We went out to Brigantine this afternoon since it was in the 80’s all of a sudden. Strong onshore breeze coming off that 50-degree water meant it was chillier on the beach, but also meant the beachcombing was pretty good even though we arrived at low tide, late to the party. Found the coolest thing I’ve seen so far: a whelk(?) shell covered in coral. It’s like an ocean geode.

Caravan seems to have a bit part in the new Pixar sequel.

This is a little bit off-topic from my usual beaches-and-travel-and-food, but email infrastructure is a hobby of mine so bear with me while I try to explain things for the layman. You’ve gotten a phishing email before, unless your provider is super good at filtering them (more on that in a moment). They claim that someone accessed your account and you should change your password, or someone made a purchase and you should log in to cancel it, or whatever.

No, that’s not a misspelling, at least on my part. The SS Atlantus, a WWI concrete ship (as in, a ship made of concrete) is slowly disintegrating just off Sunset Beach, on the west coast of Cape May. It’s pretty cool. It was a chilly but otherwise pleasant day, so we decided to drive down to Cape May and take in the lights. First we stopped in Cape May Court House, which is the name of an area and not an actual courthouse.

Pretty sure this will be the last tomato this year - that cold front that’s been rolling across the country just reached us, and we’re having sleet and Kansas-grade winds.

I have baked very little bread since we moved here, because Jersey’s bakery game is strong. I had an extra baguette that (surprisingly, given our usual humidity) went stale instead of moldy, so of course bread pudding had to happen. (I’m not a fan of soggy custard bread, but Carl is.) And now for an election-related cautionary tale I shared on Twitter: Not being really into the whole drinking thing, our own means of dealing with Election Night is probably going to involve setting phones to vibrate and going to see Doctor Strange at the local IMAX.

It’s Olivia’s second birthday-with-us, and our second Halloween here. We were hoping for more trick-or-treaters now that we have kids on our cul-de-sac, but after all the area events all weekend I don’t think many kids got out. The neighborhood kids came over before piling in cars to go elsewhere, but that was about it. The college kids decided to improvise, and hung a bag of candy with a sign around the giraffe’s neck, which I guess is what I should have done.

I had to stop in the middle of the road and take a (terrible) picture of these ferns and their fall colors. I’m going to have to swing back over there with my camera and not just my phone and get a proper picture - I almost jumped out to take one, but there was another car coming behind me so I decided to move on.

It has dried out and cooled off a bit, with an almost-frost, so everything is getting ready for winter all of a sudden. The mosses and lichen are doing whatever weird things they do at the last minute. The pincushion moss has tiny little green threads that I assume are its flower-equivalents (look closely), and the sphagnum or whatever next to it is throwing up thicker, reddish shoots. The pale greenish cup lichen is making cups all over the place.

One of these days I’m going to hose down with tick repellent and venture into the woods, but in the meantime there’s a surprising variety of stuff just in our yard. This is the first variety of fly agaric I’ve seen in gold - we’ve had red ones around before. This is pincushion moss, because what else are you gonna call it? (Tribbles hadn’t been invented yet.) There is a lot of it (a lot of them?

Those are pretty awful, though (especially when one spends a lot of time at a computer) so Carl found a different solution.

Today I learned you can see Philadelphia to the west(ish) from the same place you can see Atlantic City to the east(ish). Yes. I have moved to a place where you can stand in the middle of the state and see both sides.

Use a “charitable” foundation to pay off a state AG and stop investigations, then run for President? Why not? You won’t hear about it on TV but the Florida AG was looking into an investigation, asked for a donation, and was given $25,000 - from a foundation that claimed to the IRS it didn’t make political donations, and as a 501©(3) isn’t supposed to. The donation was “accidentally” recorded as going to a non-political charity in a different state.

Finally up to speed.

I’ve lost track what week it is, and haven’t taken pictures of them lately, but here is what the CSA and garden are doing this week. It was waaaaaay too hot to pick any flowers or herbs or tomatoes, so the CSA is a little short of what it could have been, but that’s okay. The carrots and weird-looking cuke are from my patch at the community garden - the CSA carrots came in last week.

Last year, Carl’s back was in no shape to hike all over a fairgrounds, so we missed the Pennsylvania Renaissance Festival - but I put it on the calendar for this year, and bought opening-weekend tickets (which are cheaper than other weekends). It’s up in Lancaster County, somewhat over two hours away from us. Nate wasn’t thrilled with the idea, and loaded up his phone with videos so I had to keep telling him to look out the window at things.

These grow at the edge of the forest, at the end of our cul-de-sac.

The tablet (still can’t find the camera) keeps trying to correct for the “yellow” lighting, and there is no button for “that’s not the lighting, that’s the turmeric” so this is as good as it gets. And to get it this close I still had to hold up a white card over it and then crop the picture. These are bread-and-butter pickles, thirteen half-pint jars plus not-quite-a-jar-left-over in the fridge. I’m hot-processing them so they’ll keep, because thassa lotta pickles.

Very often, when I’m watering the plants, a dragonfly (same one? I don’t know) zooms around and lights on the pepper stake. It’s not nearly as big as the photo makes it look - mayyyybe three-inch wingspan. I’m not sure if it is waiting to catch whatever I stir up out of the plants, or waiting for me to finish so it can go in and drink water off the leaves, or what.

We had a little squall blow through, and I’m not sure if there was wind or just a lot of sudden rain that did this. This pot was on the ground, with a metal plate under it to keep it from sinking into the ground, so I suspect it was just that the wind caught it. Luckily, the bean plants gave it enough structural integrity that I just stood it right back up again (after taking a quick phone pic in the rain) and it seems fine.

Continuing to adhere to my “if you see something new, give it a try” rule. Pierogi aren’t new, but this brand was, and they had samples at Costco. The sample-pusher was much younger than the usual demographic, and he had a good spiel: “Come get your pierogi samples… and we’ve also got Pokemon! Come on over here and catch them while you’re trying our pierogi!”

Whether or not it and its slightly larger friend were the guilty parties, I sentenced them to exile over by the woods.

Ramses has one slightly folded ear, which shows up more when they’re relaxed. Also, he’s apparently so soft the camera can’t focus on him.

I don’t think that’s how that’s supposed to work. We got a lot of rain yesterday. Not quite as much as the neighboring counties, where they got four inches in a very short period of time - I think we got an inch overall. But for my slow-draining tomato pots, that was enough to make them pretty heavy, and for the one that’s still on the footed stand, that was enough.

Red lettuce, butter lettuce, Swiss chard, Olivia, cauliflower, broccoli, dino kale, SO MUCH SPINACH, snap peas (behind the spinach), kohlrabi, turnips, plus the bonus blueberry kolaches and eggs from the farm co-op shop. I foresee a freezer full of fatayar sabanegh (triangular Lebanese spinach pies) real soon now. But not yet. Today we’re going to the Manayunk Arts Festival.

I guess they don’t happen very often in Jersey, but we had some quasi-tornadic weather earlier. I had to turn on the weather radio like some kind of animal because they don’t have tornado sirens here.

Carl decided for Father’s Day lunch he wanted to go to Stewart’s (since we don’t have A&W’s around here). We had driven by the one in Hammonton and noticed that it was open, so that’s where we went. We first checked to see if there was a closer one (Hammonton is about half an hour away), and were puzzled when it didn’t come up on Google Maps. Turns out that’s because it’s not just a Stewart’s, despite the violent orange exterior and decor.

Garlic scapes, snap peas, kohlrabi, Ramses, toscinato kale, arugula, SPINACH, Olivia, buttercrunch lettuce, and radishes. Not included but in the farm store from other farms: a million calories of brioche, chicken sausage, and feta cheese. Nate didn’t get his act together in time to come, so he missed out on the u-pik blueberries (also not included, and just starting to ripen).

Sunlight was coming from low on the horizon, so the camera had some trouble with that, but I caught a hummingbird perched on the feeder. Its wings seem bigger when they’re not a blur. I almost always see a female out there, or possibly a juvenile. Not sure if there’s a mother with a nest nearby, or if this is a group of young ones taking turns. Later in the evenings I sometimes see two or three out there orbiting the feeder and waiting their turns.

I’m not sure if vacation homes here have the retirement-area tradition northwest Arkansas has, of displaying your former license plate so people know where you’re from, but I hung onto our old plates with the intention of doing this. Finally found a right-sized frame a while back, and Flag Day seemed like a good day to hang it up.

It feels like Jersey schools run halfway through summer, but today is finally it.

It amazes me that there are ever any trees standing here, because some come down every time it storms. I’m not sure this one was dead. This one, at least, was.

And no, we’re not going to move again. Probably.

They’ve been eating all the suet, which made me think I should get a peanut feeder to add to the sunflower, thistle, suet, nectar, and jelly feeders. Then again, maybe not…

This feather is twist-tied onto the wire shelf that holds our pet treats. Since it’s a federal crime to possess feathers from migratory birds without a permit, I am confident this is a random domestic-turkey feather that Nate picked up on the beach, and not from some kind of gull.

There is a half-inch-long spider spinning a web across our front door frame. I imagine it telling its little spider friends, “Sure, it’s a long shot, but if it works I’m set up for life!“

Traffic begins to stall on Garden State Parkway just north of Somers Pt-Beesley Pt bridge #MemorialDay2016 #acpress pic.twitter.com/PvHwrE7Hhe — Michael Ein (@ACPressEin) May 30, 2016 I don’t understand the beach yet: it’s pouring rain, will continue to do so all day, and people are going to sit in traffic to… jam into the indoor mini-golf courses along with everybody else who would normally be out on the sand? I guess you’re there in your swimsuit, and you’re less likely to get a sunburn.

By the request of family and friends, I posted my post-move stuff to FB rather than the blog, so for the last almost-year it’s said the moving van is going to show up in two weeks. It did, went about as well as I’d expected, and… we’re in New Jersey. We still haven’t gotten used to the ocean, the trees, the wildlife… but somehow we’re bearing up.

Check your Facebook Ads privacy settings. They opted you back in without notice or consent. https://t.co/7gJx8UcXZc pic.twitter.com/McffGfTRQo — David Carroll (@profcarroll) May 29, 2016 I checked the ad settings page and Facebook did, in fact, opt me back in. For the benefit of family who is still there, I’ll pipe this blog into it, but otherwise I’m done posting to FB. Update: that writer wrote a whole Medium post that explains more.