Home – Page 5 – David Kotz

Green-up day

Our annual ritual.

Every year, since the children were small, we walk up River Road in early May, scanning the roadside brush for trash and debris as part of New Hampshire’s “Green-up day.” It’s a perfect time to do this – after the snow melts and before the undergrowth reappears. (Most importantly, before the poison ivy emerges.) Our kids were always eager participants, scampering down the roadside banks to fetch a soda can or a beer bottle, a cigarette pack or a shopping bag. It was a great lesson in the importance of community service, and the callous disregard of those who feel it is somehow appropriate to toss their fast-food bag and beer bottles into the roadside brush, perhaps imagining the river would wash it away. Today I ended up filling two large trash bags, of the special blue variety designated for this day; read on.

Hummingbird

The hummingbirds are back.

With spring emerging further every day, it was time to restore the hummingbird feeder. I had a chance to capture photos of two visitors.

Nikon D500, with Nikon 200-500 at 500mm, 1/2500 at f/5.6, ISO 8000

The photos are not as sharp as I’d like, but good practice!

First river outing

Time to get out on the river!

With the warm weather this weekend, it’s finally time to get back onto the river. I pulled out the kayak and headed downriver to the mouth of Hewes Brook. On a tiny island, inches above the level of the river, I found a Canada Goose guarding her nest.

Shortly downriver, another goose hesitated until I was near, then launched out of the water and into the air.

On that island, a bit bigger, is a beaver lodge dating back several years.

Is it still occupied? I’ll check again another day.

See the full-resolution gallery for more/better pictures.

Home brewing

An experiment in brewing beer.

At Christmas my son gave me a kit for brewing craft beer, from CraftABrew.com. We finally found some time to get the project underway in mid-March – and just today were able to sample the results. How’d it come out? read on.

Beer, bottled and ready to age for two weeks.

Ice out

Spring is here, like it or not.

Tuesday morning I saw the first spots of open water along the river as I drove into town. By Tuesday evening the river had opened up a channel down the center, near home. By Wednesday evening, below, the water was widely visible, the ice slowly dissipating and breaking up. I don’t have good records, but this sure feels early…

Morning after snowstorm

Winter keeps its promise.

Today broke sunny and blue, with a foot of fresh powder smothering the landscape. It snowed hard for nearly 24 hours, and left us with this beautiful, soft powder. As I went out to shovel this morning I was intrigued to see the deer had already criss-crossed the lawn and pawed through the snow under crabapple trees to see if they could find any treats.

The sun rises behind a crabapple tree, under which the deer have been scrounging for apples overnight.

Icy river

Beautiful patterns.

Last weekend was very cold, well below zero, and the river’s surface became even more solid. The cracks and fissures of a week earlier healed into sinuous patterns, which I found to be an interesting photographic subject – especially at the shoulders of daylight.

Ice and patterns on the river in front of our house.

Twice on Sunday I saw skaters – traveling in pairs, some wearing nordic skates and carrying safety poles, and some (like the teen below) wearing hockey skates and using ski poles for support – enjoying the opportunity to skate for kilometers upon kilometers.

A skater travels down the center of the river in front of our house, late one afternoon.

Roof snow sliders

So cool.

Last winter I posted a couple of times about a cool phenomenon, when snow settles onto our metal roof and slides, very slow, over days, toward the edge. In the right conditions, the snow bonds together into a sheet and, despite sliding over the edge of the roof, stays connected as a sheet. Yesterday I awoke to see these impressive sheets hanging outside my bedroom window, each at least two feet long.

I opened a window, and reached out to touch them. They were soft, fragile, and slightly wet, despite the 20ºF morning temperature. It had been warm (above freezing) the afternoon before, allowing them to slide slowly off the roof, but the falling evening temperatures trapped them in this frozen form.

Some time later that morning they fell off, as the temperatures warmed and a windy cold front arrived. This morning I see their impressions in the snow where it thinly covers the deck below.

Lunar eclipse

A glimpse too late.

I woke suddenly as the cat jumped onto the bed and leapt over my face to get to the other side. He likes that side, as it makes a good vantage point to look out the window and survey his territory. Following his gaze, I noted it was still quite dark – too dark to be yet awake – but with a sky more clear than had been forecast. I rolled over for a better angle and, yes, there she was, the full moon setting into the west. A partial lunar eclipse had begun a couple hours earlier, and I was fortunate to be able to see it still underway. Apparently, this was the longest eclipse of its kind in 580 years.

By the time I fetched my cameras – I was unprepared because the forecast was for clouds and even some snowfall – the moon had settled behind thick clouds. I waited, not too patiently I might add, because the eclipse was rapidly fading behind those clouds. When the moon re-emerged, I snapped a quick photo in which you can barely discern the remaining eclipsed portion at lower right.

At the tail end of a lunar eclipse, the remaining occluded portion of the moon is visible but also occluded by a bit of cloud.

The moon disappeared behind more clouds and the branches of a leafless tree. When it reemerged, and I had relocated outdoors, the beaver moon shone again in its full glory. Exposure was tricky, and I never got it right before the moon set behind its final cloud bedding for the night.

Full moon setting after a lunar eclipse.

I used a Nikon D500 with a Nikon 200-500mm f5.6 lens. For more impressive photos – from better prepared, better located, better skilled photographers, check out this space.com site.

Raspberry season

A great harvest!

Today I enjoyed the last fresh raspberries from our berry patch – incredibly, due to the unusually warm fall weather, we’ve been harvesting berries right into November. And, despite eating a handful of berries with my breakfast every day, we’ve put away ten pounds of raspberries in the freezer. I look forward to enjoying them all winter!

Ten pounds is 15 very full quart-sized ziplock bags; two full grocery bags!