“Noah’s Ark” was gone.  It was a big boat, over forty feet long — really a small yacht — that sat, raised up high on a platform, in a meadow at the crest of a hill.  We passed it every time we drove home from town.  I started calling the boat “Noah’s Ark”.  It was a landmark.  I have lived in this town ten years and my wife even longer, and she always remembered that boat sitting there.  It stood, surrounded by high weeds, for years–maybe several decades.  She told me that the owner and his family had at one time lived in it, down in Florida.  He died recently.  Now The Ark was gone.  I wonder what will happen to it.

I keep looking for the two pheasants as I pass the meadow but I have only seen one again.  I did flush a small cottontail in the area yesterday.  No more pheasants, though.  Every time I drive along there I am curious what I will see.  I have seen red winged blackbirds fly over the meadow but not this year.  It is still too early in the season although not all migrate.  I have only seen the blackbirds in the winter time in a bog viewed from a nature center.  There are marshes a few miles away that attract red winged blackbirds.  It is still early in the season.  The farmer has strategically placed nesting boxes for them.  They come back every year.  Every time I pass there I try to spot them after they have returned from their migration.  These are two birds I like.  The pheasants wander to my area from the game lands.  They really are a rare sight here.

Three deer bounded across the road right in front of me coming from the large meadow.  They must have been holed up in the tract of woods adjacent to my property.  It was an unusual spot to see deer.  Though there were deer tracks in the snow in my driveway a few weeks ago.  In the eight years I have only seen two deer here.  The three deer looked like they were fawns not yet completely grown.  Hunting season was long past.  They were heading toward the farmland and the forest beyond.  I was just surprised to see them here so close to my property.  There are other animals in the vicinity but they usually stay out of our view.  The juxtaposition of animals with civilization has always fascinated me.  And we are on the edge of country.  You just never know what you are going to see.

Now every time I pass the meadow near our house I look for the two pheasants we spotted a few days ago.  Of course, they are not there.  Surprises are just that.  They come when you are not looking for them.  Serendipity is serendipity.  What if you saw everything you were looking for every day.  Wouldn’t life be boring?  Usually your attention is somewhere else.  And there it is–another surprise.  Thank God life is not always predictable.  What a world it would be if it was?!

In a span of thirty seconds we spotted two ringed neck pheasants.  We were near our house and both quickly disappeared into the large meadow we passed.  There is a game preserve a mile away where they stock them for the hunters.  Sometimes you can spot them nearby but this was them first time I saw more than one at the same time.  We were amazed how quickly they ran and vanished into the undergrowth of the meadow.  They are beautiful birds and their sighting thrilled us.

I call it serendipity–the butterfly bush really a weed.  Two years in a row it came up in almost the same spot.  We could see it from our office window.  My wife said it was hard to transplant.  The butterflies loved alighting on its orange flowers.  I did not cut the lawn too well two years in a row.  Our lawn had turned into a meadow and there it was two years in a row.  I considered the plant a gift.  Like manna from heaven.

A Few Discoveries Today

Author: siggy

I made a few discoveries today.  When I drove to the post office and passed the meadow nearby I spotted two male red winged blackbirds dive bombing each other.  I am not sure what they were doing except they may have been fighting for their own territory.

To see two at one time was a real treat and so close to home.  Then when I was driving to Newport along the Juniata River I saw what appeared to be a blue heron perched on a branch on this side of the river.

Later in the distance at the mouth of a tributary a great egret was wading in the water.  I also used to see a blue heron always in the same pond, same spot.

I realized last winter something was wrong when it was still in the same spot after the pond froze over.  To my chagrin I was looking at a statue of one all along.

Those were a few of my bird discoveries today.  A turkey vulture reluctantly left the road and his prey when I came across it.  I watched it fly away slowly.  I never know what bird I will see and always have my eyes open for the next discovery.

I made several discoveries around the house.  The first one was a toad was living in a crack in front of the door.  He was no small toad–at least two inches wide.  I only saw him once in front of my door but I saw him disappear into the crack on the bottom.

It was magical:  he just tucked himself into the crack and was immediately gone from my view.  Since then I have kept my eyes open for him but did not see him again.

In back of my house, which was allowed this year to grow wild, was a patch of flowers I have often seen.  I knew it was a common weed:  a little white flower that looked like a tiny daisy.  I was amazed:  There must have been hundreds of those flowers in that big patch.

For months every time I stepped out the front door I would occasionally glance look at that tiny bird nest two inches in diameter resting on the nearby ledge.  I would be awed that a hummingbird could build such an perfectly round edifice.

I found the nest in the middle of the road nearby.  It must have fallen from an overhanging branch.  Every time I looked at that nest my breath would be taken away momentarily.

Another plant I never paid much attention was goldenrod.  For a long time I would mistakenly call another yellow flower goldenrod although goldenrod comes out later in the season.  My wife finally told me the proper name of that spring flower.

When I was walking my dog around my block, which is almost a mile around, I discovered there were acres of goldenrod in the gigantic meadow I passed.  I also found several patches of it around our property.  It was as if I was seeing goldenrod for the first time this year.  These were just a few discoveries I made.