RhinebeckFarm.com

Attentive viewers of rhinebeckfarm.com may have noticed that the PondCam™ has not been working lately. Good news: you can find a new, improved PondCam on its eponymous page. It’s amazing how technology advances, and equally amazing that the only way I could capture the image above was by taking a screen shot of a video taken by the PondCam™.

This soggy faun ran past the house today to wish me a happy Father’s Day.

We enjoyed the Memorial Day Parade — that unchanging, Norman Rockwell exemplar of small-town what have you — from the commodious front porch of the Kaimal/Lawsons, who, sadly, were away tending to Maya’s ailing mother.

Here is the view from said porch, including what is possibly the nation’s largest ginkgo tree. For visitors Lew, Rinda, Erica and Geoff, this capped off a pleasant weekend of superb weather, numerous sandwiches, and highly competitive Boggle.

The parade is unchanging, except that each year a new Poppy Girl is coronated.

After the parade, the ladies (including Daisy) and I walked down to the swamp to look in on our thriving heron rookery.

We have many herons this year, including these proud parents.

Another weekend highlight was Sarah’s first competition with Cisco, whom Sarah gave the show name Talk of the Town. Cisco/TotT is still a bit green, but Sarah had him under control and they won some ribbons.

We celebrated a rainy Mother’s Day by giving Jen breakfast in bed. Saturday was a lovely day, and we saw many signs of spring. We managed to forage over a pound of morels, enabling us to reprise our homemade fettuccine, asparagus, and morel dinner.

Jen couldn’t wait to get into the woods to see if we could find some early morels.

We were rewarded! On Saturday, while Sarah had dinner and a movie (Avengers) with the Lawson twins, Jen and I made homemade fettuccine with sautéed morels, garden asparagus, Mike Heffernan’s garlic, and chopped parsley.

On Saturday Daisy went in the pond for the first time this season. It looked chilly to us, but she seemed happy to be there.

Daisy celebrated her sixth birthday on Saturday. Here is the birthday girl enjoying some fine early spring weather.

Daisy has been in an exceedingly good mood lately. On Friday she proved she could still fit in Jen’s lap.

On Saturday Sarah participated in a Breyer horse show in Millbrook. Here you can see the very serious judges for the dressage event, in which Sarah eventually won a blue ribbon.

We spent Friday night in the city, having dinner at Palm Too with the Zieselmans to celebrate Sarah’s 15th birthday. In Rhinebeck, it was cold and wet, like Daisy’s nose.

A thin crust on the snow kept Daisy topside, although she did slide a bit.