may 02 other

wed 05-01 Sun today.

fri 05-03 Listening to the wind, watching the trunks of the forty foot maples sway outside my window.

sat 05-04 Little purple flowers with lots of blossoms are growing up out of the lawn in back. Dandelions too.
Squeak went out last night and hasn't come home.

sun 05-05 The yatch club has started their sunday races. It was calm when we started out in the canoe. It looked like the first spinnaker up wasn't going to fill, but it did. The wind picked up when we got to the far end of the lake and we had to work to get home.
Still no Squeak. Judy made some lost cat fliers and handed them out up and down the street.

wed 05-08 Went with Valerie to Moose Hill so she could find the side trail up which she will have to lead a group of eighth grade girls. Saw a snapping turtle on a log at the first vernal pool, and many tadpoles. Tadpoles and fairy shrimp can survive in a vernal pool since there are no fish. I don't know what the snapper eats. I collected some neat looking fairy shrimp from a pool in Lincoln once, but made the mistake of putting them in my fish tank. I don't think they lasted a whole second.

sun 05-05 We get a new roof. Only the lower front third of the roof is being done, and the color does not match exactly.

fri 05-10 Valerie and I went for a walk up Pond street and the Massapoag trail to Ames and back down Quincy to Pond. The bridge on the trail was out, so we went around by the other pond and the spillway. Lots of poison ivy on the side of the trail. One house on Quincy used to have a nice path to the front door, but now it's a parking space for an SUV.

sat 05-11 Squeak came back. Judy is happy.

sun 05-12 Little yellow flowers like buttercups are growing up out of the lawn, in addition to the purple or blue ones.
The native bumblebees are coming back since the european honeybees were destroyed by mites.
Valerie says the hemlocks are going the way of the chestnuts due to the woolly adelgids.

At eleven we went for the mother's day nature walk and pancake breakfast at Moose Hill.

fri 05-17 Four canada geese on the town beach at the north end of the lake, one with its head raised. A nuthatch scattering sunflower seeds at the feeder. The wind drops late and we take the canoe out. A kingbird in the top of a tall tree in the front yard makes a sortie and returns. Two swallows fly by against the clouds overhead. Two more kingbirds come by and squabble with the one. Two small sailboats moored by the town beach at the south end of the lake. A great blue heron flying toward the marsh. A lone male mallard by the salvation army camp beach. Three kingbirds still squabbling in the bushes by the shore when we get back to the dock. We don't know if there are bats in the bat house. No bluebirds. We have been seeing and hearing a gray catbird in various nearby bushes and trees.

sat 05-18 Roof work continues. The outside is done. Excess insulation is removed so the new ridge vent will work.
Two goldfinches at the feeder scared away by a titmouse.

sun 05-19 Went with Valerie to Saint James' in Higganum Connecticut to hear the Reverend Jan Walden, my sister, preach. The furnace was broken so it was a bit cold. Most people were wearing red for Pentecost, as were we, having been warned. Jan spoke on the Holy Spirit as it appears through the whole Bible. Bought a geranium and some impatients left over from the plant sale. It turned out the furnace wasn't broken, and someone got it working after the service. Then we went to brunch with Jan in Madison.