Posted by Chuck Grimmett. Learn more on his About page.
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A few thoughts on DEC NY’s 2026 trout stocking
I looked at the trout stocking pages on the DEC’s site for the first time today for Westchester and Putnam counties: I prefer wild fish, but there are only a few streams in this region with wild populations, so the state stocks the others. Two things stick out to me: They didn’t stock the regular…
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Caramelized Beans with Tomato & Cabbage
I’ve been lax on the bean dishes the last couple weeks, but I’m back with a good one: Alison Roman’s Caramelized Beans with Tomato & Cabbage. It was good! Pretty easy to make. Not a lot of active time, mostly waiting on things to cook. I used cabbage and tomatoes from my freezer, since I’ve…
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Month of March 2026
I am thankful March 2026 was much different than March 2025, when I was in the hospital for a blood clot in my kidney. I’m doing fine now, and I reflected more on that in my birthday post. March started with some fly tying and catching my first trout of the season with snow on…
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Trout in the Classroom 2026 Releases
2026 Trout Release season is underway for the Trout in the Classroom program here in the Croton Watershed! I went out on Monday to help with the macroinvertebrate sampling, student macro identification, and the releases. It was spring break for Charlie and my parents were in town, so the three of them came along for…
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Green frogs
Another nighttime walk in the woods with rubber boots and a flashlight. Lots of green frogs out tonight.
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Wading Around
Charlie and I went and explored a creek about 13 minutes away from our house. I heard rumors that there is a native brook trout population there and Charlie jumped at the chance to try out his new waders. Win-win. It was a beautiful sunny day, and we only needed a light jacket. The first…
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Spring Peepers
Charlie and I went out in the woods after dark searching for yellow spotted salamanders. I think it might be a bit early yet for the salamanders, but we were lucky to find the spring peepers out in full display in the vernal pools. The moment we stepped out the front door, we heard their…
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What I’m Reading, March 2026
Non-fiction Fiction
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Casting Out Winter
Overnight we turned the clocks forward an hour. This afternoon the temperature on our weather station reached 66F (18.9C). The sun went down an hour later as the clock reads, so Charlie got to play outside longer than normal. The skunk cabbages are emerging. It feels like we turned a corner and spring is on…
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Page Family Tree WP block by Telex
I used Telex to create a Pages Family Tree block for my Digital Garden. I wanted to be able to see my hierarchical post types in context, so it shows siblings and two levels of ancestors and two levels of children in relation to the current page I am on. I use it in the…
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Skunk Cabbages
The skunk cabbages are emerging, a sure sign of spring. Dates we noticed them previous years: These photos are also me testing out a used Canon Extender EF 2x III that I picked up. The reviews are accurate: A bit of a reduction in sharpness and a reduction in speed on auto focusing. You lose…
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Month of February 2026
The month of February started out with some fun sledding with friends in the nature preserve at the end of our street after the first big snow. I got out and took some photos of the ice: We read some of The Hobbit together on the couch. Amanda is a much better verbal reader than…
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Cecil Heacox’s Charmed Circle of the Catskills articles
Last weekend I read Ed Ostapczuk’s Ramblings of a Charmed Circle Flyfisher. Recommended! In it, Ed writes: In 1969, I read a two-part article written by Cecil E. Heacox that appeared in the March and April issues of Outdoor Life titled “Charmed Circle of The Catskills.” That poetic, yet simple, set of articles about the…
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Thirty-six
Last year was quite a year. Less than two weeks after my thirty-fifth birthday, I was in the hospital for five days from a blood clot in my kidney. That kicked off a year of focusing on my health. First, I had many specialist appointments for six months. I’m all good on the blood clot…
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Weekend in the Catskills
Amanda, Charlie, and I spent last weekend in the Catskills, exploring the Phoenicia and West Kill areas. (Or, depending on how you look at it, the Esopus and West Kill watersheds.) I took along my camera and tried to capture some of the beauty of that region in the winter. Woodland Valley Rd bridge over…
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Escarole White Bean Soup
This week’s bean dish was a white bean soup with escarole and ham. I was going to make a vegetable soup with yellow eye beans, but when I was in the grocery store, I spotted escarole, which I don’t see in many stores around here, so I bought a head of it and resolved to…
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Blizzard
I was curious why Fern last month wasn’t a blizzard and the one this week was. Apparently, the wind! From the National Weather Service: Blizzards are dangerous winter storms that are a combination of blowing snow and wind resulting in very low visibilities. While heavy snowfalls and severe cold often accompany blizzards, they are not…
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FediBoost Plugin
Brandon Kraft built a WordPress plugin that solves a core frustration in the fediverse: Sites have their own identities, but most of us already have separate identities in the fediverse, too. FediBoost automatically boosts posts from your site’s identity from your own identity in the fediverse. Kraft wrote about it here: It does what it…
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On using AI in blogging
Right now, I don’t use AI to compose my blog posts. I sometimes use AI in the pre-writing ideation stage and later in the editing/review stage, but not the composing/“putting pen to paper” stage. Six months ago I might have made “not using AI in personal blogging” a principled stance, but my thinking has evolved…