My Summer Friends

Hydrant Toad

When I step into the horse's stall, I keep my eye out for Jet's Toad. This not-so-little guy spent his summer in her stall, eating bugs. And, I've been tip-toeing around, being careful not to scoop him up with the manure.

Outside the stall, near the water spigot, is Hydrant Toad. She climbs out from her gravel nest when I'm emptying and refilling water buckets.

And, in the garden, there is Mr. Toad who sits under the cucumber vine.

Mr. Toad

I've come to appreciate the toads that spend the summer in flower beds, under trees, in the garden and in the barn, gobbling up insects. A single toad can eat 10,000 over the course of summer.

They aren't as graceful as the insect-eating swallows that soar and dive over the pastures and ponds. But they are much more amenable to having their photos taken.

 Like the swallows, they will disappear this fall. The swallows will be gone within the week when they start their annual trek south.

The toads, though, will stick around for another month or two. Then they will burrow underground and hibernate until spring, when the insects return again.

The Romantic Vision vs. Reality

When I signed up to collect sap from maple trees at a local park, I have visions of crisp, sunny afternoons, frozen ground, a little snow.

When I arrived at the park yesterday afternoon, it was raining and the ground had thawed. To reach the first tree and bucket, I slogged through slick, wet leaves.

Snapping the top off the first metal bucket, I looked inside and groaned.

It was full of sap.

Sap flow is regulated by temperature. About 24 hours earlier, the temperature climbed above freezing and stayed there.

The park had tapped about 30 maple trees within 250 yards of the sugar shack. My job on this rainy afternoon was to collect sap and carry it to the sugar shack. There, I put it in plastic barrels. When the park had 60-80 gallons, it would boil it and make maple syrup.

Over the weekend, when the daytime temperatures barely rose about freezing, my husband and I had collected about a gallon of sap one day and about 14 gallons the following day.

On this rainy day, I'd collected two gallons from the first tree.

But not all trees produce the same amount of sap. The next three trees produced just over two gallons of sap.

Still, it was going to be a long, wet afternoon.

But not a cold one.

There is nothing like carrying buckets of sap to warm the body.

As I carried those buckets, I thought of horse camping and endurance riding, and how we always seemed to be so far from the water tank, and how it always seemed to be 90 degrees.

When I was endurance riding -- some 20-plus years ago -- I had a co-worker who had romantic notions of those weekends of horseback riding and camping.

"You might want to rethink the corn on the cob," he said, when I told him about my packing list. "You know, corn between the teeth -- not that attractive."

I explained that by the end of the weekend, I would have gone several days without a shower and be wearing dried sweat, horse hair, dirt, hay chaff, and dirty clothes.

"Corn between my teeth is the least of my worries," I told him.

Yesterday at the park, I carried more buckets than I ever carried at an endurance ride. When finished, I noted that there were 34 trees tapped -- not the 30 that I was told, and I'd collected almost 50 gallons of sap.

Although the weather wasn't my romantic ideal, I didn't mind it after a while. The rain kept others from the park, and I found myself listening, trying to distinguish the difference between the tap, tap, tap of sap falling into a metal bucket and the tap, tap, tap of rain falling from leaves.

PHOTO: The park district gives its volunteers samples of the maple syrup.

Maple Syrup Time

Sap keeps its own schedule.

When the days warm in late winter, it runs. When temperatures dip below freezing, it doesn't. When the buds emerge on the maple trees, maple syrup season is over.

The sap is running in the sugar maple trees in western Ohio.

One morning, I went to nearby Maple Ridge Park to collect sap from about 30 trees. Officially, the overnight temperature was 29 degrees.

But the collection buckets showed the variation in temperatures. In some, the sap was slushy. In others, it was nearly frozen. But in some -- those with the most sap -- it was pure liquid.

Inside the sugar shack, though, the sap was in full boil. By day's end, it will be thick and sweet maple syrup.

The Great Blue Heron

A college friend once told me that seeing a Great Blue Heron brought luck. That belief may have stemmed from a time when the heron numbers were low. Or, maybe, it was because the Great Blue is such a prehistoric looking bird. When I saw one this evening, I caught my breath and found myself wondering what luck it would bring. The bird flew alone in an evening sky emptied by migrating and roosting birds. His long legs stretched behind him as he moved over the harvested field and toward the sliver of moon. His magic floated into the darkening sky.

Flying into the Wind

Wind gusts reached 50 mph yesterday and carried dried corn leaves and tree leaves across fields that many farmers were harvesting. Firefighters were busy fighting fires that lapped up acres of dried corn and beans. I, though, was watching the birds trying to take flight. Do birds have "wind days" like people have "snow days?" Do they just decide that traveling isn't worth the bother? At what wind speed do birds just give up and decide not to fly into the wind? And, do adult birds welcome the windy days with glee and take their adolescent offspring out for flying lessons?

The Coyotes Call

The yips drifted through the open bedroom room around 3:45 this morning. Apparently the coyotes were gathering near the river. Soon, the barking dogs joined the chorus. I haven't heard the coyotes since spring. Has it been too hot to howl? Or, have they been satisfied with the feast of corn, field mice and rabbits they glean from the fields? Or, I wondered, as I was walking the dogs among the zillions of stars in the clear, still darkness, were the coyotoes just delighting in a perfect fall night?

Discoveries in the Horse Stall

I don't check the automatic waterer in the sheep stall often. It is at horse level, so the Five Virgins don't use it. Apparently some other critters do. When I peer into it, I see little black tadpoles swimming in the water. How did they get there? As I ponder this, I also wonder what to do with them. Surely they can't get out of the metal bowl.