Free Fun in the Woods

Yesterday evening I was ready to head out to a movie, but was suddenly hit with an urge to do something different for a change, especially since we are basically broke right now. I remembered reading a really wonderful blog post from The Natural Capital about a trail near the Burnt Mills dam, which is on Route 29 about halfway between Four Corners and White Oak, and decided it was time to go check it out.

Burnt Mills is on the Northwest Branch of the Anacostia River and was originally a grain processing facility which then became a water filtration plant which was the "first of its kind in the world." If you would like to know more, just click on the picture below.

There is a lovely trail there that you can take all the way to Brookside Gardens and it also continues in the other direction to somewhere in PG county. The trail is not rugged at all and is very clearly marked.

We decided to make it a short little hike because we wanted to get back to our car before it got dark. It was for the most part a rather serene and peaceful outing.

But then, as darkness approached, it suddenly began to get a little creepy out there. The monsters of the woods began to present themselves. The first one to appear was the Evil Root Monster:

Next we saw the slightly cross-eyed, rather angry looking Log Monster:

Around this time the Hairy-Legged Spider Monster began to emerge from the depths of the Northwest Branch:

But somehow we managed to emerge from the woods unharmed. I was a little disappointed that I didn't see the legendary ghost deer on our walk. I will definitely be going back for another look. One thing that we encountered that was a source of complete delight was an area that was full of the sound of singing birds (and mosquitoes). I decided to take a video just so that you could hear a small segment of their singing.

And since I'm a total music geek with no life apparently, I decided to transcribe the song of the main bird on the video below so that all of you music buffs can follow along. These are the actual notes the bird sang. The notation actually starts about 5 seconds in, immediately after the mosquito introduction which seems quite reminiscent of the Theme from Charlie's Angels. The meter for the main bird call is in 7/4 meter (my favorite!) and you can hear the other birds keeping the beat in the background with various answering figures. I was especially impressed by the fact that although the main bird was a beat late with his pattern in bar 3, he managed to get right back on track with the four 16th notes on beat four. Maybe he was just backphrasing in that one measure. The tempo is very slow - only about 56 beats per minute.

So all in all it turned out to be a wonderful alternative form of entertainment. And best of all, it was FREE!

Fun Fourth

I thought my 4th of July was going to be a little on the rinky-dink side, but it turned out to be quite fun. We found a new beach on the Chesapeake that is absolutely delightful and then we went to Doug's concert with the Junkyard Saints in Easton.

Afterwords we did a little driving around to look at the beautiful old houses there and started our trip back over the Bay Bridge at a little after nine. And that was perfect timing to see from the distance about fifteen different fireworks displays all up and down the Chesapeake on both sides. Even though it was nothing like sitting there underneath them it was still pretty cool to be able to see so many different ones all at the same time.

As we continued west on Route 50 we had an excellent view of the downtown Annapolis fireworks for about ten minutes. Then we saw a few more as we headed past Davidsonville and Bowie and several more as we got closer to the Beltway. When we got to Greenbelt there was a display practically right next to the road and it was a good one. I couldn't take it any more so I got off at the next exit and was able to park with everyone else on Kenilworth Avenue. We saw the grand finale and it was spectacular, or at least good enough for me. And so easy too! All in all we saw about 30 different fireworks displays during our ride home.

Sorry, my fireworks video skills are not the greatest.....

what I did on my summer vacation....so far

It finally feels like summer is here. It's about time! Most of the rest of this summer will be spent working on our house. Maybe by September we will finally be able to move back in.

If you'd like to read about our progress, just visit http://www.foamcorefantasy.blogspot.com/ which is my somewhat sarcastic name for our extremely unrealistic housebuilding adventure. Doesn't that name sound kind of porn-ish? It's not - our house is made out of structural insulated panels, also called foam core panels. They are super insulating and as soon as we get back in there it will cost us very little for heating and cooling, which is great because we'll need that money for interest payments instead.

Today we drove down to Smoot Lumber to pick up a replacement cabinet for one that had been sent in the wrong size. We were in Doug's car and I wasn't driving for a change. So of course I was snapping pictures of every little thing that entertained or amused me. People were certainly making excellent use of their pickup trucks today:

On the way back from Smoot we decided to take the scenic route to try and avoid all of the early rush hour traffic on 495, so we took Memorial Bridge across and then drove up through Rock Creek Park.

Memorial Bridge Statue

(and in case you were wondering that's a foot under that horse)

We stopped at Peirce Mill Dam for a minute and saw this lovely duck:

After crossing East West Highway we stopped at the roadside stand there and picked up some fresh squash, romaine, cucumbers, tomatoes, blueberries, and blackberries. Later we had them all for dinner, along with some brown rice and vanilla ice cream. In appropriate combinations of course. But that would come later.

We continued on our way and when we got to Glenmont I saw that the "Glenmont Artist" for lack of a better description was still working on her most recent project. For the past three days she's been working in front of this sad little house at the corner of Randolph and Georgia which is due to be demolished sometime soon I guess. Previously I'd seen her doing the Glenmont water tower. I sort of want to stop sometime and talk to her so I can see what her deal is. We obviously share a mutual attraction for the various types of scenery that you might see in beautiful downtown Glenmont.

When we finally got to our house we worked for several hours. Doug immediately installed the new cabinet that we had just gotten and that made me very happy. While I was sanding and painting a bunch of pieces of moulding he put up the rest of the trim around the little windows in the pass through. He did a really nice job.

Then we went home and had our oh so fresh and fabulous, delicious and nutritious dinner. Tomorrow I'm going to mow the grass and then take Saturday and Sunday off for a change. Have a great weekend!

Harvest Moon?

Did anyone see the moon this morning at around 1:30 AM? I was heading over to my real house to do some painting when I saw it sitting kind of low in the sky. It was amazing - it looked like a huge red blob and was about 3 times its normal size. Considering that it's July, it's probably not a harvest moon but I wonder if it has some other name particular name when it looks like that. So now it's 4AM and I'm just heading off to bed. That's what I get for drinking coffee at 6PM. It works!

Foxy

While I have plenty of rabbits, squirrels, and deer in my back yard in Silver Spring, over in Herndon they have foxes!

Here's a short video of him in action:

And speaking of things with red hair, here's my nephew making his YouTube debut with a movement from a Boccherini Cello Concerto.

And here he is playing it with his school orchestra.

I Want Sunshine!!!

Okay, I got that off my chest. I am truly bored with this weather. So I'm going put up some pretty pictures now - maybe that will cheer me up.

Last week I was at the Church of the Reformation almost every night doing a recording session. It was a delightful experience and the highlight of my summer (if you can call it that) so far. The architecture in this church is very unusual - I'm not even sure of the style, but it was a nice place to be for most of the week. I like the way the middle supports for the beams look like giant pencils.

These guys were about a foot from the side of my head all week long. I enjoyed their company very much.

I walked around a little bit during the breaks and enjoyed the interesting architecture outside as well.

The church was only two blocks from the Capitol. It was pleasant to see it from this point of view on East Capitol Street. I'm usually driving towards it on North Capitol.

This week I've been wondering if it means anything that the cabinets in the house I'm never going to get to move back into are exactly the same color as the mist always is in Twilight:

Silver Spring Avenue, Then and Now

This is the house my mother grew up in at 917 Silver Spring Avenue. The watercolor above was painted by my uncle from the photograph shown below. If you look closely at the photo you can see my grandmother standing in front of the steps, and the two little kids sitting in the dirt driveway on the right are my mother and her brother Philip, who painted the picture many years later. You can click on the photo if you want to get a closer view of it.

In the mid-1960s the county forced my grandparents to sell so that they could put in this parking lot, shown below. It has looked like this ever since.

Now it seems they have some big plans for this area, which you can read about here. At least it will look a lot nicer than it has for the past 40 years or so.

And if you want to do more reading about this area, there is a very interesting post about the houses that used to exist one block over, on Sligo Avenue.

hallucinating again...

Doesn't this picture sort of look like notes on a music staff?

Doesn't it? Sort of? Somewhat? Come on people, humor me!

Here it definitely looks more like just a bunch of pigeons.

And now, a couple of videos featuring ornithological hygiene:

Sparrows taking a "dust bath"

A robin splashing in a bird bath on my parents deck. In keeping with the hallucinatory theme, my father is commenting on another bird in another bird bath and my mother is agreeing with him. This implies varying amounts of surrealism, depending upon your level of familiarity.

Meanwhile, the Capital was gleaming gloriously in the early evening light as I drove to my gig on Monday night.

goose update

Nature has dealt a cruel blow to the pair of geese that I've been obsessing about since the middle of May when I first saw their nest. They laid their eggs on a tiny island in the middle of a drainage pond and unfortunately the water level fluctuates quite a bit. The mother was apparently still in the midst of laying her eggs because she would occasionally leave the nest for short periods of time. It looks like there are two or three eggs in there. I read that once the goose lays all of her eggs she doesn't leave the nest until they've hatched. So hopefully she had a few more to go.

When we got all that rain last week the island was nearly completely under water. I took this picture around noon on Tuesday.

Later that evening the geese came back and they just stood there motionless while we looked at them. It was pretty sad. I don't think they had quite figured out what they should do next. I know how that feels. The water had subsided a little bit. I was sure that the nest had washed away and unfortunately freshly laid goose eggs don't float.

I checked again on Wednesday but they weren't there. I think they are probably gone for good. Maybe they found a new place to lay the rest of their eggs.

On Thursday I went back one last time. The water level was back where it had been the very first time I saw the nest. The twigs of the nest actually looked like they had survived the flooding, but the eggs are gone. So I guess I won't be seeing any one day old goslings swimming around in this pond anytime soon. I hope that she had a couple more eggs to drop and she found a safer place to build her new nest.

Life is so random sometimes. Since I became a freelancer I've learned that it's all just part of the package. You just deal with whatever comes your way, however good or bad or strange it happens to be. We lost our home four years ago and we're still rebuilding it. That disrupted a rather nice steady employment situation that I gratefully enjoyed for four years.

Then I was given a wonderful opportunity to finish my M.M. degree. On the very first day of school I got a call for a three month jazz trio gig in Dubai. That is exactly the kind of thing that I have always wanted to do but hadn't really pursued so that was very random. I was bummed that I couldn't do it and I saved that message on my phone for the entire school year. The year of school was wonderful though and well worth doing.

While I was at graduation I got a call to do a three month ship gig in the Mediterranean, which I can't do yet because I need to stay home and finish building my house. And exactly one week after getting a masters in jazz studies I suddenly and inexplicably find myself having a bunch of classical gigs, including a performance of the Mozart Requiem and a recording session for a new requiem by a local composer.

I guess I'll be thinking about those poor little unborn goslings while I play these pieces. I'll be thinking about other friends too. But now it's time to stop with all the philosophizing and go cut the damn grass which is super long once again.

Geese

Last week we were walking up to the Greek place to get some lunch when we saw a goose sitting on her nest down in the drainage pond next to the road. It was kind of an unexpected sight and we found ourselves going back each day to check on her and her mate. Here are some pictures I took over the next week and a half:

Sometimes the father goose would hang out in the grass.

Yesterday when we stopped by the mother goose had left the nest, probably to do a little eating and grooming. The eggs are still there though.

And the father goose was keeping a watchful eye on the nest.

Today Mrs. Goose is back on the nest again.

The water level has really gone down quite a bit from where it was when I first saw them. Their little island is a lot bigger now. I hope this is not an issue for them.

I found out that the female with lay one egg at a time every 1-2 days and the total number of eggs is usually about 5. Once she's finished laying all of her eggs, she'll stay on the nest pretty much full time until they hatch about a month later. This site contains all the information anyone would probably ever want to know about Canadian geese. When I first saw her sitting on the nest, I was all excited at the prospect of seeing one day old goslings during the next couple of days. But now it looks like it might be a few more weeks so I guess I'll just have to be patient.

mission accomplished

I finally finished cutting my grass. It was long and thick and took me a total of eleven hours spread over 3 days to get it all done. I always dread the annual spring growth spurt because it's so hard to keep up with it. I hate getting all dirty and it's annoying that it was necessary to do that three separate times this week. But the chance to "commune" with nature makes it somewhat more tolerable. It's nice to look up at the sky because there isn't any long grass to look at up there. And it's always nice to see Mr. Rabbit!

big day today

This morning I had to get up super early so that I could attend the music department's graduation ceremony at 9AM. It's hard to believe that this school year is over. It went by pretty fast. I am so grateful for having been given the opportunity to finish my M.M. degree with the help of a teaching assistantship. I definitely wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. And I loved the teaching part at least as much as I did the learning part. I am also grateful to all of my teachers who I learned so much from during all of this. They inspired me to work hard enough to graduate with straight A's! So yay them and yay me!

Now that I'm finished with school I can finally get back to building my house. So maybe that goal will also be accomplished this year - who knows? I got called for another ship gig (in the Mediterranean) yesterday, but I can't do that again until my house is finished, which is a bummer. But for now, finishing our house and moving back in is my number one goal.

However my more immediate goal (for the next hour) is to rest up for two back to back gigs this afternoon and evening. Have a great weekend!

She's thinking "Wow, I finally finished something!"

things I saw on my walk today

I'm feeling more non-verbal than usual. My brain is hibernating.

I'm not sure if anyone still lives in this old house.

Interesting trunk on an ivy-covered holly tree.

These are tulip poplar blooms. I've never noticed these before.

That's an awfully deep kiss. Or maybe he's feeding her. Or, is that how birds make babies? Haha, I'm kidding!


Another tulip poplar bloom

Paulownia Tree

Here's that old house again. My walk is almost finished.

reunion time

Last weekend I met up with my two roommates from senior year for our college reunion. Although we've gotten together several times since we graduated, it had been a really long time since all three of us had returned together to the original scene of the crime. We had a blast, and it was also wonderful to see the other people from our class who came. It was a great weekend which brought back many fond memories.....

Here we are, whooping it up out in the woods at my "birthday" party!