A Splendid Morning For A Paddle And Birding

7:02

7:23

Kayak Morning

I was up just before 7:00, to a windless morning, lots of clouds, some light off to the north.  The sun eventually peaked out from above the clouds but then quickly hid back behind them.  It's 45º and it looks like a kayak morning. Well, it's 9:10 and I just returned from an amazing paddle, watching two loons sing to each other, hooded mergansers orchestrate a mating dance, mallards and wood ducks float by, as Canadian geese filled the sky.

A Courting Loon

First Wood Ducks Of The Year

A Pair of Hooded Mergansers

Mallards

Yesterday not much happened worth noting, just another day on Chautauqua Lake.  We were both busy by 9:00, having had our coffee and written the blog.  Evie was getting the kitchen cleaned up from  Thursday night's dinner and I stripped the bed because it was clean sheets day.  I drove off to Lakewood to yoga at 9:30, a good class with Julie.  She's a good teacher and fun, always helpful too.  I thought about a coffee but instead stopped at Tri James to find out about getting some gravel to fill in the potholes on our road and talked with a guy who suggested I use something called millings which is ground up asphalt from roads.  This is the first year they will have it available so I will give it a try once they open May 1st.

A Flight Of Canadian Geese

Paddling Back To Woodlawn

Evie had done a couple of loads of wash and cleaned the kitchen and made two baked zitis, ready to be frozen by the time I got home and was dressed and ready to go to the Y.  When she left, I heated up the last of her vegetable soup and put a stub of the Cuban leftover from Wednesday in the oven.  I watched my show but was happy to get back to my book, THE WINTER OF FRANKIE MACHINE, the story about a retired hit man and surfer dude.  Evie was back after my nap, having had a good workout.  We watched some TV then, mostly the Masters, until time for dinner, with a brief hiatus because my hair and beard needed trimming.  So Evie got out the scissors and electric trimmer and quickly made me presentable, sort of. 

Kayak Morning

We had a brief wine time because we were hungry, and we watched our neighbor's dock put in by Chris and Austin, to Evie's dismay.  She has dock envy. Dinner was the leftover moussaka, even better than the night before, with a salad and garlic bread.  We finished the series HANNA on Amazon Prime, watched a couple of Colbert's and finished with an episode of the BBC's much-admired KILLING EVE.  We are not crazy about it.