8/09/10 HARD TIMES AND GOOD TIMES

FAMILYREUNION
LEAST SANDPIPER
TYPICAL TEENAGER
A FINE LITTLE MUSEUM
CHICORY

Monday, 8:00 AM. 73 degrees, wind W, calm. The sky is overcast, the channel foggy. It is quite humid and the barometer predicts rain.
Yesterday after the blog was written, Lucky and I went to the beach, where there was considerable bird activity. The gulls were having a family reunion and a kingfisher plopped into the river not 20 feet from me, and popped out with a small fish. A diminutive least sand piper, hardly bigger than a sparrow, scampered along the shoreline not six feet in front of me for a long way, picking up bits of this and that.
An immature bald eagle, a typical teenager dressed all in black, sat on a tree branch over the river, waiting for a fish for breakfast. It eventually flew off still hungry, no doubt blaming its parents for its plight.
Later Joan and I went to the Washburn museum, a very professional little place, to see their quilt show, and on the way back I found this oft-mowed, lone chicory plant, which is not very common in our area. Of European derivation, it is one of the few blue roadside flowers. In hard times past its roasted roots were used as a coffee substitute, and it is still a component of some southern coffee mixtures, as it is in Europe. The leaves can also be used in salads and the roots as a vegetable.