Tuesday, May 8, 2012

New Point Comfort Observation Deck

These photos were taken from the observation deck at New Point Comfort in Mathews County.  
The observation deck is the only place to view the New Point Comfort Lighthouse 
without trespassing (that I know of).
 There is an abundance of wildlife in the area.  
I managed to get a photo of a Rail and her baby.
Virginia Rails are described as "A secretive bird of freshwater marshes, most often remains hidden in dense vegetation. It possesses many adaptations for moving through its habitat, including a laterally compressed body, long toes, and flexible vertebrae."
 




This is one of my favorite photos.
I just love the two herons fishing and the sun on the water.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Monday Meditation

Times of great calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
~Charles Caleb Colton




Friday, May 4, 2012

Good Fences?

 When I went down to Deltaville in March, I was shocked to see a privacy fence stretching between 2 properties.  Shocked even more by the sign located at both ends of the fence.  I have a lot to say about it, but I'll leave it in Robert Frost's capable hands.
 Really? I swear, next time I'm down there, I will have a photo of me standing next to this sign 
with my index finger extended almost touching this fence. I might even chant, "I'm not touching you!"
 The Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
                                ~Robert Frost