September 19, 2007  

     The Souhegan Valley Chorus marched in the Milford Labor Day parade behind a truck decorated as our "float."  Five chorus members met at Tim Hageman's to do the decorations and some construction.  Tim carried on last year's tradition of singing in the shower.
     Lynn had three gardening friends over for lunch and conversation.  They met when Lynn was a member of the Amherst Garden Club, but now that we've moved up here, it's a bit of a hike, so she discontinued her membership.  Fortunately, some of the friendships have endured.  
     Last Friday, Saturday and Sunday, Lynn went to a quilt retreat (didn't take the camera).  It takes place at a camp/conference center on the other side of our town, but inside the camp you feel like you've gone miles away.  Basically, there are hours of uninterrupted quilting, no cooking, and lots of fun with other quilters.  
     I'm starting to build a bridge across the Rand Brook behind our house.  It will be 30 feet long with a stone support in the middle.  This fall I'm building the support, and next spring I'll add the wooden structure.  I'm interested to see how the support survives the spring floods, if they come.
     A deer seriously browsed one of our new pear trees.  The carved-off branches look like beaver work, but they're too high for a beaver to reach.  We don't know any way to protect from it happening again.  Ah well, you lose if you try to fight Nature.
     You can call us buggy if you want to, but Lynn and I seem to take a lot of pictures of insects.  Lynn caught a shot of an assassin bug nymph on a board at Tim Hageman's.  Here's what he will look like as an adult.  She also found a grasshopper enjoying a dahlia and a monarch butterfly sipping a daisy.  I found a quarter-inch worm on my jeans and took a movie of him.
     Three kinds of wild asters are blooming in our late-summer fields—New England aster, calico aster, and panicled aster.  Here's the complete set of wildflowers this summer..
     Here's an idyllic scene at sunset on the knoll behind our barn.

Feature - In his "Devil's Dictionary," Ambrose Bierce defines admiration as "Our polite recognition of another's resemblance to ourselves."

Quote for the Day -
    "Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home."
                                                                                                                                       — Bill Cosby