A Very Foggy Boonton

A very foggy Monday (March 22, 2010) in Boonton. It started with rain from Sunday evening and suddenly became foggy. The fog continued almost throughout Monday and then started clearing up. It has been breezy and chilly since the last two days. Today is Wednesday, March 24, 2010.

Lamppost

The picture was taken in December when it was cold and snow everywhere. Most (or should I say all) of the lampposts in Boonton look like this and I really love this old-looking lampposts. The lamppost is located on the Washington Bridge and underneath and behind it is the Boonton Water Reservoir. A little history about Boonton from the book Boonton, the Gem of Mountains by Edward J. Cahill :

The natural beauties of Boonton lead many to believe that they were the reasons for its selection for a town site. However, such is not the case; it was the building of the Morris Canal and the iron in the adjacent mountains to the north that led the New Jersey Iron Company to select Boonton as the place to locate its iron works. Boonton dates as a settlement back to 1825, although the first settler of whom we have any knowledge in what is now Boonton was Christian Loweree, who built his little house in 1766 on the side of sunset Hill, where is now the corner of Barnet Street and Woodside Avenue..........The original settlement, called Old Boonton, and located about 500 feet south from the corner of the Washington Street Bridge, the site of which is now 90 feet under the water of the Jersey City Reservoir, was a settlement of over 200 years ago. Old Boonton was first named Boone-Town after Thomas Boone, Governor of the province of New Jersey, 1760, '61, '62 and a friend of David Ogden of Newark, the original owner of the tract.

The above book was original published in 1910.

Spring is Here

Spring is arriving, though we are supposed to have frosts again. But at least it's arrival is being announced by all the new growths on ground and the new buds that are appearing everywhere. Also, the air is fresh and fragrant, vibrating with numerous bird songs.

Almost Armageddon - March Saturday the Thirteenth

For the last couple of months, it seems like Armageddon has come earlier than 2012 :-). We had been experiencing one of the harshest winter with snow accumulating, sometimes, close to two feet. With snow everywhere - thick slabs on the roofs, knee-high snow on the porch and the patio, the trees and the branches bowed down with the weight of the snow - it seemed like the Ice Age was here. I could imagine how it would feel if an Ice Age really came.

With the winter hardly behind us, pockets of snow still frozen solid on the ground, we are experiencing an ominous stormy day with chilly temperature, howling wind blowing at about 65 miles per hour and heavy downpour. The day has been dark since morning; gusty wind slamming against the house, rattling the roofs and shaking the house. Two huge evergreen trees toppled over in the lawn of our neighbor and destroyed the front part of her house :-(.

A typical scene on Cornelia Street

Today it is cloudy and a bit chilly here. But, it doesn't matter if it is snowy, rainy, sunny or cloudy, this part of the cornelia street is all the time calm and quite like this. The most traffic one will have on this street is those of people walking their dogs.

The Thief is Caught Red-Handed

They abound in numbers here in Boonton. In fact, I think more wild animals and birds, than human beings, live in Boonton. Feral and wild cats, deer, bear, opossum, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, birds like blue-jays, cardinals, chickadees, titmouse, nuthatch, sparrows, doves, woodpeckers, juncos, finches and what not lives here. Who would say that New York City and other metropolitan areas like Jersey City, Newark, Elizabeth are so close by that Booton is almost considered a suburb of NYC. But it is a laid-back, quite, typical American village with a wild river, waterfalls, woods and forest and wild animals. With rising population, I wonder how long it will remain like this?

We have two bird-feeders and the food, often time, goes away quite fast from those two feeders. Then, suddenly one day we solved the mystery. Squirrels come and either stretching their bodies or standing tall they steal the sunflower seeds.

Peas

Forest on Fire or Sunrise?

This is the scene behind our house. The sky takes on different hues of colors and shades, every day, from red to dark purplish, orange to yellow and purplish blue and and what not as the sun rises.

Flow of Life