Passing through

Sometimes trains pass through the Cranford train station! WHO KNEW.

Bursting

What’s that, you say? You *still* don’t believe spring is springing? I offer this photographic evidence of a maple tree on the verge of bursting into some kind of bloom.

It’s a board! It’s a sign! It’s….!

That’s one way to reuse a boarded-up drive-thru window in your establishment. (Seen at Cranford’s Tea Spot.)

Cheer

Yeah, I know, I know, but dandelions are awesome, especially in the early spring, before half of them have gone to seed, and lawns are all spotted with these little yellow pompoms of cheerfulness. I like pompoms of cheerfulness! Who wouldn’t?

Benchisms

Every bench in downtown Cranford has a different happy little inspirational phrase painted on its back. It’s sickeningly cute. I kind of love it.

Please stand back 2

Last week, I featured one of NJ Transit’s reminders to not get yourself run over by a train: the yellow line.

But apparently the ever-present yellow line isn’t the only safety technique they use to get people to stand back. There are big red signs at Cranford’s station; I assume they’re intended to light up when there’s a train approaching. Never seen these before! I think they’re kinda neat.

Green algae

I actually wanted to make the photo below my main photo for this post, but the above shot makes a better thumbnail. But the POINT is in the photo below.

In Nomahegan Park, there is a little river that is so very densely populated with these little plants— algae?— that it appears to contain no water, only plants. (This is not the case.)

It’s very strange, stumbling upon a stagnant lime-green river.

Paleoptera

The dragonflies are out!

When I read a book about evolution a couple months ago, I learned that dragonflies are in a (disputed) evolutionary group called Paleoptera— “primitive wing.” Most insects can fold their wings back over their abdomens (making them Neoptera, “new wing”), but NOT DRAGONFLIES. Unfoldable dragonfly wings are the kind of wings that bugs had back when bugs first evolved wings.

Cool, huh?

Tree sitter

As I was walking through Nomahegan Park, snapping photos here and there, a passing bicyclist saw my camera and gave me a heads-up about “[mutter mutter] in that tree over there!”

Curious, I surveyed the opposite shore of the lake, until I saw what appeared to be a life-sized bronze statue sprawled out in a tree.

As I squinted, the statue moved its arm!

(The bronze color, it turned out, was only a trick of the setting sun interfering with my color perception.)

Lounging in a tree over a lake! What a perfect way to spend a summer weekend, don’t you think?

Pond

Sometimes the light hits the pond scum just so.

(Nomahegan Park, Cranford.)