What a Morning!

I left the house this morning about 5:45 for my 4-mile run. Weather was cool and humid but breezy. This route goes steadily uphill for about a mile, across and still slightly uphill for another mile, downhill for a mile and then across for the last mile.

The first mile was fine but boring. I kept trudging and made it up to the top.

The second mile began to get interesting. On this section I pass two farms. The first is a sort of gentleman's farm with a few draft horses, a handful of cows and some chickens that I sometimes see wandering about the farmhouse lawn. The draft horses were out and close to the road. I called to them but they were determinedly walking up the path to the field and didn't pay me any attention. One stopped to scratch his leg on the wheel of a wagon in the field.

About 1/4 mile later, more horses (of the non-work variety) were out. These ones all perked up when they saw me coming and one even came running towards the road from deep within the field. I bid them good morning and kept on going.

About halfway on this road I passed the first of three Amish farms on this route. The horse poop that usually covers this section of road had been washed away in yesterday's heavy rains. The dog that sometimes barks and runs threateningly at me must have been relaxing in the house. And I heard a rooster crow loudly at 6:15. I passed a friendly young Amish girl all dressed in black right before I turned the corner to go downhill. I'd seen her when I ran this route last week, too. We waved to each other.

The beginning of mile three is also the beginning of the second Amish farm. Here growing in a small field on the corner are different varieties of daylilies for sale. I'm anxious to get some new daylilies for my garden and, while I didn't see any here that interested me, it reminded me how I'd like to make a trip to Olallie Daylily Garden in Vermont to try to find a few. I thought about my garden for a while, especially how exciting it is that the recently planted canna bulbs and sunflower seeds are just sprouting.

After the daylily plot there's a fenced off field where baby cows were grazing. Then there's a small pond where I've seen cows wading and drinking. Set back from this there are several barns and then a bit further down the road there's the farmhouse.

As I passed the cow pond, I saw it: a great blue heron! (At least I think it was a great blue heron. Once I got home I tried to verify the sighting with an online photo. The bird was indeed big and gray like the great blue heron but I don't remember the white stripe on the head. Maybe it was a juvenile.) When the bird saw me coming it flew gracefully to the other end of the pond. And when I approached that end, it flew back to the side I had seen it at originally. So beautiful and exciting.

That (and hearing the rooster crow) were really the highlights of my morning. I continued down the hill past a small iris farm, turned onto the main road and kept jogging along, re-entering the village, getting back on sidewalks again. I stopped at exactly the 4-mile point and walked the half-block back home.

My time was 42:46 so I was fairly speedy, for me. What a great morning!