What Trumps Blogging? A Daughter's Wedding!

It hasn’t happened yet- Oct 9, 34 days and counting but it does mean that other things are taking precedence over this blog site.  It presently is September and that means the beginning of all volunteer things.  Most of my activities are tied to the school year; the nature center, my work at the church, it is all with elementary students and because Texas schools start in August it means everything is pretty full tilt by the time September rolls around. 

I love it though; I always say that September is the true emotional New Year when no matter what my age I am driven like a lemming to the stores to buy new pens, new notebooks etc.  Wise financial sense, spiral notebooks are17 cents now!  How I love that fresh page, that spiral wire that isn’t twisted out of shape yet, the colors that will get divvied up to this blog, or Faith formation or Master Naturalist.  It’s just all so inspirationally new.

Added to this layer of September excitement, I have my daughter’s wedding in early October, plus her bachelorette weekend this coming weekend on Cape Cod.  She has graciously invited me for she knows I miss it as palpably as she does.  She has planned a tour of all her favorite places so her Maryland friends can see the rock or sand from which she was hewn.  We were a military family, but of all three children Laura spent most of her years, 5^th grade on, in this one heavenly spot on the Cape.

These twelve friends deserve our prayers for they are about to embark on a weekend, Gonser-style, where one gallops from favorite beaches to favorite hikes, to whale watching, pond swimming, forest jogging etc.  They are young, lets hope they can keep up.   For me it also means, incredibly, I am back home at a time when I may have a chance to see that “tornado of swallows” that happens from August to Oct as the tree swallows mass at Sandy Neck, a seven mile barrier dune beach, eating every bayberry in sight before they start their barrier beach hopping to their winter homes in the south. 

If I were really lucky, an early gannet or two might be diving off the coast in that pencil-nose dive that hurtles them into the water like some naval fish-seeking missile.   And whale watching.  I must have gone 40 times off the Cape to see the humpbacks but never in September.  Again, the birder in me wonders what might be zipping past on their way south. Or those northern birds that head to CapeCod claiming it to be their idea of a Florida wintering spot, thousands of Eiders, Scoters etc.  I bet they are arriving now. Yippee.  So bless the daughter that chose the fall to marry, and was willing to invite her mom on this bachelorette tour of home. 

There still is one more Iceland related blog clogging a corner of my mind.  It will be about the puffins.  Prepare yourself that clown face masks a pretty sad story these days.  I suppose that is why I haven’t rushed to write it.  I keep thinking of some old 70’s song, “The face of the Clown when there is no one around”.  The cheerful faced puffins, Arctic terns, murres and many other shorebirds that nest on the multiple rocky cliffs of Iceland, are all suffering from a change in water temperature.  But lets not sully this happy almost-wedding-day, blog with those facts.

There are a couple of weeks between my return from the Cape and my leaving again for MD where the wedding will be held but who knows, if there is a break in the space time continuum, maybe I shall find a moment to blog here. 

Happy Fall to you all and may fresh notebooks and new pens make you feel you can tackle anything this coming year.  The real 2017 may start Jan 1 but mine starts now. Right now.