Alberta Clipper Five

       

I took my camera to work today, to take a picture of red dry hydrants for Lisleman. They shone like rubies in Tuesday’s sunshine.  I’m not expecting to get back a day like that any time soon.  They’re just dull looking dry hydrants, with Alberta Clipper Five closing in.

At the end of that post, Jenny commented that hydrants in her town are painted to coordinate with local landmarks.  That is a magnificent idea and I think Nick and the kids at the art academy might see these as the Loch Ness monster.  Or anything.

Because dry hydrants would make a rather dry post I thought I’d just go down to the corner and take another picture to show you another story, when I heard the heron—and looked up and found him. One more wing flap and he was over the cedars.

This poor golf course is the winter home of deer, Canadian geese and mallard ducks.  It’s a beautiful golf course, thickly fertilized all winter.  I thought about cleaning it all up every spring and asked a friend who managed a golf course in New York.  She went wild.  Don’t even talk to her about it.  And, the goose crap is toxic.

So, there are shoulder to shoulder deer and geese on the golf course all winter.  Come spring, only the geese are left.  Several years ago I realized the geese nested around the lake.  Then the little yellow fluff balls would appear, running about like cartoon ducks.  And the hawks swooped down and took them away.  One morning the hill would be yellow with goslings and at day’s end I could watch the last gosling whisked away. 

I stopped taking that road into the valley once I saw the geese nesting; breakfasting hawks were not a pretty sight, even if they are endangered red tail hawks.  I was even more angry with the stupid geese who couldn’t be bothered to go across the street and use the marsh for a nursery.  You don’t even want to know how they watched their broods lifted off without raising a wing, then sauntered around the lake as if nothing happened.

Then two years ago the golf course left the low corner at the road unmowed, and a little marsh sprang up on this side.  I watched for geese nesting on the lawn, and there were none.  I resumed using Truxell to get to work and back, keeping my eye on the lake and the corner.  And sometime in June those half grown geese began emerging from their private marsh.  It didn’t improve my opinion of their parents’ IQ’s, but at least they knew what to do with this marsh when they found it.  Here it is, waiting for spring to turn into the goose nursery.

And then I telephotoed up the hill, past the marsh, onto the golf course.  Yes, that is goose, duck and deer shit littering the ground under the cedars.

And, Alberta Clipper number Five is swirling around outside.  While we will get only two to four inches this time, I’m thinking about New England and New York taking the two to four feet pounding.

Lest we forget Tuesday.  Golf course with deer track.