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I was looking forward to the walk today. We had the first frost of the season. It would be a crisp walk with frost all over the ground.

I hadn’t been gone for five minutes when I heard them. Leaf blowers. They are around all summer. But now the big leaf blowers are out, and they are louder, and they spend more time at the lawn getting rid of the leaves.

I walked north today on Newfield Road. I was coming up to the Italian Center when I heard a car accelerating behind me. I looked back and the car was passing three cars on a double line. The car missed me by thirty feet as it veered back into its lane. I thought I am going to need an eye in the back of my head to watch out for all these bad Stamford Travelers.

Crossing the Merritt Parkway, I gaze into a nice lawn and see a hawk alighting from the lawn with a chipmunk in its talons. Nature at work.

I turn left onto Lakeside Drive, and I am amazed at all the traffic at 10:30 in the morning. Traffic seems to be increasing all over Stamford these days.

I arrive at High Ridge Road and head south. I came to Chokepoint Charlie, and I feel daring. I decide to walk under the Merritt Parkway. Quite often I take the bus but today I walk and no problems.

High Ridge Road south of the Merritt is busy as usual. I saw a couple of thems. I do dislike thems. The is nothing scarier than crossing the street in front of a them. A Them is a car that is entirely tinted included the windshield and is usually a heavy tint. You cannot see the driver.They are just plain dangerous. By the way I took the word them from a SciFi movie called Them.

In the afternoon I am walking on Long Ridge Road, and I find $.32 cents on the street. No sidewalks, no reason for the money to be there. But it is.

Like I say all in a day’s walk

Walking on the sidewalks I see a lot of moss in the cracks of cement.

Here is a typical sample. Now here is a picture of moss gone wild.  Look how big

it is.  The green is just Luscious. This moss specimen is located in the cement wall on North State Street close to the train station.

I am curious how the moss will hold up through the winter months. I shall keep you informed.

This is a picture of my neighbors Japanese Maple. The brilliant red is almost there. The small maple in front of it is mine and you can see how the leaves will look soon.

It looks like most of the trees in Stamford are at peak color of even past. I have a maple tree that is dropping leaves like crazy. I clean up the leaves and three hours later it looks the same.

However, if you want to see some beautiful green, look for moss.    

Here is a picture from Scalzi Park. I love the texture of the moss.

This has been a great year for moss. I see it everywhere when I walk. Even the cracks in sidewalks have beautiful green moss in them.

To Stop or not to Stop

That is the dilemma

As I walk around Stamford, I see many of my fellow travelers not stopping at stop signs or right turn on red.  The question is should they. Let’s face it many times there is no one coming when you approach a red light or stop sign. So why not just go. After all, if I stop, I will lose time and there is the additional energy needed to accelerate from a complete stop.

Let us look at the other side of to Stop or not to stop.  It is the law.  We do need some rules when we are driving, or it would be utter chaos. One could argue we have chaos already. When I watch people make right turns from the left lane, I would say we are heading in that direction. I could list more.

Now from my point of view as a walker.  It is dangerous for us. The main problem is that when a car traveler is looking to see if they can go, they are not looking for pedestrians. One of the scariest things for me is crossing in front of a driver who wants to make a right turn on red. Very rarely do they look to the right. The same goes for not stopping at the stop sign. The drivers are not looking for pedestrians they are looking to see if they can avoid stopping and not hitting other cars.

Now I also could plead guilty to not stopping at stop signs. Four months ago, I decided that I will always stop at the stop sign.

This decision has had many positives results. I have already avoided a major accident. I was at a T intersection. I started to make a left when a car from the right blew past the stop sign without even slowing down. If I had coasted through the stop sign, we would have collided. There is much less stress stopping. You can concentrate on the stop. Then check to see if it is safe to proceed.

Coming to a full stop takes maybe two or three seconds and maybe thirty feet. Just last week the car in front of me did not stop and I did. I caught up the other car at the stop sign.

Let’s see. Stopping is not going to cost you time. You will be more focused on driving properly and you are increasing your chances that you won’t have an accident.

Walking I get to see all aspects of nature and life. Sadly, death and destruction are part of life.

This telephone pole is something I see all the time. I would love to know how many car accidents there are in our area.  I am always seeing signs of the destruction from our cars.

Then there is death. Every so often I will see a dead dear on the road. Last summer I saw a lot of crushed snakes.  This summer was much better for the snakes. I did see a few crushed turtles and some birds.

This was the sight when I looked out my window this morning.  At first, I thought someone had thrown some garbage in our yard.

When I went out to investigate it was the carcass of a rabbit. The rabbit had been torn to shreds. I am assuming that a coyote had attacked it. I never heard any commotion last night, so I have no idea when the incident happened.

I have written in the past about the ongoing violence between the crows and the ravens in our town. Even though I walk every day, I only catch glimpses of the realities of nature surrounding us.

I have had Covid all week and have only been able to do short walks. Not fun at all. Today was no exception.

I walked south on High Ridge Road and came up to the big lawn with the old maple tree there.

I spied on an object in the lawn. It looked like a branch with leaves on it sticking out of the grass. As I got closer the leaves had a triangle look to them

The leaves were a fox. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the fox.

There it was, hidden in plain sight.  All those cars were passing the fox and never seeing it.

The joy of walking is seeing these great sights hidden in plain sight.

Today I was walking on the train platform at Westport waiting for the train.

These junipers popped out of nowhere.  Usually, all one sees on the train tracks is garbage. There is garbage and these beautiful junipers.

It always amazes me where life takes hold.

I shall try to update on how long these bushes last.