hours of blue
days of gray

That best describes the summer thus far.  Last weekend, finally, there were more hours of blue.  It was wonderful.  Sunday morning, the logger that I'd had cut a blow down area, came by to move his skidder up the road to a neighboring farm.  I walked the trimmed out woods road with him, checking to see if things had dried enough to get to some large downed maples I wanted to pull out for firewood.  Things are drying, but not dry enough to keep from rutting things up.  Maybe a few more weeks.  Maybe.  A bit later, another neighbor stopped by to check the list of the barn.  I like to double check it every year or so.  The sills are on the ground, not on footings or a foundation so it moves around with the moisture and temperature each season.  Sort of like a boat on the water.  Sort of.  While he was there, we started talking about the family of Canada geese that the town had been home to all summer.  We thought of them as "ours".  So did everyone else with a pond.  All seventeen of them made it through the spring and summer.  Now that the goslings have learned to fly, we no longer see them walking out of the woods, coming the last quarter mile up the hill from my closest neighbor.   They've expanded their home territory from what I think was about 1/2 mile square, to perhaps a mile or so, as the goose flies, of course.  I'd heard them fly in about dusk, announcing themselves and sending out an invitation to another group in the area.  Party night.  I hoped they'd stay away from the yard.  Thirty odd adult geese make an awful mess.  They did, and in the early morning, I heard them take off again. 

In the late afternoon, I left my shoes on the bank,

and paddled out to see where my summer neighbors were making their homes.  

 I found the entrance to the otters' den, several for the muskrat, 

and what I hope is the abandoned beginnings of the beaver's lodge.  I never successfully trapped him this summer.  I did get him in the trap once, but…. he, being the largest beaver I've seen in a while, ripped the door off of the trap and got away just as I got to him.  

This year's geese may be back next year.  The two sets of parents made their home here for the last two years.  The population has apparently been increasing.  An article in the local paper noted an increase in the bag limit for Canada Geese this year to five per day.  It said that the local population needed to decrease before the transients come through.  Seems like a lot to me.  Fly away quickly my friends.  I saw a red leaf.