Maine?

Wait, where do we live? Humidity in the house is 76% and temp is supposed to get to 80 today. And it's 0830. Guess we'll figure out where fans and dehumidifiers will live this summer. The other surprise this morning: the male Baltimore Oriole was checking out our new Oriole feeder!! Oranges and grapes with grape jelly to come. He stood on its roof and looked only, but that's a good start. Speaking of birds: we watched "The Big Year" last night. Cute and funny, lightweight entertainment. Was curious to see how Steve Martin, Owen Wilson and Jack Black would do. Happy Memorial Day weekend to you.

NYC

Photo from the ferry to Ellis Island of the new World Trade center building. The crane on top made it, again, the tallest building in NYC. Pretty beautiful.

Lazy afternoon

Baltimore Orioles and hummingbirds are here. A Tree Swallow is making many trips to the birdhouse with pieces of marsh grass. We've seen the deer, a raccoon, our groundhog and a flock of what we now can tell are Glossy, as well as White Faced, Ibis. Very cool. Warm sun and cool breezes. No bugs yet! Spring cleaning and packing up the winter clothes this weekend too. Keeping a few things out for cool evenings.

The ecosystem in early May

We have the various grasses coming up in the marsh as of today. You can see the trees are yet to leaf out here on Cinco de Mayo. And you can see one of the female turkeys who like to eat the birdseed that has fallen! I couldn't believe seeing her just plop down to take a rest. Then I must have spooked her- she took off at quite the pace.
We have had a lot of rain in these last two weeks. In fact, one day there was threat of flooding so Annelle came home at high tide to make sure the house was ok. Again, we had lots of water running off into the marsh from our side yard, but nothing got close enough for concern. We can get tides to around 11ft without getting water in the yard. Higher than that can creep into the yard. The tide is rising out the window at the moment, has overrun the banks of the riffles and is expected to get higher in the next hour. Tonight the moon is full and we hope to get a nice photo of the high tide near midnight.