Well spotted

On a hot morning a few weeks ago, I spent an hour walking along my road with Kelley Nunn, who knows more about birds than anyone I've ever met. She has an amazing eye and could spot a hawk or a kestrel long before I could, just by noting a slight shadow on a cloud. She could identify each call in a jumble of songs ("like picking out the oboe in a symphony," she said) and shared mnemonics for many of the calls (for the Red-Eyed Vireo, it would be "Where am I? Here I am. In the tree!"; the Phoebe says its own name).
I've lived on my road for a good many years and until she showed me, I didn't realize that there are actually two ponds along one stretch, one of which you can see only from the very top of a steep bank.
She kept track of what we saw and heard and sent in the completed checklist to eBird: 45 species in one hour! She wasn't surprised; actually she said my road is something of a mecca for birdwatchers.
Kelley leads bird walks at the Bucktoe Creek Preserve on Sunday and Monday mornings (free and open to the public). She is amazing, and I hope to take another walk with her soon.

Garden pix

I'm hoping your gardens are

doing as well as mine this year. Only a few of the phlox have mildew, which is amazing considering the amount of rain we've had. And yes, I know how corny the yellow swallowtail-on-pink Echinacea photo is, but it was fun taking it anyway.
The pumpkins, which as you'll recall I had to replant back in May for lack of germination, are relentlessly taking over the garden. And the sunflowers, even though they started blooming a month ago (very early!), are still doing so, and beautifully.
(Yes, I do take my phone/camera with me everywhere, even while working in the garden. Except, of course, the other night when my brother's bicycle had a flat about a mile away from here and he needed a rescue. D'OH!)

Township meeting

There's a West Marlborough Township meeting on Tuesday, August 6, starting at 7 p.m. I'm not sure what's on the agenda for August, if anything, given that so many residents are either in Saratoga or on Mount Desert Island this time of year. However, as my regular readers know it's rare that I don't find something interesting to report on from a meeting. Well ... "interesting" to us locals, that is, even if it's only a washed-out gravel road or somebody building a new turn-out shed.

Form and movement

Over the winter a friend of mine had her right knee replaced at Christiana Hospital and spent quite a lot of time doing rehab at the physical therapy place in Willowdale. We had breakfast the other day and it was great to see a much-slimmed-down version of her walking into Perkins without pain (she still has a little limp, but that's due to plantar fasciitis). She said that three months after the operation she went to the Grand Canyon on a family trip and was utterly thrilled to be able to walk 3.8 miles (she measured!) along the Canyon rim.

Open and shut

Last week I wrote about the annual shutdown weeks at our local YMCAs. Now these additional closures have been announced at the Kennett Y to enable the workers to finish the expansion:
August 12th-August 25th – CLOSED AREAS: Main Gym, Cycle Room, Indoor Track, Main Pool, Sauna/Steam Room , Holistic Health Studio.
August 12th-August 18th – OPEN AREAS: Cardio and Weight Room, Wellness Studio, Warm Water Pool, Family Activity Center, Childwatch/Kids Zone, Locker Rooms
August 19th-August 25th – Entire Facility is closed.
By the way, I visited the newly completed "Wellness Studio" at the Kennett Y for the first time the other day and it is gorgeous: spacious but not cavernous, nice light, clean floor, good mirrors. I took a great class with Marta, too!

Our national bird

Bayo Nichols of the Unionville Saddle Shop was kind enough to share this adventure with me:
"Was on Mill Road going into Kennett late this afternoon [July 24], near the old Gaebel farm, when I rounded the bend to see flares on the side of the road. A few cars were pulled over on either side, a State Trooper was there, as well as a security guy from New Bolton, & what do you think was going on? A young Bald Eagle was standing in the middle of the road! Don't know if he was injured or just having teenage bird angst. Wish I had my camera."
Adds a West Marlborough friend and neighbor who read this story:
"There has been a nest of Bald Eagles residing along the Red Clay Creek between 926 and Baltimore Pike for almost two decades. When we lived near there, we would regularly see one, and others spoke of it too. Don't know where the nest is, but the family has been "in residence" for many years."

Walkin' after midnight

What a summer we've been having weather-wise. Just a few nights after that amazing heat-lightning display there was an absolute gully-washer (literally, in terms of our beleaguered gravel roads!). The intense rain and the thunder woke me around midnight. I immediately checked the weather map on my phone and saw the storm wasn't going to lighten up anytime soon, so I got dressed and went outside to explore. The lightning allowed me to see that the tiny creek in front of the house had become a torrent, flowing over the road. I turned back when the water started getting in my Bean boots.
When I went back inside and dried off I checked Facebook and found that several locals, including the Sharp-Eyed Friend, had been rudely awakened by the 12:27 a.m. Flash Flood siren on their phones and had taken to Facebook to express their displeasure. How they managed to sleep through the downpour in the first place is anybody's guess.
When I got up later that morning, the creek was burbling along in its channel as usual and the driveway and road were already drying up. The only sign of the flash flood was that the grass and weeds along the creek were flattened.
And people are still talking about that heat-lightning storm we had back on July 20. One kind reader took the time to write to me and said she was in her backyard during the storm watching both the Longwood Gardens fireworks and the heat lightning: "It was an amazing display of man vs. nature. As always, nature won!"

Noodlehead

Today at the Produce Place, in addition to a berry smoothie and two boxes of blueberries, I bought a bag of their delicious tomato-basil pasta made by Little Barn Noodles of Honey Brook. It's excellent with a little butter and fresh-picked basil. I was going to add some parsley, too, but I discovered that SOMEBODY has stripped my parsley plants of every single leaf. I'm looking at you, squirrels!
(Someone purporting to be the squirrels [I suspect it was one of my waggish chums] commented on this post, placing the blame on green caterpillars. But they would say that, wouldn't they!)

RIP, Mrs. McKay

I saw my old friend and retired Unionville teacher Karen Halstead this afternoon in Kennett and she shared the sad news that beloved fellow teacher Mary McKay died on July 24. Mrs. McKay was a longtime volunteer with the Longwood Fire Company and the Unionville Community Fair, where she and her husband Ray ran the youth photography competition for many years. In Mary's honor, the flag was lowered to half-staff at the Pocopson post office, where she was a regular.
It seems like we have been losing so many treasured members of our community recently, doesn't it?
By the way, Karen told me has moved to Kendal and said she absolutely loves it there. She also said many of her new neighbors are avid readers of this column. Thank you all very much! I'm honored.

Red states

The American Red Cross came out to the KOA Campground in Embreeville this afternoon for a blood drive, and I was one of those who donated (nothing new; I've been opening my veins for 30 years). The previous time my blood flow was a little sluggish, so I'd been advised to drink a lot of water beforehand. I asked my friends to offer frequent reminders during the day, and Susan F. complied with gusto, both online and in person (yes, that was she yelling "Drink your water!" when she spotted me on Center Street in Kennett).

For two days I avoided coffee (it's dehydrating) and downed many glasses of water, and it worked: almost before I knew it I'd given my full pint, and after eating some pretzels and drinking yet another bottle of water I was outta there.
The poor person who gets my blood! He or she may well experience an unexpected boost in curiosity, a tendency to use British slang and a new love for pancakes (without syrup, thank you).
Seriously, though: think about signing up next time. Attendance at the blood drive was not great, and unless you've seen it, you wouldn't believe the amazing improvement that a unit of blood makes for an anemic cancer patient.
The photo shows the sticker they give you after you donate; I always wear mine proudly the rest of the day.

These eyes

I went to Sardella Eye Associates in Willowdale to get my eyes checked the other day and Dr. Renny discovered that I've become "less near-sighted" than I was before. Optician John said it could be tricky getting my new prescription lenses put into my existing Maui Jim sunglasses.
"I'll have to send these back to Maui," he explained. "Well, not Maui. Actually Peoria, Illinois."

What's the 4011?

Yesterday at the self-service checkout at Giant in Kennett I was delighted to see a Unionville pal who I encounter more on Facebook than in person. We had an excellent gossip -- but we were so engrossed in our conversation that we seriously messed up our checking out. I punched in the wrong code for bananas, which I normally know by heart, and like an idiot I put my fruit at the bottom of one grocery bag, underneath the soup cans and ice cream. As I was leaving, the clerk had to point out that I'd left my receipt sticking out of the slot.
My friend and I laughed at how distracted we were, and she suggested to the clerk that he really should have told us sternly to keep our minds on our groceries and not on Unionville news.

What a show!

Saturday night I was winding down from a busy day when I noticed multiple flashes of light in the sky to the south. It was as if the clouds were pulsing with light, like a disembodied brain in a cheesy mad-scientist movie. At first I thought it was a distant -- if huge -- fireworks display, but when I saw horizontal lightning bolts streaking from one side of the cloud to another I knew something more was going on.
On Sunday morning I asked retired Unionville High School science teacher Helen Martin to explain what we saw, and she was kind enough to get back to me immediately:
"Many in our area were able to see a spectacular light show on Saturday, July 20.  Perhaps the best explanation of the heat lightning was an article about it in the Farmer’s Almanac on August 3, 2009.

According to Jaime McLeod, “At this time of year on warm, humid nights, the phenomenon known as “heat lightning” is very common. The sky will seem to flicker with light; and even on a seemingly clear night with stars, you may see flashes. No sound accompanies the flash, although if you are listening to an AM radio, you’ll hear crackles of static at the same time you see the flash.

What you’re likely seeing is the light from a distant thunderstorm that is located at too great of a distance for the thunder sound to be heard. The sound of thunder rarely travels more than 10 miles. Other cases can be explained by the refraction (or bending) of sound waves by bodies of air with different densities. An observer may see nearby lightning, but the sound from the discharge is refracted over their head by a change in the temperature, and therefore the density, of the air around him. As a result, the lightning discharge seems to be silent.

The term “heat lightning” probably comes from the fact that the effect is most often seen on warm, humid nights during July and August. So an association has been made with sultry temperatures. But when the sky is hazy, as is quite typical on warm, summer nights, the light from intense thunderstorms as far away as 100 miles can be reflected off a layer of haze and up into the night sky.

And that’s why you tend to see heat lightning as just a diffuse flash or flicker.”

Looking for "Brandywine Boy"?

Last week I wrote about "Brandywine Boy," the charming memoir by retired veterinarian Adrian Morrison about growing up in Chadds Ford in the 1940s and 50s. Susan Minarchi, president of the Christian C. Sanderson Museum in Chadds Ford, wrote to me and said the book is available not only on Amazon.com but also at the Museum's gift shop.
"It's a wonderful book and one of our volunteers was frequently a "partner in crime" with Dr. Morrison," she said. The Museum is open March through November, Thursday through Sunday, 12pm to 4pm, or by appointment. It's at 1755 Creek Road (old Route 100), Chadds Ford, just north of Route 1. Website is www.sandersonmuseum.org.