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A quick rundown of the rest of the summer:

Do you remember how we decided to get reject roosters this year?  Man, that was a terrible idea.  They were very beautiful, and very loud at 4am.  We kept 2 of the (female) Wyandottes for extra eggs and it turns out they lay tiny eggs (maybe 1/3 normal size).  Makes for very cute fried egg sandwiches.   They are completely looney and we have named them Tuck and Roll.

They prefer to sleep in the trees rather than inside the birdhouse.  The funny thing that you can't tell in that picture is that they are all piled onto a crabapple tree that is only 4 feet tall.  The branches sort of bend over when the birds are on top.

We had a bounteous garden which netted us 14 (14!!!) watermelons, 58 delicata squash, 41 cucumbers, 1 zillion tomatoes, 400000 green beans, and countless other tasty treats.

We did a bunch of hiking, including a very well-timed trip up Blueberry Mountain right in the midst of the harvest season.  We brought handheld peach pies, and then augmented with the fresh berries.

And now it's fall!  We also built a bunch of websites -- you know, our jobs -- and now that we have a bit of breathing room we'll post about those in the upcoming weeks!

We have an amazing garden this year at webmeadow HQ.  Remember our pals at Old Shaw Farm?  They had a bunch of leftover seedlings at the end of spring that they were kind enough to give us, including 22 very healthy tomato plants.

The tomatos are going crazy, and today I was wandering about looking for any early ripeners.  Instead, I found my mortal enemy:

If you are not familiar with the vernacular name "those little bastards", you may also know these dudes as Tomato Hornworms.  They are huge, and these guys will eat an entire tomato leaf (audibly, even!) in less time than it takes you to say, "eeewwwwwwwwwwww".  (The plant in question is some sort of variety of ground cherry -- papery husk like a tomatillo, and when it's ripe it tastes an awful lot like a mango.)  According to their wikipedia page, they glow under a blacklight.  That doesn't make me feel any better.

Hey, did you know that one of my birthday presents last year was a microscope that hooks up to the computer?  So I brought this guy upstairs and had a photoshoot.

Mouth of doom!!  The white things are half-leg, half-mandible, four-fifths GROSS.  I can only guess that dots in the upper right are some sort of eye.

Look at those toes!  I also got a picture of a big ol' caterpillar butt crack, but I will spare you because this is a family blog.

Then I fed it to the chickens.

So crowded!  Only a scant 2 weeks before, there was room for at least 20 eggs, and now they have to take turns who gets on top.

Or rather, they did have to take turns.  Not satisfied with the cramped quarters (and no longer getting food deliveries from mom or dad), a baby robin jumped out of the nest only 5 days after the last blog post!  Perhaps 'jump' isn't quite the right word, as it looked much more like an accidental step, followed by lots of wing flapping.

About 4 hours later, we looked over to find the second bird moving out of the nest, onto ajoining beam.  There was some experimental flapping, a wee look around, and then poof, a step off the edge.  That bird made a nicely controlled fall, completed with a slight bounce off the grass. 

The last two birds decided to stay put, perhaps luxuriating in the extra space. 

A day later, and again no food from mom or dad, 3rd chick decided to make a controlled fall directly from the nest, bouncing a bit more on the landing.  About 1/2 hour later, the last one popped down in a similar manner, and when we looked over, we noticed it flying/hopping over to an area in the adjacent trees containing an adult robin and a couple of the juveniles! 

It's common for juvenile robins to follow parents around for a numer of weeks after leaving the nest, perhaps remembering that elusive easy meal from bygone days, so now we've discovered an in-between period where adults keep tabs on, and perhaps help find food for, just-launched juveniles.

Once the baby robins were over their shock of leaving egg-dom, they began leaving their beaks up in the eternal "feed me" position.

We noticed that sometimes the babies had enough energy to get their heads up and over the nest wall.  Lucky for us, they sometimes didn't have enough energy to hunker back down, so we were able to get more pics!  They weren't old enough to open their eyes, and they had very little feathering (or skin-covering of any kind).

Below is the picture from this morning, about 7 days after hatching.  They've opened their eyes, they're replacing their initial downy coat with feathers, and they're beginning to look a bit crowded. 

We estimate that they'll fly off within another week or so.

We noticed a large amount of moss and sticks scattered on the front porch several weeks ago, and upon making sure that neither one of us was about to make an art project, we looked up to find several testing nests (ie., nests that were only 1/10 complete). The next day, the selection of nests was reduced to two, and they were getting more built up. By the third day, we saw that one nest was significantly bigger than the other, and more importantly, it had a robin sitting on it.

A couple days later, we got a closer look thanks to some creative mirror wrangling -- there was one lovely blue-green egg was sitting in the nest. Within the next 3 days, there were 4 eggs, which then led to 5-6 days of serious incubation by the robin mother.

Then, robin babies!

It has been busy around here! So busy I have been neglecting the blog! But we have not been neglecting the snow. I'll give you a rundown:

First we hiked up middle Sugarloaf. From the top, you can see the front of Mount Washington. On the way down, I lost my (brand new!) gloves, which is sad. But I lost them because they were in my pocket because it was so warm outside that I didn't need to wear them. So that was happy.

The top of middle Sugarloaf is flat and broad, which is nice because it is also a granite cliff which might otherwise be a dangerous place to be in the snow. While we were up there the sun had warmed the snow so that it took perfect impressions of anything pressed into it. It did not take long before that led to sillyness. This is what it looks like when you do a forward-roll (AKA somersault) in the snow.

Later we hiked down near the Dartmouth Skiway, which is crazy cute. We didn't realize that our trail took us directly to the top of one of the ski hills until we reached the top and found hordes of little kids in tiny skis pouring off the lift just to the left of our trail.

This week we went up the Starr King trail. It was a pretty walk, and when we got to the top we could see the other side of Mt Washington! Technically this is a picture of some of the other Presidentials (Jefferson, the 5 Adams, Madison), but Washington is just behind that tree on the right. It kept coming in and out of cloud the whole time we were on the peak.

At the top of Mount Starr King, miles from any sort of road, we found the remains of a cabin. Someone had thoughtfully left a duraflame log in the hearth, which made us feel oh-so-welcome!

Last week we had cause to be in Vermont, so we went cross-country skiing at Osmore Pond.  According to trails.com, Osmore Pond is a "great" snowshoe and cross-country trail.  It is located in Groton Forest State Park, so we parked in a plowed campground and wandered through the campground roads until we hit the pond.

It was a beautiful day and the snow was awesome.  The trail, however, was quite possibly the worst cross-country trail we have ever been on.  It is a brilliant snowshoe trail, but it was incredibly twisty-turvey and also had a zillion little hillocks, both of which are hard to deal with when you've strapped 6-foot-long boards to your feet.  By the time we realized that it was a terrible trail, we were about halfway round the loop and so we were doomed to finish it.  I think we'll go back on snowshoes at some point, or on skis to wander around all the camp roads. 

In the meantime, webmeadow is closing for the next two weeks as we go to PANAMA!  We are super excited to see some sun and warmth and birds and fishes.  And if a baby monkey somehow manages to find its way home with us... well, I won't be complaining.

(And just to prove that travelling is always an adventure, the airline just called us and moved our flight so early tomorrow morning that we have to leave tonight, instead of mid-day tomorrow.  Sweet.)

Our first hike of 2009 was up to Lonesome Lake. If you have been reading this blog as long as I have, then you may recall that last year's Lonesome Lake hike was absolutely exhausting, on account of having 18" of fresh snow to slog through. This year, however, we actually ditched the snowshoes about 1/4 of the way up because the trail was so well packed. It is a much easier hike without snowshoes (though I still contend that it is not the easy-peasy beginner hike that all the books make it out to be).

It was a beautiful day, cold and clear, so at the top we had a lovely view across the lake. You can't really tell from this photo, but by the time you get to the lake, you're on top of a mountain. So the cloud-covered peak in the background (Mt. Lafayette) is extra-tall. And being at a lake on top of a mountain is pretty cool.

Once again, the AT hut was open with a caretaker (who was in the process of making some sort of baked good while we munched on our snacks). It's pretty fun to have a mid-walk rest inside a nice warm-ish building, listening to NPR. From the radio, we learned that we were going to have a dismal winter storm later that day, so it was a good thing we chose to hike in the morning.

Meanwhile, back at the homestead, the ducks have come to terms with winter. If it is really cold, they stay indoors, otherwise they spend time hanging out on the snow. If it is actively snowing but not too windy/cold, then they camp out under the chicken tree (so named because, though you can't see it in this picture, those branches are all full of chickens). The geese, however, have not come to terms with winter. They don't understand, they don't like it, and they'll thank you not to mention it.

If you have power and heat and a good supply of food, ice storms are just pretty!

This week we hiked to the top of Mount Avalon. The first half was nice easy walking (on a very wide and well-trampled trail, because it is right next to the Crawford Notch Highland Center), but the second half was a giant vertical stone staircase. With no handrails.

Now, a cool thing about Mount Avalon is that you're pretty much in forest the entire walk. But when you get right to the summit, there is a pile of granite (really, the tiny bald peak of the mountain) that sticks out above the trees. As we walked up to this little bald spot, Aaron stopped in front of me and pointed to a bird. Usually there are not too many birds around us when we hike because we are, well... big blustery humans. But this one was on a tree right at eye-level, about 6 feet from us. And he didn't seem bothered by our presence at all.

We clambered up onto the summit and the bird followed us! Then I got an inkling that maybe this was a bird who was used to humans. I set down the backpack and opened it up to get the camera, and the thermos of hot tea. And let me tell you, I have never seen a bird move so fast as this one to that backpack.

You know what's in backpacks? FOOD. If you are a bird person you may recognize Charles (as named by Aaron) as being a Gray Jay. Also known as "camp robbers" for their bold behavior around humans. We didn't know what he was until we looked him up, but we knew he looked like some sort of chickadee on steroids. Like maybe what a little bird would grow into given an UNLIMITED SUPPLY of trail mix.

I know you are not supposed to feed wild animals. But you try sitting there with a tiny bird sitting on your knee, and see if you are strong enough to resist giving him little bits of your apple. And bread. And cookies. I am not that strong, so Charles got some little nibbles. He is smart, that little guy, so he would take his nibble and fly off to his nearby trees and stash it somewhere, then pop back over for more. I bet if you explored that area you would find a whole menagerie of human foods among all the branches. Gray Jays do not migrate (and they start building nests and incubating eggs absurdly early, like Feb/March), so we were just helping Charles build up a winter food store. You know, nice and neighborly-like.

You might notice that behind Charles all you see is GRAY. That is because the whole world was foggy and visibility was about 20 feet. However, Charles kept us entertained for long enough that we were still on the summit for the 8 minutes where the whole valley cleared as the weather transitioned from "drizzly foggy clouds" to "RAINSTORM". The rock summit is only about 200 square feet, but once you climb up on top of it, you can see above all the trees, so we got to look all the way down Crawford Notch and all the way up the Mt. Washington Valley. It was pretty great. Then it started pouring.