Thunder rumbles in the distance, while clouds mask the setting sun, creating a golden blue/pink/purple sky. We need a word for that. Just as I made up Mondate to describe the Monday dates my guy and I share, I feel obligated to describe tonight’s sky as golden blinkle.

After a rainy weekend, we awoke to another gray morning. But . . . there was a bright spot. Our yard was filled with mats of spider webs.

OK, so maybe “filled” is an exaggeration, but they weren’t here yesterday.

My initial intrigue was with the water droplets sitting atop these finely woven blankets.

And then I spotted a hole in the center of one.

A look at the others, and I knew we had a yard filled with funnel weavers.

Imagine the industrious nocturnal work it took to complete this masterpiece.

As I stood watching, one of the weavers appeared.

I saw something land, I know not what, and he quickly scampered over to snatch it, and then moved into the funnel to dine. That reminded me that it was time for breakfast.

My guy had been out for a morning run and when I pointed out the webs scattered about the yard, he said he’d seen them all along his route. So . . . why today? Why so many? Will they be here tomorrow. As the day wore on, it became more difficult to see the webs.

This masterpiece, however,  has been gracing the dock for weeks. I keep waiting for Charlotte to leave a message.

We had some errands to run in North Conway and then decided to head off in the kayak. I wish I could take a selfie of our paddles as we work together in unison. It reminds me of our relationship–we’ve always prided ourselves on our ability to think things through and come to an agreement as one. Oh yeah, sometimes we get a bit out of sync and one paddle dips into the water ahead of the other or the water splashes one of us, but all in all, we lower and raise the paddles together–and as Robert Frost would say, “That has made all the difference.”

As we paddled along the edge of the islands, we discovered one large beaver scent mound–it had to be three feet high.

While this was probably created in the spring to mark a boundary, it appears to have been visited recently.

Numerous buttonbush plants bloom along the water’s edge. In all their manifestations, they are spectacular.

Spadderdock continues to offer a brilliant reflection of gold on blue

in the water garden.

But it’s the birds we follow today. Here, a female red-winged blackbird.

Her guy is out on a limb.

They don’t give us the exact information we want, but the catbirds are nearby. We hear their mews emanating from the shrubs and know that it’s time to abandon ship.

This is blue gold. A happy afternoon spent foraging together. We made sure to leave some for the birds in thanks for their guidance.

And now, the thunder continues in the distance and occasionally lightening flashes  across the sky, but nothing can shine brighter than a blue gold Mondate.