FIELD NOTES: Terrifyingly beautiful...

A perfect 10 day...no one available...or awake!...so jumped in the car myself...went to my favorite nearby beach...Silver Sands State Park...80 degrees on sand/in surf...low tide...full sandbar out to Charles Island...treasure hunters on a Sunday afternoon...all before the opening of a new school year...teachers, coaches, grandparents surround me...a coconut-scented breeze swirls their memoirs and hopes around me...anniversary of strong woman names Katrina/Irene/Victoria(my mother's death)...the summer day I have been wanting?...and...the last?...or...full circle...

HAIKU: Bee-sotted at sunrise...

                   Vine jiggles! I dash -

                   get paper - make coffee. He

                   ...sating......self.........proper.

GOT A CAPTION?

FIELD NOTES: Between a rock & a hard place...

...or a post & a shingle... A sound had puzzled us for days...not only was it a high-pitched whirl that was loud for small, backyard nature, but we couldn't figure out where it was coming from...Chip is known to scurry around the back patio, under the deck and in between the planters, but this trill was high up...yet not avian...I couldn't see anyone on the roof, so it was someone small enough to hide in plain sight...I wondered if a chipmunk was capable of 'throwing' his voice like a ventriloquist?...I settled on that thin hypothesis only because I needed a reason to quell my curiosity. One noonday I lunched at my bistro and in my daydream, the answer caught my eye! There was a mottled gray lump wedged between the deck post and the house...it had a inflated throat which I later Googled to find was a vocal sac that acts like the hollow wood on a guitar amplifying the sound of the strings, or the sound of an echo in a large cave, projecting it across long distances! It's satisfying to solve a mystery... Read more: How Does a Toad Croak?

Listen to a toad!