Beautiful misty morning here in northeastern PA. Haze across the forest, about 50-100 songbirds singing*, nice, quiet sleepy day, Mr. B hollering HAL YAY YOU YA on the other side of the door...

The newish green that forms a semi-circle around me, balanced by the faux-stone wall of the house a foot to my right, seems to play with you: is it really hazy, or do the leaves just smear the colors like an oil painting?

Speaking of magical woodland type stuff, you know, in the movie Legend, during the opening credits, there's all that fluff and stuff floating around, giving the forest that enchanted feeling?

Those were our working conditions earlier this week. I'm not sure what the tree was ~ I didn't ID it, although with the proliferation of seeds, I wouldn't it be surprised if it was the evil Tree-O-HeckHeaven ~ but it was definitely related to the dandelion. For two days straight, the air was filled with floating fluffballs. Sometimes it was as sparse as those opening credits(!!!!). Once in a while, it stopped for a few moments. Here and there, it was so thick, that we joked we'd be competing with the guy with a fir tree in his lung... you couldn't take a breath without inhaling a few of the things.

Today will be Rachel's last day of school. We're going on a field trip to the Lehigh Gap Nature Center for a talk by Pat Sutton on Backyard Habitat For Birds and Butterflies (For those in the area who might be able to join us it's at 1:00 p.m.-- Special program by naturalist Pat Sutton from Cape May, New Jersey; with lots of tips on how to attract birds and butterflies to your garden).


* Estimated. I lost count at 25 different types of calls. Sounds kind of like I'm in an aviary, which is good.