Sunny day ahead

For the moment at least, the weather on Roundtop is settling somewhere around normal again. No more frosts or near-frosts, no more chilly April rains in mid-May, and summer’s heat and humidity hasn’t found me yet. A three-day weekend edges ever closer. The fox didn’t make an appearance near the chicken coop last night either, so my mood is nearly as sunny as this morning.

I am eager to have an extra day to spend exploring the spring season deeper into the forest than a weekday allows. Dog and Baby Dog both need to be tired out on a long walk, or at least an attempt made in that direction. My little vegetable garden needs some attention, too.

This morning the local Canada geese were getting an early start to the holiday weekend, taking the five young ones on a trip to the new pond, marching them across the access road, down a lane and through the paintball fields. They were in a hurry too, just like the drivers on the highways of my commute.

The forest canopy is nearly as thick as it will get, which means I can no longer see the view to the west, or in any other direction for that matter. My view of the sky is reduced to little pinpricks of light. To see what’s going on with the weather, I have to walk out to the intersection of my driveway and the lane. Even out there, I only get a little view of the sky, just enough to see a few clouds. So that doesn’t give me the whole picture. For that, I need to walk to the end of the lane, where the trees give way to open sky at the old pond.

Until the denseness of the leafy canopy starts me feeling a bit claustrophobic, which likely won’t kick in until the hot days of July or August, the privacy afforded by the forest has its advantages. I’m not sure I will tell you what they are. You can come up with your own ideas. Let me just say that a person could pretty much do anything they wanted to and no one could see them doing it. And sometimes the idea of being able to do that is just as good as the reality of actually doing it.