Watching the Loons at Play
I can’t remember a better weekend on the shores of Averill Lake. The temperature was in the 70’s all weekend with warm nights. The lake water temperature hovered around 75, perfect for swimming. We hiked the trails around the south end of the lake through wooded bogs that were filled with Sphagnum, Snowberry (ripe berries were tasty with a mint flavor), horsetails, Cornus canadensis in fruit and even one in flower, Trillium in fruit, beautiful mosses, and lots of bog related shrubs. No sign of any moose activity; neighbors tell us that the moose numbers have been greatly reduced because of infestations of the winter tick; it’s population zooms in numbers during warmer winters. We did see many loons and watched them play during the day and heard their calls during the nights.
Good friends visited over the weekend and helped us take out the rolling docks; this is a big job when we do it ourselves and goes ever so much better when we have many helping hands. It is a good feeling to be able to take out the docks during such pleasant weather. Hopefully, it will be as pleasant in the spring when we put them back in. Blackberries were in abundance; our friends picked several pints and we made a “Blackberry Surprise” dessert for dinner. What a treat!
My bed of mint is prolific! We had plenty of mint to brew mint iced tea to go with our meals. With the new septic system and parking area finally finished, our next door neighbors are giving us many ideas of things to plant. We’re looking forward to doing that in the spring.
View of the lake from the new parking area
On our ridge trail hike on Saturday we found many “Artists Conks” growing on the yellow birches up on the ridge. We brought two nice ones down, one for my friend and one for me. They are great for saving a record of the weekend’s activity.
Drawing on the Artist’s Fungus!
Averill Mountain Crafts 