The Adventurous Acrobatic Squirrel

I just had an amusing encounter with a squirrel who must have been practicing for an acrobatic gig with the circus. I was in my office with a casement window wide open - so this is the kind of window that swings out at a 90-degree angle. I heard something and when I turned to look, there was a squirrel on the outside window "sill". Actually there's not really much of a sill at all but he was crawling at the base of the window opening right against the screen - I thought he was going to push the screen in and join me in the office! The "sill" is a down-sloping, 1.5-inch wide, slippery strip of vinyl. It must have been difficult for him to make the jump from the deck to the sill - too bad I missed that.

Then even funnier is that he continued to crawl out along the base of the open window itself... so these are vinyl windows with only a half-inch base but he's trying to crawl out on it. And not doing very well. I could hear his claws scraping against the vinyl and glass trying to gain purchase. He ended up being upside down holding on to both sides of the window and yet he was still slipping and finally, plop, he fell, LOL. Not that far - the deck is beneath that window luckily for him. Of course I was just getting up to make a mad dash for my camera when he finally fell and gave up the game. Very strange and funny.

Country Living

I arrived home from vacation to be greeted with tons of blooming flowers in my yard - no gardening or landscaping bill involved! I let my yard go wild - no lawn to mow and as a bonus I'm treated to an ever-changing display of nature's bounty.

When I left to go to Acadia National Park (trail reports and photos will be posted soon on HikeNewEngland.com) the yard was greening up some but was rather unremarkable. Upon my return there were striking vibrant-purple lupine blooms in one large cluster. Scattered across the front yard was a delightful mixture of daisies, fleabane (lavender), yellow hawkweed, and frothy-looking bedstraw.

In the backyard was a carpet of fresh light-green ferns accented with bright splotches of color from both yellow hawkweed and orange hawkweed.