full time job and a garden and a  dog and hair that must be blow dried.

Please keep your eyes peeled for this product, which is so much better than any other canned pumpkin it isn’t funny.

The photo above shows one of the marinas near us. The parking lot was scoured by the high water and you can see the poles lying there, but the building itself is unscathed. Amazing, considering that at one point, the wind gusted to over 90 miles per hour. Notice how beautiful the sky is, though. It usually is after a powerful storm.

This is our chimney cap, lying on the back lawn. I remember hearing it break off and hurtle to the ground sometime on Monday evening. We lost a good part of our roof, and today, work has begun on a new one.

We got our power back a day ago, and the house is warm and cozy. I put away all the “storm stuff” and we are once again able to enjoy hot showers – little things, but important.

Here’s my friend, Tom, cutting up a huge spruce that was uprooted and came down on his truck.

And here’s the poor truck.

The oyster farm guys were busy getting back on the water.

This Japanese maple still has salt damage on its windward side from Irene last year. It took another major hit this time. All the trees around here were damaged by  the salt in the wind.

Looking back, I would say that my most useful pieces of emergency equipment were my camp stove and my headlamp. The stove allowed me to make coffee and soup and hot suppers like pasta, which made life a bit more bearable. The headlamp, which I use when I go backpacking, was indispensable, especially when I had to go down into our cellar.

These linemen in the blue hats drove three days from Alabama to get to RI. Here they’re receiving instructions from a local power company man. We are very grateful for their help.

I was pretty frazzled by the time the power came back on, but it’s hard to complain when people in New York and New Jersey are suffering so much more. Thanks to all the readers who cared enough to ask how we were doing. That meant a lot.

The above photo gives you an idea of our hurricane preparedness. Note large bottle of brandy – every bit as essential as anything else when the power’s out and all you can hear is howling wind and the weather radio, and you’re already getting on each other’s nerves.

It’s very windy now, and power is starting to go out in different places across the state. This could be my last post for a while, but my fingers are crossed.

Last night the fire department came and handed us a mandatory evacuation notice. We’re are free to stay, but no one will help us if we get into trouble.

Down at one of the marinas this morning, the water was creeping up onto the road.

We took a quick drive to the store and on the way home we stopped at Worden’s pond, the largest lake in the state. Access to the beaches is blocked now, so this intrepid windsurfer was sailing here.

When neighborhoods are evacuated, you have to go through a police checkpoint to return to your house. This officer told us “Have fun and good luck!”

The storm is still far away, but we’re starting to get some pretty strong gusts now. Sometimes the house shakes. Looks like it’s going to be a sleepless night.

Just when we thought the season was over, we find ourselves watching the news, listening to weather reports and otherwise preparing for Hurricane Sandy.

It is early morning as I write this, and instead of peace and the occasional bird call, I am hearing my neighbors testing and preparing their generators. Even last year in Tropical Storm Irene, which wasn’t considered to be particularly severe, we were without power for five days.

Those of us without generators lost all the food in our freezers, and couples up and down our street were getting mighty sick of each other by the time the power came back on.

My vegetable garden has been put to bed, so we only have to take a few things off the deck and tie down the lawn chairs. I bought a bunch of batteries, we have a camp stove, and there are 12 of gallons of water downstairs just in case.

Of course, Sandy is now the main topic of conversation in Rhode Island, as harried workers haul one boat after another out of the water at the five marinas here.

We always think we have everything under control until one of these monsters approaches. Then we realize how ridiculously powerless we are. The last major hurricane to hit Rhode Island was “Bob,” a Category 3. It’s unlikely that Sandy will turn out to be a big deal here, but we still have to be ready, just in  case it moves a teensy weeny bit to the north. Either way, we’re in for a couple of days of high wind and lots of rain.

I’ll keep you posted.

Recently, I spent a couple of hours  hiking the Barn Island Wildlife Management area in Connecticut. This is the largest coastal property in the state – 1,013 acres.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you probably already know that I love fall, but for those of you who don’t know, I LOVE FALL!!!

These photos will hopefully explain why. The sun is still warm, but it’s cool enough to hike without suffering. The flies are gone, and so are most of the tourists. The trees light up the forest with their colors, and even the dying bracken fern is beautiful.

As the leaves fall, the contours of the land reemerge, as do the rocks and the stone walls, and birds’ nests. Here are some headstones in an old cemetery. They are pretty hard to read, but one seems to be for a little girl, and dates back to 1750.

The light is pale and clear and the sun takes a while to melt away the frost on the grass.

Here’s an interesting whirlpool, created as water from the marsh is sucked into a culvert.

Some of the marsh grasses turn very red, even redder than the maples.

Great hike, great friends, great season. Lucky me!

When I stopped at my local supermarket this week, this is what greeted me: an immense pumpkin – a behemoth! – 800 pounds, sitting right there on the curb, surrounded by its normal sized cousins. The sign next to it said it had been grown in Wakefield, not far from where we live.

The best part is, this monster is tiny compared to the giant pumpkins RI is famous for. Why, this year, Ron Wallace of Greene, captured the world record with a pumpkin weighing 2,009 pounds!!!!!  That’s over a ton! (The previous Guiness world record is 1,810 pounds.)

Growing record-smashing pumpkins (get it?) has become a Rhode Island pastime, right up there with digging for quahogs and driving to the beaches to watch the surf during hurricanes. Funny that a state so tiny should produce such  greatness. It could be the  cultivars, or the soil, or the TLC, or most likely a combination of all of the above.

Check out how tiny my shopping cart looks behind the monster. These giants are not for eating. They are grown for size alone.

Anyway, it’s one more weird (but cool)  quirky thing about the Ocean State – or  the Giant Pumpkin State……