Scattered Thoughts . . .

T his morning, I noticed that the weather was unusually nice so I decided it would finally be a good day to do a little more work on my large scale steam locomotive and the trolley.  I had painted and weathered both of them but I never got around to sealing all my work with a matte UV resistant sealer.  This is something I would prefer to do outside since I would be applying this sealer from a spray can and it appears as though today would be a good day. My plan was to go outside to grab a couple of sawhorses and a piece of plywood so I could make a utilitarian table where I could safely place my big steam locomotive and trolley.  We've had bears and skunks in our yard quite often lately so I've been very vigilant about scanning the area before I step too far away from our door.  I stepped outside...  no bears...  no skunks...  then headed to behind the house where I left my sawhorses. As I was about to place my right foot back behind the sawhorses so ...

We don't get to see too many snakes in Vermont but tonight we were greeted by a rather small slithering visitor when we arrived back home after a trip to the grocery store.  Our visitor was lying completely still in our driveway... perhaps trying to look like a stick, which he did! He coiled up as Sheila prodded him trying to get him to move from our driveway before someone squashed him but was moving rather slowly in our very cool climate. Sheila feared our little garter snake would get run over by Adam when he arrived home from work later in the evening so she picked him up and moved him to one of our bare wildflower gardens.  The last time I had seen any snake in Vermont was probably more than 10 years ago in my backyard on the river. That, too, was a garter snake but easily twice the size of our current little visitor. I would say that winters are simply too long and too rough for a large snake population here in Vermont but the rugged Adirondack Mountains to our ...