Life On a Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

A little calligraphy by your blogster, in the form of a test blog.

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Wayne, our webmaster, says the blog is back and will function nicely now. Let us see. . . .

And friends, sorry about this. I meant to communicate with you much more often during the past two or three months. But BlogStudio moved, and has other troubles resulted from the move.

But the heart remains steadfast.
 

They are back; the snow geese are back!

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Yep, the snow geese are back, clotting the winter fields by the thousands, and so are many of the other winter birds. Yesterday morning two swans cruised by--unusual because we rarely see them on water, though they are well designed for swimming. They may have been tundra swans, or else quite young trumpeters: both have a beige cast, and are hard to tell apart by less than superficial signs.

Bigger than a goose, smaller than a  heron, the trumpeter/tundra swans have similar arch necks. I've been trying to draw them for weeks. My first herons looked much like geese. Never could get that beautiful crook to the neck. But, ah, I shall call those ill-drawn birds swans now. But then the shape of the head isn't right. . . .

Geese crook their necks, too. (Morris Graves did a beautiful drawing of angry geese while in Ireland, and caught the crook just right; if you've seen a reproduction, you won't forget it, either.)

The swans appeared quickly and disappeared just as fast. My eye already longs for them, though my eye (and memory) caught the pyramidal shape of their forehead just right.

I shan't forget it, it is so noble.

Misty dawn over the lake, facing East

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We've had a lot of rain, sure, but we've had a lot of sunshine, too. And that makes for a pretty good start of winter—though it is still autumn, I know.

Winter ought to start the day after Halloween. And it ought to end with the start of the first spring-like weather that starts around here, in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, the last week in February. True, the past couple of years have been exceptions then, with blustery weather continuing well through March and into April. But I remember the end of February that mimicked mid-spring and was shirt-sleeve weather.
Not awfully different from what we are having now, come to think about it.

Hey, weather matters when you live on a lake, whether it is tossing and turning, or calm and flat, as in the picture above. Would you rather have me talk about the Presidential election?

I thought not. We are all full to the gills with that.
 

Ah, there is nothing like fresh fruit on the bough!

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These apples are Honey Crisps, and this is their first year of production. Last year, when they were less than one year old, they produced a few blossoms, which we dutifully pinched off, according to the accompanying nursery literature. We really didn't want to. I, for one, wanted to let them go their "natural course." My wife said no, and she was right, right again.

This year they paid is back in plentitude. Some of the apples were the size of small grapefruit. They were sweet and tasty. It took the two of us to eat one apple. As the season bore on, they got a bit more flavorful, though they were about as good as any apple can be.

They resisted being plucked from the bough, so we left them on the tree through October, picking only one at lunch time. But now it is November, and when one did fall during the night, some creature got to it, the tooth marks were a bit frightening: to think such a creature lived in our rural neighborhood!

So yesterday we harvested them in a plastic bucket, along with the apples from its companionate apple tree, the Shizuka. It is a cross between a Yellow Delicious and an Indo Beauty. But more on that fine apple in another blog. . . .

Thanks for the visit,
Robert C. Arnold, Editor