one evening last week..

It was a dark,  rainy evening.  Sounds like the start of a mystery. 
Sorry, it's the explanation for the blurry pictures.  They were taken
handheld at 1/2 sec.  I'm lucky to have them at all.  I have no idea
why the hundred or so sheep were running single file, in a long line
stretching as far as I could see, down the road to my neighbor's farm.  

They were definitely in a hurry to get somewhere.  Probably, like
lemmings, they were simply following a leader with no  idea why they
were going or where.  Maybe not. 

Rumor around here has it that several
weeks ago my neighbor "lost" nearly 30 sheep one night to a mountain
lion. The official line here in Vermont is that mountain lions, also called catamounts are
extinct, the last one having been killed in 1881. If there were any here, they would now be a protected species.  Extinct or not, something slaughtered the sheep.  For the last fifteen years, we
(the collective "we" around here) have seen them, filmed them, and
collected scat in an effort to have the state correct itself.  I myself
have seen prints in the snow of one tracking a deer.  If you are interested,click here.

No worry this night.  Whatever the reason, they were a sight to see. 

*In the distance you can see a car approaching, lights on.  I doctored the pictures to make them more readable.

ps. I agree that it seems unlikely that one animal would kill that many sheep.  It IS the local rumor.

or… a belated Blogiversary to me!

Summer, family vacation, no phone service and six weeks of trying to fit in as much outdoor stuff as possible into the short bursts of time between heavy downpours and electrical storms, left me without celebrating five years of smatterings.  August 1st. came and went phoneless and therefore without internet.  I imagined my post and have forgotten it in the succeeding slip slide days of walking in a soggy woods, dragging logs that must be this year's fire wood.  As I sit here this morning, I can hear the road crew digging, replacing the culvert with a new and bigger one that can carry away the torrents that we have been having more and more of this summer.  The weather is hard the garden.  Green plants love it, fruits and veggies, not so.  Even the trees seem confused by it all.  The hills are dotted with maples already showing color.  Too little light, too much water, and very cool temps.  I haven't had the down comforter off the bed in two months.  Summer is summer, whatever the weather and tradition has it that we have high tea in a beautiful garden during vacation, even if it is in the rain.  I swear that these plants are real, I was not eating mushrooms, just scones and cream.  Here's proof that Mother Nature is one step ahead of our imaginations.