This Can't Be NJ!

Since the day we got back from vacation [naturally!], the weather here has been amazing! Usually we get beautifully clear blue skies about twice a year, immediately after a storm front has moved through the area.

It's been looking and feeling more like Iowa or Montana or one of those other states than it looks or feels like New Jersey. Many years ago when I was still in the photojournalism corner of the profession, I would fantasize about getting a job at the Austin American Statesman because every time I visited a close friend from the Navy down there, the weather was so unbelievable gorgeous! I had forgotten how blue the skies could really be.

I guess because we're the most densely populated state, over the last 20 years or so there has been a concerted effort to retain much of the farmland that originally made New Jersey "The Garden State". One of the recent additions to the preservation of the farm land is the Griggstown Native Grasslands Preserve. The majority of this land used to be a horse farm along the D&R Canal and a number of years ago a developer was trying to buy up the land. The township, in coordination and with the help of the NJ Audubon Society, was able to buy up all 600 acres of the land, annex it to other land that is part of the Ten Mile Run Greenway which in turn is part of the East Coast Greenway and turn it into a native grasslands meadow where wildflowers are blooming and the grasslands species of birds have a place to call home. Rght now the Black-eyed Susans, milkweed and Cone flowers are in bloom and it's just a wonderful place to go filled with trails, birds, rabbits and all sorts of other wildlife.

Nat