arts & crafts

Dante's really getting to the stuff he's doing at our pottery class. I got 25lbs of air dry clay on freecycle, and he showed Mason and Claria the techniques he's learned this week. Today we glazed our work, but we have to wait a few weeks for it to dry and be fired.

Dante finally got to make a pinch pot. We've been doing some under the sea themed stuff, but if you finish before the end of class, you have free time for projects like this.

My seahorse, texture courtesy of Lucia's sandal treads.

After pottery and lunch, we went to see something called Science in Motion at East Hampton library. The guy was a mime, and had some tenuous science tie-ins, but his demeanor left a little to be desired. He was constantly admonishing the kids for minor infractions, and he scolded me for taking a short video with my camera. He seemed to think I was from the newspaper, tho why it would upset him if I took pics or video, I'll never know. Guess he doesn't want people to find out about what he does. Whatever. Ed Popielarczyk, the magician on Monday at Portland Library was WAAAAYYY better anyway.

After that, we dashed off to the Russell Library in Middletown for "Green Children". We made fern print t-shirts -- very easy and loads of fun. How can banging a hammer in a library not be fun?

Lucia, not having so much fun waiting 3 minutes
for her t-shirt to come out of the saltwater bath.

busy day at the beach

Dante and I are taking an intro to pottery class at Wesleyan Potters in Middletown, so Lucia has a fun week lined up visiting other people while we craft our masterpieces. After picking her up at Grandpa's today, we headed to the beach. The bank clock en route had the temp at 92 humid degrees.

Gotta love the floating rings.

Lucia and JoJo: two peas in a pod.

Grandpa even put in an appearance at the beach, and sat at the end of the jetty while Dante fished. Here he is interrupted halfway back to the beach by Dante's crabbing habbit.

The green crab hunter, hard at work on the jetty.

Success! And look at the enormous claw on this lil guy.

Lucia (followed by tomorrow pottery-time playmate, cousin David)

make the arduous trek out to see the green crab action.

Hey! Uncle Tommy stopped by to toss the kids around. Lilly is his current victim.

And look! Julian found his thumb!

Lazy Days at Day Pond

Dante hadn't been feeling well for a week or two, but he finally felt up to a few quick trips up to Day Pond to enjoy the recent heat. As it turns out, he's got Lyme disease (Plum Island biological warfare research gone awry?), so maybe I'll suggest that we were taking these, er, therapeutic waters. Yeah, that's it. Dante's opted to also take the antibiotics, in case that murky water isn't effective. I have this small collection of photos.

I told our resident drama queen (drama king just doesn't sound right)
to make a face for the camera and this is what I got.

Glad this random stranger was around to chaperone Lil and Lulu in the shallows. I was busy knitting mittens on the beach. My second non-hat knitting project!

in memoriam

Well, it happened again. The completely preventable loss of one of our babies. Sigh.

Last week, we were home, cleaning up from dinner and making strawberry shortcake biscuits, since the kids and I had gone picking earlier that day. It was lateish, after 7:30, and I was going to get the girls in as soon as I popped the biscuits in the oven. The corrugated plastic panels were pushed aside on the top of the pen since I'd sent Dante out with some leftover hardboiled eggs (does that seem somehow cannibalistic to anyone else?) to treat the girls. As I'm spooning out the dough onto the baking sheet, I hear the chicks making a ruckus outside. I look up and my heart lurches -- there, inside the pen, running about chasing my babies, is a big, fat racoon.

You remember this guy, right? From our earlier post on Predator day, when I discovered him sitting in my hanging flower basket during his midnight snack at our birdfeeder. Right. Well, he's obviously a very happy squatter these days, enjoying all our offerings, as well as those we're not at all offering. I started shouting and running outside, Luke joined me, and the kids came out on the deck in time to watch as this bad neighbor made off with one of our Auracanas -- FuzzyUzzy. The older chicks had flown out of the pen and were milling about in the rock garden, pretty freaked out. The poor younger chicks, who'd been trapped in the pen along with this menace, were also hard to catch and bring inside to safety. It was a terrible night for all of us. Goodbye FuzzyUzzy. We'll miss you, and the pretty blue/green eggs you would have laid. Sniff.

FuzzyUzzy May18th-June 20th, 2007

our impression of old lyme

Monday morning saw us on a quick trip to the lab for a blood draw (a lyme disease test for our tick magnet) due to Dante's mysterious illness. Then we hit the gorgeous scenic backroads of eastern CT on our way down to the Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme. We wandered the gardens -- I confess to green-thumb envy -- and saw poppies, which was exciting as we've been reading The Wizard of Oz lately. The guide gave an introduction to American impressionism as well as a history of the Lyme Art Colony and Florence Griswold herself during our tour of the house and new art gallery. The pic above was taken in the new museum gallery, and the kids are all sitting in front of my favorite painting from the collection: Harvest Moon Walk by Harry Leslie Hoffman.



This was followed by our own foray into plein air painting down on the lawn by the river. The weather was perfect, and the kids had a great time. Lucia found the paint to be magically delicious. Dante had fun painting, at least until the Motrin wore off. We skipped the picnic on the lawn in favor of a jaunt to the cottage in Saybrook. After cleaning some windows, we hit the beach, along with Kathy and her kids, and David and his friend Julian. Grandpa brought his kayak down and gave rides along the shore to interested parties. Dante lay on a towel moaning, while I read to him from the Burgess Bird Book for Children, and Lucia shared ring floats with Lil and Jo.

We were late bringing the chickens in, which lead to the lovely discovery that if you wait til they really WANT to come in, they will not run away from you but will gather in an orderly fashion in the corner of the pen and wait for you to pick them up and put them into their current mode of transport back inside: the laundry basket.

Daddy's Big Day at Salmon River

The boys braved the rapids on the Salmon River in search of the elusive rainbow trout. Alas, Dante caught only a couple of downed trees and a few rocks. Lucia and I spent the time swiping at tadpoles and minnows in the shallows near the small waterfall.

Dante snagged a trout baby in his net!

I laughed, I cried...

Well, we had a funny and sad story happen all at once the other morning. Lucia was up by herself downstairs, since Dante, Daddy and Nonno went fishing. I didn't realize no one was up, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.

A while later, I heard loud peeping from downstairs, and went to investigate. Rounding the corner from the stairs into the kitchen, I saw the baby chicks scurrying about underneath the kitchen table. The floor was littered with little blobs of chicken poop. Laughing at this unexpected sight, I escorted the girls back to the laundry room brooder. Discovering that it was empty, I went in search of the older girls. I found them hanging out in the middle of the living room rug, tho they must have just arrived in this room since it was poop-free. I opened the door to the deck and helped the girls figure out that this was the way I wanted them to go. We all walked down the deck stairs and they all were happy to be back on familiar territory. I headed back inside to clean up.

Once I finished, I went back outside to find the big girls because I couldn't see them. They were back behind the big evergreen, sitting on the stone wall. Missing one of their number. It seems that in the 10 minutes that I was wiping up the mess inside, a hawk swooped down and breakfasted on our smaller silkie. I was so upset! Luke's parents took the kids to the movies and he and I worked to finish the moveable pen that is relatively predator safe. And this week, on the way back from the bison farm, we stopped at the chicken lady's house to get another silkie. This one is younger than the first group we had, but since she looks familiar, the bigger girls don't seem to pick on her. She seems to be adjusting nicely. So here, without further ado, are the girls:

Pong seems to be trying to figure out what the deal is with B.B. -- she looks similar, but isn't quite the same as Ping (RIP).

Speck checks out the new silkie, but doesn't peck her because she looks familiar. Unfortunately the BLRWs don't have this advantage, and we hear little squeaks from them throughout the day if they get in the bigger girls' way. Or if they look at them the wrong way. Or if they're just within 4 feet of them... you get the idea. Although it's been almost a week since we put them all together, and the pecking is slowing down considerably.

Rosie, striding with purpose across the pen.

All the chicks were curious about the camera, and Rosie got a little too close -- but I got a nice shot of her chest with it's pretty feathers.

Fly investigates something along the perimeter of the new pen.

Bandit enjoys some thistle seed, while Peepers keeps her distance. Bandit pecks the most.

Peepers jumped up on my arm for a rest.

Tinkerbelle looks around nervously, hearing the approaching thunderstorm.

FuzzyUzzy was freaking out, I think from the storm, so I could only get this shot of her (on the right) with all 4 of the Blue Laced Red Wyandottes (Izzy's the dark one at the top left).

Clover is nibbling on some clover.

Izzy also decides my laps is a warm, comfy spot.

Luna searches for some thistle seeds leftover from the sloppy big girls treat.

Luna and Peepers get their own thistle seeds.

Peepers back in action on the lawn.

A visit to Bakerwoods

Following the bison farm, we went to Bakerwoods (visitbakerwoodsfarm.com) in Ashford, CT. The owner gave us a tour of the animals (donkey, sheep, horse, goats, tons of chickens and chicks, ducks, turkeys (including two wild turkey chicks someone couldn't get off their doorstep), two breeds of pheasants, parakeets, several breeds of pigeons including some very aptly named "hooded nuns", read-eared slider turtles, baby painted turtles, and many rabbits. The kids went absolutely wild to see all these animals, and loved to see all the chickens and pigeons roaming about. They each got to hold an adorable little bunny and to feed the turtles. Then we headed out on the I Spy Gnome trail. She gave each of them a laminated sheet with various items to find along the way, so we had a nice walk in the woods to end our day.

Strut (the turkey's name) really likes to do just that. You can just see the tail of his "woman" sticking out behind him. Evidently he thought we meant her harm. Or he just likes showing off his "rack" because he kept following us around all puffed up like this, gobbling once in a while. He wasn't aggressive at all, just, well, strutting.


Everyone got a chance to hold the cute lil bunny. The bunny seemed mystified by Lucia and stared at her the whole time he was on her lap.


We were on the I Spy Gnome trail, and found several trees with little red cones on the leaves. Here's dante examining what we determined to be the gnome hat-growing fields. We came home and learned that they are Red Coned Galls (creative name, huh?) and they house a tiny gall wasp larvae in their center.

This cooksite was one of the areas we had to look for items misplaced by the gnomes. Lucia discovered the missing lantern hidden in the trees. Dante really likes open hearth cooking, even when it's pretend.

oh give me a home...

Today we went to the Creamery Brook Bison Farm in Brooklyn CT. They raise bison for meat, and cows for milk, and have emus, peahens and a rooster as well. The kids made ice cream, we had a picnic, had a hay wagon ride out to the bison fields, and then back again to make butter on the lawn under a tree.

Only the females and babies are out in the field we went to, and here's a nursing pair.


This baby (most of them were born in April) just enjoyed a dust bath and is now resting while the adults go crazy over the grain we brought with us. The owner dumped it right next to the wagon so the bison are about 3 feet away from us.

This is just a general shot of the view out the side of the wagon. The bison in the bottom left of the pic is eating the grain next to the wagon.


I know I would eat a lot less ice cream if I had to do this every time I wanted some...


We saw tons of birds, including a very low-flying red-tailed hawk and turkey vulture. A large group of pigeons and another group of barn swallows were very busy in the loganberry tree right next to our picnic tables. I didn't realize that barn swallows were so colorful. I don't think I've ever seen one close up before.

Our own BioBlitz

Our friends the McCoy's from Boston came down for a visit this weekend, and after being cooped up on a rainy Saturday, we were ready to get outside today. We packed everyone and some nets and buckets into the car, and headed for Day Pond to see what we could find.

Luke and Dante are on their way to harass mating leopard frogs near the stone dam/bridge.

Hey! Look, an unlucky bachelor/ette who didn't escape the net. Should've found a mate, mate.


A happy couple... and are those eggs at the backend?


Hey, look! A water snake. This one had an icky defense move -- it releases very pungent feces and coats it's skin with this foul smell. I touched it with my finger, and could barely stand to use that finger to snap these pics. Baths for everyone!

After roaming around up to her chest in the pond for about 20 minutes Kate managed to capture this painted turtle. He then came into her "cleaning station" to have 5 or so leeches removed from his various body parts.

A huge, blurry dragonfly nymph.

Crawfish

Bullfrog tadpole.

Senor Stinky-Pee. And below, his buddy, one of the 3 or 4 water snakes (with the exciting name "northern water snake") that were caught today. Notice the belly markings on the one below.


Lucia makes a splash.