Rocky’s website, Whirled Wide Webs provides more information about what he is doing, as does the video below.  For him, it is a form or art, and a source of income. He shares at his site that he gathered over 2000 specimens IN A YEAR that became works of art.  Though others have tried to imitate his spider web art, it’s not an easy thing to do what he has mastered and made his trade.

But then we look at the news and see what is happening in Japan, and our hearts break, it makes what we are experiencing look so small. Our thoughts and prayers are with those in Japan, and those not far from us in New Jersey who experienced much more than we did, thanks to some carefully placed sand bags by my son.

Here is a short video clip we took of a river in Butler, NJ, not to far from us, video taken March 12th:

I had fun putting together a page about fall foliage in New Jersey, and it has many links to places you can go to hike, drive or walk all over the State, as well as a few videos to enjoy.

Please click “Colorful Fall Foliage in New Jersey“, I hope you will find it to be a helpful resource if you are planning to travel in the New Jersey area to view the colors.

But back to the flooding…our flooding.  We were having a fairly quiet Saturday at home, but I was nervous, because there was a LOT of snow on the mountain across the street from us, and a LOT of rain falling.  My husband set up something to divert water down the side of our house should the torrent come toward us that I told him about…he hasn’t been home for the two other times we’ve had this experience.  As evening came, I noticed the first signs that we may be in trouble, water was no longer being held back in the low spot in the woods, but was beginning to stream across the property across the street, we ate dinner, and suddenly my husband said “water is coming in under the door”, out he dashed with my son  and they spent the next approximately 6 hours keeping drains cleared and diverting water.  I have other pictures for this post, but did show some night shots of water up against our house at http://weedsandseedswap.com. Amazingly, we were able to keep it at bay, but not without a lot of stress and exhaustion, and with the help of the town DPW that was overwhelmed with problems throughout the Township. Things have cleaned up nicely, I was able to throw bedding and towels up against the inside of the door to hold water out, and as of today, all is clean and dry inside, I have no concern about mold because I’ve worked hard to do the things to prevent it…a friend did a nice post about this that you may find helpful at this link.

Sunday after we had done all the cleaning we could, we went “flood hunting”, I didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked to, but these ones were just down the hill from us in Bloomingdale, you see the river raging past houses, some houses were partly immersed as we passed, others just up to the edge of the home…even as I stood taking the pictures, the water that you see overlapping onto the parking lot spread more and more, we left quickly, not wanting to wait and see how much area it finally covered. Only a couple of blocks away roads were completely closed due to flooding.

Here are the pictures, and my hope that all of you that have received far more damage than we have will receive the help you need.

If you use these pictures for any reason, kindly give credit to newjerseybabyboomer.com, it would be appreciated!

I purchased the deluxe water-saving kit for $15 and the outdoor landscape kit for $7, a total of $22 and expect that with the savings on water usage and energy, the kits will pay for themselves.  They contained water conserving massage shower heads, sink nozzles, things to put in the toilet tank to reduce water qantity, kit to test to make sure your toilet isn’t leaking, water-conserving garden sprayer, parts to mend hose leaks, water rainfall measure, something to test the level of moisture in the soil, and more…quite a nice deal!

I don’t know how long this is available, and there are a few other States included, visit waterconservationproducts.com and see for yourself, and remember to conserve water.  I shared some tips at another blog, “Baby Boomer Penny Pincher“.

(Blurry zoom-in, shaky hands, just too excited )

I’d suggest you take a look at the calendar of events (starts August 1st) as it develops over the coming weeks, there’s already a lot posted, and plan your day around the events you want to see. During times when there are no events, there are plenty of vendors, and if you and your children like rides, there’s the carnival. It’s a busy place, so chose your times to visit to suit your likes and dislikes. You can find out more by visiting the official website for the New Jersey State Fair.

Comment if you’ve ever been to the fair and let us know what your favorite attraction was.

These turkeys were so much fun to watch, they couldn’t get enough of strutting their stuff, and the closer we got to the cage, the more they strutted, what a pair!

The Peacocks never did display their tail feathers for us, there were two of them, but looking closely at the tail feathers, you could imagine what it would have looked like. It was amazing to see them run around with their long, beautiful “train” behind them.

Yes, that’s me, and I’ll do my usual female thing of saying it was at the end of a long day, I didn’t have time to fix myself up, I forgot to take of my glasses, yadayadayada, but that’s the real me, no escaping it! Isn’t the tree beautiful?

When it was time to leave, two handsome geese lead the way, a fine end to a beautiful day!

(I just had to come back and take a closer look at this picture, my husband just told me that if you look closely to the left of the goose furthest away, there are two little goslings, I think that’s how you spell it? Can you see them? They are SO tiny right now. We saw another mother goose on her nest quickly pull her little ones under her…you couldn’t see them, but could hear their little “peeps” from under her.)