Acair Fearann

For my other blog, updated once a week, on or around Wednesday.  Not that most of my readers are in the area!

http://newhartfordcthistory.org/

The link is to the front page, not the blog.

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One of the issues that runs along with a property of any size, especially a property bounded by a state road and divided by a town road, is that of trespass.  It is exacerbated by the fact that the pond tends to attract people and the town road has no other houses on it.  While I would like the public to be able to enjoy the view from the road (indeed my horse and the pond both have local fan clubs), I take exception to odd behaviour late at night.

However, while I am passing friends with Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson, I have no intention of confronting unknown numbers of unknown individuals in the woods when there is no imminent threat to my person or property, a matter of good sense and legal behaviour.  Consequently, last night at about midnight I called the cops, seeing as there was a flashlight being waved around down by the pond in the oddest of fashions.

The state trooper dutifully came along after a time and requested that the individual proceed upon their way, which they did.  He then came and asked me if I knew the person, who claimed (bear in mind it was now well after midnight) that ‘he was checking the lines’.  This latter statement was said with some puzzlement.  I retorted that a: I had never heard of the individual in my life, and b: who in their right mind checked maple syrup lines at midnight, full moon or no? 

Assuming that was the end of it, and rather annoyed by the fact that somebody would attempt to steal the sap lines (not surprised…they aren’t cheap),  I went to bed.  This morning, however, my neighbor to whom the lines belong called all apologetic.  It seems he had gone down to the local coffee shop this morning and was immediately accosted by everybody there, all of whom wanted to know what his partner’s son had done and what had been going on up on the hill last night?  Poor man, I hadn’t called him yet.  Police scanners are, of course, something of a hobby around here. 

It turns out that the person in question had actually been checking the lines.  The owner had asked him to, and he said he would after work….neglecting to mention that his shift didn’t end till 11:30pm.   We agreed that no sane individual checked lines at midnight and I have added another name to my mental list of accepted people.

So a slight round of embarrassment all round, a good bit of gossip for the town, and a reminder that the house has eyes on that bit of road, no bad thing.

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The fog broke in a matter of a moment or two, the world suddenly shifting from white, to gold, and then there was the meadow and hills.  As the sun broke through, the clouds appeared, low slung ranks of blue-gray, shading up to white and above them patches of robin’s egg blue sky.  Out of the fog the earth and sky had returned or I had returned to them; they had been out there, of course, but out of sight, out of mind.  The mist blew off the pond, drifting across the meadow, the trees red, grey and the startling lichen green, bright in the darkest corner.  

And then the event was over, the world outside the window was simply a wet January day, the clouds, the woods and the wind exactly as they ought to be.  The sense of wonder passed. 

Such sudden shifts in the world outside the window could be anticipated by watching the weather forecast.  But, somehow to know such a shift is about to occur takes away the vibrancy of it.  Knowing the future in detail takes away from the present and the ability to pay attention to the moment.  Not that I enjoy unpleasant surprises, mind!

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A snow shower is a terribly misleading term, even if it is the technically correct term for today’s weather.  A shower suggests a gentle, passing bit of rain with little wind.  Thanks to Chaucer, it tends to be irrevocably associated with April.  Yet, snow showers have none of his floral, April life promising virtue.  Here in early winter snow showers come racing across the hills; the light blue sky suddenly turning gray, the pines black against the crest.  The clouds promise wind-shear and turbulence, their edges cut and sharp, puzzle pieces of cloud on a blue board.  Sunlight as the cloud moves east, bright beneath the shadow.  These are squalls, gales, flurries, all words suggesting the wind, not showers.

Isn’t English fun?

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Connecticut is on the major migration path for many birds, lots of warblers in the spring, shore birds on the coast, and any number of year round/summer species; but it isn’t really known for spectacular, high-profile species.  However, for the past few years a bald eagle pair has nested on one of the drinking water reservoirs nearby.  These reservoirs are some of the largest blocks of completely undisturbed forest and water in the state, owned by quasi-private companies and off-limits to the public, they are not only drinking water reservoirs but increasingly valuable travel corridors and breeding habitats for animals ranging from the odd moose, the black bear, fishers, osprey, innumerable woodland birds and smaller animals, and the subject of this lay, the bald eagle. Towns lucky enough to have water company land have a good jump on open space, though since it is not formally protected as such, complacency is unwise. 

In any event, we have bald eagles nearby, but not close and not many.  I have seen them to know them only twice in the wild, both times in the same spot, here in northwestern Connecticut, and the second time was today.

I was out doing some yard work and just happened to be looking east as a big male rose up just over the tops of the trees, so close you could see the individual wing feathers fully lit by the setting sun, and went soaring down across the meadow.  We watched him for some time as he worked his way higher and then angled off to the north, back towards the river valley and the reservoir.  The first eagle was on the same flight path earlier this year, so it may well be the same one. I am glad they are back.

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Deep in the woods, the partridge berry creeps amongst the wiry grass and the arched ribs of the Christmas fern; and hard against the frozen ground, the eye is caught by the occasional scarlet flash of its fruit, nestled in dark evergreen leaves.  Having come down the hill, where the emerald moss betrays the small spring even in winter, I looked up at the burnished steel sky and the forest crown composed of clear ink lines against the light.  And there, in the silence, I watched the two hawks, spiral upwards, stoop and dive out of sight on unseen wind.

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We try to do as much of the house’s repair/maintenance work ourselves as we can; it saves money, I have (fortunately or unfortunately) the time, and I enjoy it.  I probably don’t do enough of it.  There are, to my way of thinking, three types of work arranged on a sliding spectrum of required focus: the intense physical/mental work that demands all of your attention: this might be using a chainsaw or doing research, in either case that is what you are doing, thinking about something else shouldn’t be happening.  If you are thinking about something else, the work is not being done.  At the other end of the spectrum there is the truly repetitive work that needs only minimal attention, not much really falls into this category, if only because minimal attention usually ends up with minimal results, some assembly line work is probably the closest, where the same action is simply being repeated. 

Then there is the middle.  In some cases the work being done is boring and really can’t be improved on, maybe because you have reached the highest level of skill the job needs: mowing the lawn, vacuuming, cleaning stalls…you can only get so good.  You need to pay attention, but not really focus.   Those jobs give you plenty of time to think, observe, work on something else; I wrote many essays in my head cleaning stalls.  In other cases, you can always do it a little better and because of this the job becomes a challenge (eventually the challenge is great enough to move it into the first category).  I encountered the prospect of a mild challenge the other day, reputtying some old, very old, windows that are being used as a cold frame.  Because the glass is old, I wanted to ensure that it was solidly in the frame, so those windows got the same treatment that a window on the house would get.  The added advantage was that because they aren’t on the house, no one will see them, and so it was a great opportunity for improving my technique.  Setting my mind to a task that was not exhausting, but did call for attention to detail, experimentation, and kept my hands busy resulted not only in a pleasant few hours but also let me think about an article I needed to have written.  Doing some chain-stitch embroidery the other night also had the same effect. 

One sort of wonders then, so many times you hear of an author being admired for managing to write despite being busy with their other jobs.  But did their jobs give them the distraction that allowed them to write?  If they had nothing but free time, could they write? (some can and do of course) Julie was a prolific writer, how many of her books, I wonder, were written while sewing?

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On windy, partly cloudy days such as today, watching cloud shadows from the house can be somewhat distracting.  One can see the shadow come down across the hill to the west, through the valley, and then sweep up the woods and finally across the field, where the edges of the shadow are sharp and clear.  The woods shift between the purple-brown of the shadow and the gold-brown of the sun.  Bands of light will pick out the tree-tops in the valley below the field, sometimes the west hedgerow will be briefly backlit, each tree suddenly defined.  The varying light not only highlights individual trees, it also makes the change in elevation more apparent, especially when the valley has sun and the hilltops do not.  The landscape, on days like today, is alive with motion and color. Very distracting.

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I know, well over a week later!

Note that there is no lower wire evident on the fence, that wire is about 14 inches off the ground and is two inches wide.  The day before that was all green grass.

The arch in the center is actually the elm tree, bent double with its top touching the ground.  You can see how the snow came mostly from the north-east.  Less than 24 hours previously the lawnmower was out on the lawn picking up leaves and I was weeding the garden.

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Which in some ways aren’t that freakish, a genuine Nor’Easter, just early..very early.  To the tune of eighteen inches in 20 hours.  Now, one might say, “what is the problem?”  That is where it gets interesting, at least if one is interested in why trees fail.  The primary problem was several common species had yet to drop their leaves, in particular the Black Oaks.  Black Oaks, in the right conditions, grow fast and thick.  Leaves plus snow, well you know your physics.  This was also the case for the Star and Saucer Magnolias, both of which don’t tend to grow this far north in a ‘natural’ environment.  It was also a problem for the Japanese Maples, though both they and the Norway Maples could take more bending than the Oaks and Magnolias and so suffered less damage overall. Both species, non-native, don’t drop their leaves until very late, the Norway has yet to turn; I rather wonder if they are therefore more capable of handling leaf + snow loads.  The Black oaks were late this year as we had not yet had a frost.  Dogwoods, including the Kousa, are very flexible and weren’t bothered.  (I worried, but they could generally take it, which makes sense: their branching structure predisposes snow capture regardless of leaf cover, so flexible wood is a necessity).  Evergreen losses were confined to those with unstable root systems: snow load plus unfrozen ground…physics again.

We lost relatively few trees and shrubs, only one (a Black Cherry) completely.  Frankly a minor miracle.  Severe damage to some trees and shrubs, but not what it might have been.  Though that Gingko limb made a lovely Thump on the porch!

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