I wanted to write at least a quick note since it’s already been the better part of a week since I last posted. I enjoy having a record to look back on, but I’ve found if I don’t mark it as it happens, much is lost, even if I leave myself a couple of reminder notes. I will have some posts to back date (which reminds me, if you’re interested in seeing those, it’s probably worth signing up for the e-mail notifications which you can do in the sidebar – then, no matter how far back I’ve backdated the post, you’ll get a notification of it) as I took advantage of some nice weather and was able to get up Indian River, part way up Verstovia, out to Middle Island, and then up Starrigavan Ridge. The only day I didn’t do too much was the Fourth of July (though I was recovering from the late night on Verstovia trail in that case). From each of those days I have from several to a couple of hundred photos to process, but I’m not sure when I will manage to get through them (perhaps if we get a stretch of less compelling weather).
Today it started out mostly cloudy, then got to be mostly sunny before the clouds moved in and this evening it is overcast. I was a little bummed that I didn’t get to take a picture of some pretty classic lenticular clouds behind Bear and Cross Mountains. I thought I would be able to see them better from Silver Bay so drove out the road to get pictures, but had not realized how far behind the mountains the clouds actually were, so the mountains blocked the view of the clouds. By the time I got back into town in a place where I would have the right perspective, a layer of stratus had moved in enough to obscure them.
Yesterday I picked about a quart of strawberries – the warm weather combined with my busy schedule had finally left enough ripe that I wasn’t quite so tempted to just eat them as I found them. Fortunately the slugs haven’t gotten into too many of them, though I did find a couple that were partially eaten. The slugs I found I gave to the chickens, who seem happy to eat them. I hope I’m not being set up for future unment expectations with respect to slugs and strawberries. It’s been a pretty warm and dry year, and I imagine that has helped keep the slug population in check. I sort of think it might help that I don’t have a lot of nearby vegetation that slugs like to eat as well, so it’s kind of a long trek for them to get to the berries from where their more regular food is.