The community is a symphony in the key of orange lately, with American Redstarts tittering in the treetops and the orioles whistling their sweet theme. Warblers are everywhere, and birdboxes are full of wrens, tree swallows, and bluebirds.  Meanwhile, sugar snap peas are coming up fast in the garden.  I’ll see you all in the woods!  (In the meantime, apply yourselves to Dickinson’s mysterious poem, below. Also, there are minutes of the last meeting posted on the site, and Debbie would like anyone interested in renting their place for part of the summer to contact her.)

To hear an oriole sing
May be a common thing,
Or only a divine.

It is not of the bird
Who sings the same, unheard,
As unto crowd.

The fashion of the ear
Attireth that it hear
In dun or fair.

So whether it be rune,
Or whether it be none,
Is of within;

The “tune is in the tree,”
The sceptic showeth me;
“No, sir! In thee!”

— Emily Dickinson

For those of you who are curious about goings-on in the vicinity of the community, I’ve added a link to video of the Hillsdale Town Board meetings — look in the “current events” section of links in the right-hand column.  Details of the meetings are also available through the Hillsdale Town Website, but the videos seemed worth highlighting.

To cast a wider net, consider tuning in to WGXC community radio in Hudson (90.7 FM, or listen online at TuneIn.com) — local news and a variety of entertaining musical selections, featuring the community’s own Noah Reibel, among others.

After a few warm days it was truly bitter cold through most of the Martin Luther King weekend.  The stream froze nearly solid overnight, and all the half-melted snow firmed into an extremely slippery glaze over nearly everything.  On the positive side, it was a great opportunity to get out an enjoy some animal tracks.  There have been a dozen or more massive turkeys wandering the community and the flock leaves various traces.  I like how the “arrows” point in the opposite direction from the one in which the turkeys are actually walking.

My appetite is rather keen,
But how shall I get there?
“Straight down the Crooked Lane,
And all round the Square.”

—Thomas Hood

Disheveled maples hang over the water;
Deep gold sunlight glistens on the shrunken stream.
Somnolent trout move through pillars of brown and gold.
The yellow maple leaves eddy above them,
The glittering leaves of the cottonwood,
The olive, velvety alder leaves,
The scarlet dogwood leaves,
Most poignant of all.

—from Falling Leaves and Early Snow, by Kenneth Rexroth

One of my favorite early snow poems.  Here are some scenes from my walk in the woods after ours (click for full pictures):

One of the joys of a such a leafy green rainy summer has been the proliferation of all sorts of wonderful caterpillars.  Presented here are a handful for your enjoyment.

*I’m backdating this post from after the October snowstorm, so I have the benefit of hindsight.  Boy was he right!

I had a feeling Harold Camping was going to be proven wrong for a second time when I saw how busy the robins were this week, feeding their new chicks:

Well the world may not have ended, but we certainly had an epic deluge.  A solid week of rain, and then suddenly Pow! Pow! Pow! We were pelted by thousands of marble-sized hailstones, quite impressive even if relatively low on the official Hail Scale ™ (1. Marbles, 2. Golf Balls, 3. Grapefruit).  Barely had I time to stow the obligatory Bowl of Hail in the freezer when the sky split into a massive rainstorm.

The ground was already swelling from all the water it had soaked up this week, so the runoff was extreme.   All the colverts were overloaded, some jammed with leaves and others just couldn’t take the volume.  The dirt road looked like a river in most sections, and in several places was flooded out entirely.

The frogs and mosquitoes had quite a party, but Carmen Barbato was on the scene in no time, inspecting the damage, and aside from a few new channels in the road here and there. no harm was done.  Our local robins got back to pulling worms for their hungry brood, and I went for a walk in the misty woods.

One final note:  I used some of the rainy time to add a bulletin board to the website, available for members to post notices or enjoy general discussions.  As always, let me know if you have questions or suggestions.  Here’s to sunny days ahead!

A huge ice storm hit the area in March and the woods are all askew.  Downed trees are everywhere, large boughs broken and scattered, and the more brittle varieties — evergreens and birches — snapped off at the trunk.  In the deepest woods, the tallest ones can’t seem to find their way down to the ground and remain suspended at precarious angles, resting on the kindness of neighbors.  I’m told they’re called widowmakers — best not to contemplate.

And despite it all — even despite the April snowshowers — spring springs eternal, once the spring is sprung, and sprung it is.  Buds and catkins are doing their thing, the insects are waking, and the phoebes have arrived to dine on them.  Also, the dastardly cowbirds, watching the phoebes, and waiting.  Beware!

Finally, Debbie knows a couple who are interested in renting in the community — contact her for more information.  My next project on the site is to add a bulletin board for members to post their own notices.  More news on this shortly.

I took a walk up to Bash Bish Falls last weekend.  The snow was still falling but the trail (which is sheltered and well-trod) was encrusted with about a foot of bare ice.  It was quite an adventure.  There were ice-donuts at the side of the path — created by tree-drippings or ski-poles?  I’ll leave that to you:

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

— Wallace Stevens

An acorn is just a tree’s way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. – Shirley Ann Grau

A beautiful autumn, one day trading its bloody august sunset for another’s pale yellow and ice-blue.  I gathered armfuls of acorns from the big Northern Red Oak outside our house.  Euell Gibbons in his classic Stalking the Wild Asparagus recommends making an effort to find members of the white oak family, which have less tannin, a substance that makes the acorns bitter and probably unhealthy to eat.  Woe is me — I got lazy and gathered mine off the back porch.

I tasted one raw and regretted it immediately — the tannin gives it an awful, tongue-shriveling quality that reminds me of unripe persimmons.  But everyone online seemed to agree that every acorn is edible if you soak it enough.  Euell says to boil ’em for a few hours, changing the water regularly.  I decided I’d lose too much flavor by boiling, so I crushed them and tried a cold-soak with regular changes of water.  The Native Americans who ate acorns used to put them in a bag and bury them in a bog or creek for months to a year.  I was pretty sure I could do it faster, but weeks later I had learned the hard way that it’s just not worth the effort.  I could have saved so much time if I had invested just a little up front in finding the right tree.  If you happen to have a red oak and are dead set on exploring its bounty, I highly recommend grinding the acorns first before soaking (a nice description of the process is in Debbie Lee’s interesting article on dotorimuk, a savory Korean acorn pudding).

Nonetheless, I finally succeeded in leeching the tannins out.  The nut meats had changed from an ivory hazelnut color to a lovely dark coffee-bean shade, but still retained their earthy hickory-maple aroma.  I roasted them, ground half into acorn meal and kept the rest as nuts.  They make a nice acorn-corn bread, and a delicious acorn-crusted acorn squash (stuffed with acorns, of course).  I’ve also tried a cookie (oakmeal-rasin, of course) and the leftovers went for the above-mentioned dotorimuk.  Recipes available on request!

Sorry to miss the summer update — I was laid up for all of August and got behind in everything.  It was a really beautiful summer, with perfect weather and everything blooming.  The barred owls stirred themselves into a cacophony every night, the turkeys seem to be enjoying all the quiet farmland (courtesy of Mr Chambers), and the coyotes seem to be enjoying the turkeys.

We were enjoying the fruits of our garden, which Melissa had been slaving over all spring to good effect:

Eva made her annual Hillsdale pilgrimage with her son Ben (joined later by Michael and Ana).  They did some pond exploration, and found a local letterbox on the Harlem Valley Rail Trail.  Whether he’s working or playing, Ben approaches life with ferocity.

Autumn post coming any day now — thanks for your patience!  (Photos of Ben and Eva are courtesy Elisabeth Sperling, who is a really talented action photographer.  Thanks, Elisabeth!)