Rice, milk, sugar, eggs

I would love to be able to share the recipe for this most wonderful rice pudding, but I've been forbidden to do so. According to my sister-in-law, it's a "family" recipe and not meant to be shared with the world. She insists that only her dad could make it really right and that the recipe would self destruct if made to perfection by anyone but him.

: )

His recipe is unique in the quantity of rice used, I think, and leads to a thick milk custard with an understated presence of rice. Because I can't leave well-enough-alone, the second time I made it, I dressed up the rice/milk mixture with a bay leaf, as well as the expected vanilla. It adds a little something nice.

I also tried my hand at flan this afternoon, another dessert made with the same basic ingredients - milk, sugar, eggs - but the jury is still out on that science experiment. It was easy to make, but for the caramel...

What's your favorite dessert?

A counting

There's 92 species of birds on the list for the year already; some favorites are American Pipit, Loggerhead Shrike and Wilson's Plover. I've never kept a year list before. I don't generally "do" lists, but thought it might be entertaining for a while. I'm wondering what a reasonable expectation for the year might be... 200? 250? Any additional birds will accumulate slowly until Spring, unless of course there's travel involved.

2013 was a good year for new birds for me and I took a couple nice trips that added to my (only in my head) life list.

In February, we went to Sanibel Island, Ding Darling NWR, Cape Coral and Ft. DeSoto. The weather was crappy and the drive was interminable, but I hope to get back to that area sometime. Lots of neat birds...

Common Ground Dove - easily overlooked, but striking when they show their rusty wings.

Monk Parakeets feeding in the same field we found this Burrowing Owl; hard to say which felt more unlikely to this Jersey Girl.

: )

We also saw Nanday Parakeets and a Long-billed Curlew on that trip. Talk about impossible to imagine birds!

This Vermillion Flycatcher was probably the least expected bird I added to my nonexistent life list last year - just gorgeous! A friend of a friend on FB gave me directions to a town just west of Tallahassee and I found it in the exact tree where he said it would be - imagine!

I've no idea what new birds 2014 holds for me...

Happiness doubled by wonder

Cape May Point, Sandhill Cranes

It's easy for me to forget where I am sometimes and get excited about birds that I shouldn't. Eastern Phoebes and Pine Warblers, for example. They merit a FOS (first of season) post heralding the arrival of Spring to the local birding group in NJ, but here they're regulars and spend the winter without anyone getting excited. The opposite of that almost happened with these Sandhill Cranes passing over Cape May Point... in Atlanta you can see scores of them heading south along the interstate on any fall day, but in NJ, they're something special. In my heart, they're something special. The wild sound of their cries drifted back to me long after they'd soared out of sight.

While I would've loved to visit all my favorite places and all my favorite people, there just wasn't enough time. There was a visit to Sandy Hook for a very-far-away Snowy Owl and a drive past the coastal ponds that hold ducks all winter long. There weren't many ducks yet, but those familiar places felt good anyway.

Stone Harbor Point, Snowy Owl

At Stone Harbor, we walked slowly, scanning the dunes and grass for what we knew was there, and found it facing a small rise that served as a windbreak. Snowy Owls may occasionally perch in trees or on a fencepost, but they are birds of wide open places and prefer to rest on the ground. This is not my first Snowy Owl, but as with all birds of prey, I'm impressed with the indifferent serenity of this predator with few fears, beyond the local pair of Peregrine Falcons.

First through binoculars and then with the spotting scope, we watched the owl's half-closed eyes and mottled feathers, the head swiveling around occasionally in a smooth, liquid fashion as if it might just come unhinged at the next turn. The bird's presence, despite the crowd of onlookers, was such that it seemed to transform this popular beach into tundra. When you see a bird like this, one that is so unconcerned, so self-contained and so strikingly beautiful, it is hard to turn away. The desire to see every detail and to keep looking is strong. The temptation to get closer is almost overwhelming. Instead we take photos, perhaps to assure ourselves later that the bird was real.

Near the 2nd Ave. jetty in Cape May, invisible Snow Buntings

Walking the beach with the Cape May lighthouse in the distance, a flock of Snow Buntings came flying right at us. There must have been at least a hundred of them and right before it seemed that they would mow us down, they parted and we were surrounded. Their colors seem copied from fields where snow drifts hide all but the tops of the tallest weeds... large spaces of pure white touched here and there with black and gray and brown. All I heard was the rustle of wings and the ocean... it was glorious. I felt lifted up and then they disappeared back into the dunes.

Forsythe NWR, Northern Harrier

Gosh I miss marshes and the harriers that haunt them! The sight of this one, troubling shorebirds as they fed on the mudflats of the refuge, had me laughing and singing to myself, "Watch while I make these Dunlin nervous..." which is a random reference to a Wheeler Boys song...

Forsythe NWR, Snow Geese

These birds, too, belong to a far away winter world. It was late afternoon and I was standing out in the cold waiting for the Snow Geese to fly across the road from one side of the refuge and over my head to the other side. It is one of the most spectacular things to witness... the gigantic flock of them, the lowering sun coloring up the white of their undersides, the noise of them. I love seeing them this way on a winter's day too, with the hotels of Atlantic City as a backdrop. There might be a hundred different things in your head: things to do, worries and hopes, resentments and regrets. But it's all forgotten listening to the noisy waves of geese and I felt my mind go clear, silent, here.

These words are here just to remind myself now. I was there. I was happy. Has it been a month already?

Almost perfect

I'm home now from Thanksgiving in NJ... tired but happy. I'm glad to report that vast quantities of mashed potatoes were consumed (as was a piece of Brian's homemade cheesecake). I found my winter coat and was thankful for it. Surprise of all surprises, I found time amid the holiday craziness to see some good friends, as well as some good birds. Thankfully, we did not forget the Brussels sprouts or the mashed turnips. There was a beach walk and lots of wide-eyed staring at the places I miss so much. I thought about my dad a lot.

A loggerhead boil

"Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause." 

 - Bruce Feiler 

I'd imagine that most of us (birders, naturalists, outdoorsy-types) have read a lot about the value of a real-life, hands-on nature experience to convert the rest of the world to our ranks. Be it hand-feeding chickadees or swimming with dolphins at Disney, I'd almost come to think of myself as superior to this type of experience, somehow beyond the magic of another "wildlife encounter".  I've watched over endangered birds in the blazing hot sun, boxed up and delivered hawks and gulls to wildlife rehabilitators, rescued baby birds and bunnies from all sorts of self-imposed mischief, etc.

But I was not prepared to fall in love with baby sea turtles!

Years, now, of visits to the GA coast and FL panhandle had at least made me aware of their plight, but I'd never thought I'd be lucky enough to chance upon a real-life encounter with any. What are the chances of that, right?

A part of our beach-arrival ritual is to dip our toes in the sea, no matter the weather or time of day; it feels like coming home to me! On our first night of an experimental summer camping vacation, we walked the beach on Jekyll at low tide. It was empty and quiet, but for the almost full moon and a couple people out with red lights checking the sea turtle nests. We happened to talk to a couple of them, volunteer turtle nest monitors, and they directed us to nest #62 which looked as if it might hatch that night, in the next hour or so.

Really?!?

Squee!!!

So what if it was nearly midnight... we were on vacation and had nowhere else to be!

So we sat.

And we waited...

(for all of about 5 minutes)

before Jay thought he saw some movement and...

Sure enough, those baby loggerheads were boiling out of their nest! Coolest thing ever! It was pitch dark, but those little turtles knew their way to the ocean and we watched, and counted them, and cheered them on.

What luck!

So a couple days later we signed ourselves up for a "nest excavation" walk with the GA Sea Turtle Center. Their researchers dig up every nest on Jekyll a couple days after it's hatched to record data about it. They count every hatched eggshell (51 in the nest we saw excavated) and they open each and every unhatched egg (49 in this case).

The unhatched eggshells were pretty gruesome and smelly. They estimate the stage of development each was in before it perished (the majority in this nest died very early in development.)

I've read that, historically, some people especially enjoyed the richness of cakes made with turtle eggs. Can you imagine?

Dead hatchlings are also counted - in this nest there were 2 - these are baby turtles that hatched, but died before making their way out of the nest and to the ocean.

Sometimes, live hatchlings are also found! There were 2 in this nest! I don't know enough about Loggerheads to guess why they might stay behind in their sandy birthplace, refusing the call of the sea. Anybody know?

Two little Loggerheads were rescued from their sandy womb (tomb?) and pointed in the direction of the sea, with our cheers to urge them on. They didn't seem to be in much of a hurry, but with turtles, it's hard to know.

; )

Sweet Sadie... ever patient and well-behaved, watched all of it pass her by at the tip of her nose.

(Tho there was one baby turtle she was determined to investigate as it made its way past her nose to the water that first night. I'm glad for any occasion to see her acting like a dog... but know enough to hold her very close!)

I was pretty surprised (pleasantly!) with how much this all touched me. There are devoted turtle-watchers who never get to see what we happened upon by chance and luck. 

I feel blessed.

A visit to Jekyll Island always manages, somehow, to be magical.

Our carnival life on the water

“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement... We never have the sense of home so much as when we feel that we are going there. It's only when we get there that our homelessness begins.” ― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again 

Hurricane Sandy wrecked communities rich and poor in NJ, from the Staten Island-meets-Miami style multi-million dollar homes of Bayhead to the blue collar bayfront bungalows near where I grew up. Its images were unimaginable and unbearable to me: of trashed boardwalks pushed into the sea, of an iconic roller coaster dumped into the ocean, of a road leading into the tide where homes used to be. From a thousand miles away and desperate for news of what was happening at home, it looked as if my childhood had been washed away and that the entire Jersey Shore that I knew and loved was gone.

Eight months later, towards the beginning of last month, I went home to NJ for a couple days expecting to find a ruined way of life there, but also hoping, still, to catch a faint whiff of the competing aromas that signal "home"at the Jersey Shore: the fried dough of zeppoles just before the powdered sugar goes on, the sweet muck of a local salt marsh at low tide, the extra garlic on pizza slices and the salt spray coming off the ocean. All of these live deep in the soul of NJ for me. I found all of it, at once, and witnessed small moments in the sad seaside ritual of rebuilding the storm-damaged communities that I hold dear.

I can't pretend to be untouched by grief at the total destruction of the shore towns that are a backdrop to a thousand stories in my life. But the Jersey Shore is more than a place; it's more than its wood-plank promenades and town squares on stilts. It's more than its carnival lights. It's more than a staging ground for summer. For many, it's an identity and an attitude. I love the shore best on foggy days when you can't even see the boardwalk or the ocean, but can only smell it. I love the dampness and the feeling that you can almost lick the salt out of the air. I love the dampness in the sheets at night when you go to bed. You'd never put up with that anywhere else, but at the shore, it just feels right! When you walk around at night, you smell the boardwalk everywhere. There's always a far-off murmur of traffic. It feels safe. It feels comfortable. It feels like home. All of these things, thankfully, remain.

*Photo of where a house used to be in Union Beach, one of the hardest hit communities in NJ.

*Post title from "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" by Bruce Springsteen

No whining in paradise

Isn't there a saying about a rainy day at the beach being better than almost anything...

: )

So it rained while we were in Florida and when it stopped raining it got so cold and windy that being outside on the beach was almost unbearable.

Almost.

We got to do all the things I was hoping for and it was still fun, but the weather did put a damper on things.

Florida is magical to me, regardless of the weather, really. During the many hours on the road, driving back and forth on I-75, I found myself remembering a road trip my family made to Florida when I was a kid. I don't remember much about that trip beyond the rain and that I had to sit next to the leaky window in the backseat of my dad's Cadillac.

Any trip to Florida still holds a certain level of excitement for the Jersey Girl in me. Growing up, the lucky kids got to go to Florida on vacation.

: )

But having been able, recently, to visit different parts of the state, I'm seeing it differently now and starting to form opinions about favorite places to spend time.

That's a good thing, I guess. The magic isn't at Disney anymore, but instead in the places that aren't so developed. The roadside orange groves and blooming bougainvillea delighted me. The palm tree-lined streets are charming, but for all the traffic. The birds are amazing... I've never seen so many Osprey!

So... I came home without even so much as a sunburn. I've a bucket of seashells from Sanibel to sort through and some lovely photos of Florida "junk birds" like this Yellow-Crowned Night Heron. Plus the memories of a couple rainy days in paradise...

Nauset Light and around Cape Cod

"Sometimes just looking up and seeing the light is enough." 

~Terri Guillemets

Birders are a generous lot, as a rule. Mention on FB that you'll be visiting a particular place and before you know it, birder friends will have dinner plans and an itinerary made for you, including convenient stops along the way from the airport where you can find whatever species of bird it is that you're pining after.

I'd been pining away for Piping Plovers, it being March and all. March is the month when plovers return to NJ beaches from wherever it is that they've spent the winter months. March in the Northeast is the most miserable of months, I think, because Spring is so close on the horizon and you want it so badly, but the weather is dank and damp and mostly miserable, cold and gray.

On the tails of a short vacation in Florida, a couple days on Cape Cod in March seemed an impossibility... I'd given away most all of my cold-weather clothes before moving here and going from shorts and flip-flops to thermal underwear and gloves in the span of a week felt ridiculous! But... there might be Piping Plovers!

I spent an afternoon wandering around the city of Boston... remembering the cold and delighting in a Dunkin' Donuts on almost every corner! Spring had the willows in Boston Commons that lovely green that willows know how to perfect.

Weeping willows are not very common here. Surprising that I should miss them...

The coast of Florida is, of course, beautiful and I'm glad for each and every chance to visit, but beaches there lack something that beaches in the Northeast have in abundance. It might be the wind that never rests. Or air that is thick with salt and the smell of low tide. Oh, how I miss that smell! Maybe it's just atmosphere and the feeling of home. There are beautiful and scenic places where I live now, but no easy access to the ocean.

We met up with a local Cape Cod bird club and spent an appropriately cold and misty, rainy morning on the beach at Nauset Light (thanks for the suggestion Mojoman!) looking at winter birds. We wandered along dirt roads on the Cape looking at ducks and exploring the ponds that Mary Oliver described in her poetry.

We stayed at a bed and breakfast perched on Gull Hill in Provincetown... and scanned the harbor for breaching whales while we had afternoon wine and cheese and watched Northern Gannets dive into the ocean from the warmth of our rental car at Herring Cove Beach.

Race Point Beach had plover fencing installed, but no Piping Plovers, yet.

Compensation for the lack of plovers was found at the wharf in P-town, where we found Harlequins and Common Eiders within spitting distance! Eiders have always been one of those birds for me... I'd never had a really satisfying look at them before and anywhere that one can see Harlequins without a treacherous jetty-walk (like at Barnegat Light) is worth a visit.

Of course I didn't have a proper camera with me, you know.

Silly.

I'd love to get back to Cape Cod in the summer someday... maybe even visit Nantucket. I'd imagine late September to be the perfect time of year... maybe I could catch the Piping Plovers before they depart...

Untold stories

There are a lot of stories I never got around to telling last year... these are just a couple to share...

Waiting for birds to appear on the CBC in January...

A very cold visit to the NJ Meadowlands in February...

Shadows of the March sun at the carousel in AP...

Walking the High Line with a childhood friend in April...

Lunch in Asheville on the way home from W. Va. in May...

Playing with reflections and a new lens on the boardwalk in June...

A couple hours on the beach in July with one of my favorite little people...

Playing tour guide for a flock-mate in August...

A September visit to California...

An October visit to Savannah...

My first (and last!) raw oyster in Apalachicola in November...

Exploring back country roads in December looking for birds...

I hope to be a better blogger in 2012...

1/365

New coffee pot, new camera, new life... why not a new photo project, too?!?

I'm trying out the 365 Days Project to take a photo a day for the next year. Sounds pretty easy for someone as camera addicted as me, right? I figure it'll be a sweet way to chronicle this first year in a new place. I also have a new camera - the new iPhone 4S - and it combined with Hipstamatic is the perfect toy!

I'm not sure how often I'll share pics from the project here, but considering the difficulty I'm having with writing regular posts to this blog, if nothing else, a photo a day will at least give me something to blog about. The truth is, I have plenty to blog about, but the difficulty lies in how much to share and what to keep close to my heart. I imagine I'll work that out with time and practice. For now it still feels like too much, as if too many people are reading over my shoulder...

Anyway, about the new coffee pot...

; )

The cheapo Mr. Coffee died yesterday when I was just desperate for a cup...

Coffee this way reminds me of my dad and of camping. I love the smell of it cooking on the stove. It's especially yummy this way, I think, but it takes forever to be ready. So today I snapped a pic while I waited.

Anyone else out there prefer perked coffee over drip-brewed? Any hints for getting the basket contraption out of the pot without burning my fingers or should I go to the garage for that camping tool?

: )

My mother's cookie jar

My dad's health had declined so suddenly early in 2004 that he couldn't live alone any longer and my brothers and I were left scrambling to make arrangements for his care. We also had to figure out what to do with his house and all the stuff in it.

The short story is that we shared dad and cared for him as best we could amongst us while we set about cleaning out and selling his house. I don't remember how many 20-yard dumpsters we'd paid for, but still... my attic ended up filled with dad's books, mom's dresses and lots of assorted "stuff" from numerous generations of our family.

I never really dealt with any of that stuff properly. I'm awful about purging my own things, let alone all this sentimental crap... my dad's high school ring, a letter he wrote from France to my mom while they were engaged, her wedding dress preserved in a fancy cardboard box...

What am I to do with any of this?

Life has found me in a place now that I'm sorting through the collections of a childhood and a marriage: my lifetime so far. Some things are easy to keep and others... pfft! It seems impossible to do anything other than cart them around with me until sometime when I can think more clearly about their meaning and real merit in my future.

I've been washing and boxing up my mother's china and sorting through ridiculous amounts of bird-related-kitsch the last couple weeks. I've no idea what to do with the perfectly-preserved wedding dresses worn for two failed marriages, but...

(sad sigh)

This cookie jar, as awful-looking as it is... I know I want to keep it!

: )

Of course it would be meaningless to anyone else, but I remember it there on the counter above the breadbox in the house I grew up in. It's one remnant of my childhood... innocent of any guilty feelings and sense of obligation... I see it and think of Scooter Pies and Pecan Sandies.

: )

In the last couple years I'd used this as a treat jar for my bunnies... appropriate, no? It broke at some point recently and my sweet DexH glued it back together for me.

- - - - - - - - - - -

"My mom" is just an empty title to most people in my life. I have just one friend who remembers her, in fact. It's 30 years since she passed away when I was 11. I can look at pictures of her and still smell her perfumed hug or remember days at the beach as a kid. There is little in my life, now, to make her a real person. This ugly cookie jar was probably meaningless to her... an empty household piece that once belonged to the most important person in my life.

Despite my inclinations to the contrary, I still hold on tightly sometimes. I still think her stuff is as sacred as my memory of her.

- - - - - - - - - - -

I wonder what it is that you all have been carting around with you to remember the people that once loved you? A pink trunk full of tattered love letters? A collection of tools? That set of crystal hi-ball glasses you can't bear to part with, tho you don't even really know what a hi-ball is?

: )

Do tell, please. Lend me some comfort in my state of overwhelmedness.

Trying to be loved

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk? ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982

This tree, somewhere in spring in West Virginia, was totally trying to be loved.

: )

Along 30A

Slow down, you're here.

A year in pictures

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Probably it's time to move on, but I'm not quite finished yet... just a few more 2010 shout outs and I'll be done. I promise.

: )