Outdoor Adventures with Gary Lee - Vol. 365

One day of summer and one day of early spring, some people reported ice pellets yesterday in parts of the Adirondacks. One lake I was out on early this morning, and the temperature was 34 degrees with the wind right out of the north, it was cold but no bugs for a brief time. For anyone who hasn’t been outdoors for a while there are bugs, both blackflies and mosquitoes. We had two inches of rain on two different days and that only added to the places where the mosquitoes can hatch out of. I must dump my bird bath every other day as there will be wigglers (mosquito larvae) in it that fast. If you have any containers with standing water, flowerpot bottoms are another and they will lay eggs in these and you will have more mosquitoes. When I was growing up many people left old tires out in their backyards. These would get full of water and what a breeding ground they were. Others had rain barrels to catch water for their plants and gardens, and these were always full of wigglers. We had a cistern that caught all the rainwater off the roof, and we kept a trout in there who ate any bug that fell in or who tried to grow there. Rainwater being soft water was good for washing as you didn’t need as much soap when doing a wash. This also saved taking water from the well as we did a lot of watering the garden during dry times. Eventually my dad had a well driven that never ran out of water.

Growing up every spring, my dad would roll out this big wooden tub that was winter stored in the barn and gradually fill it with water to soak up the boards to keep it from leaking. This was a goldfish pond in the back yard about five feet wide and a couple of feet deep with lily pads and goldfish. If any bug jumped into the pond, they were fish food and no wigglers. These goldfish grew quite big during the summer and sometimes we would keep them in an inside fish tank for the next year but sometimes they got too big and dad traded them off for small fish for the next year.

I had my first week of watching Loons and I found only one nest with eggs on a platform. I found some nests built but they hadn’t laid any eggs yet. The one on the platform was sitting in a cloud of blackflies, biting then out of the air, and eating a few. The Loon would get off the nest and then try to get rid of the swarm she had around her, but they would just follow her and be back at the nest when she got there. Sometimes when the flies are this bad, they will abandon the nest and wait a couple of weeks before trying again when the bugs aren’t so bad.

A friend Nancy, whose husband went to Ranger School the same year I did and he was from Saratoga Springs, so we knew each other as he was on the wrestling team there and I was on the team in Ballston Spa. He went on into a surveying career for his life work and me a Forest Ranger. We met at the annual reunions and once in a store in Ballston Spa when we still lived there. She gets my column and we contact each other through e-mails. She knows I’m into wildflowers and so is she into gardening as was her husband who has passed. She told me about her neighbor who had a camp and each year he would come up and mow all the wildflowers in his front yard. He had nodding trilliums and many other beautiful wildflowers. Well, he plans to expand his camp and put it right over all the beautiful plants. She got his permission to remove the plants and contacted me to see if I would like some. So, I went over on Sunday and removed several but there were still many left in his front yard.

There is a new bison stamp out at the post office; it just came out on Tuesday and Cathy in Inlet saved me a page and Don Andrews also bought a page. The artwork and bison pictures on the stamp were done by our guide and Don’s friend Tom Murphy out in Montana. He will be coming back east to a stamp show in Boston this summer and then going to Washington to show off this beautiful stamp. During that time, he will be in Old Forge and give a talk at Kurt Gardner’s studio and at View’s main space to tell of his x-country ski trip across Yellowstone Park, the first person to do so.

More Looney stories as they happen but that’s another story. See ya.

Photo above: Bison Stamps