Field Notes at last ...

Below are the notes I made when we drove to Jokers Hill nearly two weeks ago now, so I could take a look inside the house and start planning what I need to take with me when I finally move in. I'm posting them here as a sample ... and ideally they get written up into full sentences that pull other details in their wake. Of course for that to happen they have to be written up within living memory of being recorded ... a shorter and shorter period of time I find.

In this case, I didn't get beyond the notes -- but if I had expanded them a week or so ago I would certainly have noted that the pond where I saw the geese is a farm pond -- and that many years ago now, as many as twenty, late one fall we saw several hundred geese gathered on the property, readying for migration.

November 4, 2012 – To Jokers Hill, overcast

Hawk in flight north of Yorkdale Station

Another on a lamp pole just beyond

Gulls

Xpanding housing …

Just north of side road 18: dozen geese by a pond

At the house – lock stiff

Good windows I can look out

Study faces north, back stares into the open woods

LARGE tree – what is it?

Forest floor leaf-covered, brown

Kitchen well equipped, better pots than home

Back deck with barbecue

Fireplace!

Dusty miller still healthy in the front border

Can I have a bird feeder?

Geese still there on the way home

trees bare, cornfields faded – cornstalks with leaves pointing  (in the direction of the prevailing winds?)

haggard  look

beside the Allan, in the city: ragweed both seeded and still blooming – Michaelmas daisies blooming too, purple and gold the colours of the season