#Tidiness challenged full#

The clump began to move, to bubble, to swarm. I was using a stick to whack out the dried gunk, and ran across a little clump in an inside corner. I remember once cleaning the lid of a backyard hibachi after it had sat all winter in a shed. They are one of our most common visible invertebrates. I have them both inside and outside my Brooklyn apartment. The way some people shriek when they run into one of themвЂ¦. The conservative estimate of 40,000 species found in the world (3,400 in the U.S. The distances the wind can blow them when they launch themselves into the breeze on long streamers of silk. The tens of thousands found in the average acre of meadow, for instance. They sat in the center of their webs with their long front legs extended before them, looking like a smudge or flaw in the web.ДЄ lot of superlatives surround spiders. Dozens of them, if not hundreds, covering most of the outer layer of the bush. As I looked around the bush, it became clear that there were very many webs. One morning not so long ago when I was in northeastern Massachusetts, I started noticing small spider webs on the rounded hump of a bush in a suburban front yard. The same structure was hosting another eastern phoebe nest, this one on top of the light above the menвЂ™s room. ItвЂ™s about 1.5вЂі in diameter, and I think itвЂ™s the start of a bald-faced wasp nest. On one of the camp ground buildings, I noticed this. This large ant was on the same tree as the web above. The saturation of moisture made the many, many spider webs stick out.

#Tidiness challenged full#

Fog clearing over the water: The forest floor was full of moss and sprouting acorns. There was so much fog we didnвЂ™t even bother attempting to look out. Grand hotels of the mid-19th century were located in the area (all are gone now) to take advantage of the view. The lakes are above Kaaterskill Falls and on the edge of the Escarpment, or Great Wall of Manitou, the sudden rise out the valley of the Hudson (from around 540вЂІ above sea level to 2250вЂІ). We started to walk around the yellow-blazed path at North-South Lakes campground. The fog returned at the village of Haines Falls. The meadow was also playing host to a troupe of cedar waxwings, a chipping sparrow, and an American goldfinch. An eastern phoebe nest, nestled into louvers of a window in the projection booth. Hieracium aurantiacum, also known as Pilosella aurantiaca, or orange hawkweed, devilвЂ™s paintbrush, etc. WouldnвЂ™t you know it? Like the flower below, itвЂ™s a native of Europe.

Meanwhile, this used to be a parking lot, now itвЂ™s all covered in flowers (to misquote the Talking Heads), including: Deptford or grass pink, Dianthus armeria. The gate proudly claims вЂњwe will be back,вЂќ but that seems unlikely. We couldnвЂ™t resist stopping in this former drive-in on Route 296 south of Windham, now claimed by a meadow. It lifted as we descended down towards Hunter, NY. We started the morning in the thickest fog any of us had ever seen.