Surprisingly enough, I’ve carved several eraser stamps recently. First, I did a maple leaf, strictly for a practical reason. We’ve been looking around our woodlot to see if we have any maple trees we might want to tap next spring. There are a few scattered along the trails. How can we recognize them next March, …
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Weekend in NJ – Monday Oct 8
I took a day off on Monday Oct 8 (my company doesn’t have Columbus Day off) so that we wouldn’t have to leave the wedding early to come home. We’ve left weddings in New Jersey on Sunday before, but this one was farther from home and there were more people Arlene wanted to have plenty …
Weekend in NJ – Sunday Oct 7
On Sunday we rode with Joel and Millie to Forsgate Farms Country Club in Monroe, NJ, for the wedding. It was an unusually hot day for October. It would have been a hot day for September, and a warm day the last week of August. We had expected the ceremony would have been planned for …
Pennant fallout
I’m not much of a baseball fan. When I was a kid living in Flushing, NY, three of the sixteen major league teams were in New York — the Yankees, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the New York Giants. We were Giants fans. My dad took me to see games at all three of Yankee Stadium, …
Witch hazel
When we were walking around the block yesterday, we notices some witch hazel growing along the other association’s road. I learned about witch hazel from Lois & Sandy Brown probably thirty years ago. It blooms very late in the year, even after frost, and keeps its flowers through a lot of the winter. Insects have …
Local turkeys
There were eight wild turkeys in our side yard today, chowing down on crabapples and whatever else was around. I hope they found a few japanese beetle grubs. Anne and Matt had seen turkeys on our property last year the day before Thanksgiving, but this was the first Arlene and I have seen any here. …
Juncos have arrived
The backyard in Casco was covered in white-throated sparrows and juncos today. That’s a pretty good sign that winter is really on the way. We saw a couple of (undoubtedly southbound) palm warblers, some yellow-rumped warblers, and some other sparrows, probably chippies and a field sparrow though we were hoping for a white-crowned, on a …
Weekend in NJ – Saturday
We were in New Jersey last weekend for Heidi’s wedding. Heidi is the youngest child of Arlene’s first cousin Diane. She’s the only person of that generation (other than my own kids) whose date of birth I know. We were staying at Diane’s sister’s house in Albuquerque when the phone call came to say she …
New siddurim
Last night (Weds 10 Oct) we went to shul so Arlene could say kaddish for her father. We reached for the prayerbooks and, what’s this?! Unfamiliar new-looking prayerbooks. We had been there just under two weeks ago for the anniversary of Arlene’s grandmother’s death, and these were new since then. We found out as soon …
Dimitri as director
Last night Barry called in sick to klez (his back is bothering him — he can’t stand and hold an accordion) and Dimitri took over as director. I’ve felt for a long time that Dimitri is a better musician than any of the rest of us. He told us last night about some of his …