Sometimes a day is just that... a day.

A day like any other... sipping hot tea, leaning back in my arm chair, watching out my window as the goldfinch preforms acrobatics plucking seeds from the giant coneflowers that grow taller than I can barely reach.  I wonder as the morning sun rises, if the clouds gathering on the horizon will eventually drop a little rain in my afternoon; or tease me as they usually do by rumbling all around me, and moving on without a designated raindrop for my thirsty yard.

A group of gregarious English sparrows (a bluebird bully) moved into the neighborhood many moons ago, and while I would like to pepper their little hinnies with buckshot, I'm a lady, so I'll say no more.  Late last month, a pair of house wrens took over the chickadee box; and even though the babies have flown the coop, mom and dad's chitter-chatter while feeding the little tykes gets mighty intense.  On top of that, a new batch of cicadas has been escaping their earthy confinements to join the heavenly choir above ground.

Sheltered baby cardinals are flushed out of hiding as I go about the business of gardening, and chirp incessantly for their next meal as the dog two houses down begins to whimper once again on being left alone all day.  There are times when I find nature to be just as noisy as a city street; although, it's an assault to the senses that reminds me more of freshness than staleness.

A type of Crane Fly (I think)

Body approximately 1/2 inch long
on Joe Pye Weed

Common Green Bottle Fly

Spicebush Swallowtail on Joe Pye Weed

Six spicebushes in containers and a few more

 now appearing in the gardens ~

this creature appears every late summer.

Tiny bee resting with tattered Wings

This poor little guy has seen better days

"Black Cherry" Tomato

Tomato Moth Caterpillar

Thought the wrens would get these, 

but had to intervene while I still had some tomatoes left.

Cicada found on ground

Leaf-footed Bug missing one leg

Zabulon Skipper

I'm uprooting Virginia creeper left and right out of my wildflower garden this week.  Of course, one never really gets rid of the stuff.  As a ground cover it's perfection, but as a control freak, it's turned my flower bed into a tangled web of roots and leaves that knows no boundary or height constraints.  It's been the monster of my gardening nightmares this season.

For twenty years I policed the mother plant, ripping out her runners before they creeped to the far shores or climbed to the heavens above.  Then I got sick, and that little sucker shot out all over the place.  I felt a twang of regret when I dug the old lady out of her comfort zone and tossed her into the trash can.  I'm still removing bits and pieces of her brood, and already missing her as I view that too big of a patch of bare ground.

I'll remind myself each day as I lay my eyes upon that empty space; of her contentment having it all her own way, and my discontentment with her casually advising me to bugger off when I objected.  The emptiness will reawaken with Summersweet clethra, the same Summersweet that still lingers around the edges of her memorial.  The lavishness of that licorice aroma is a promise worth waiting for.

Phlox "Laura"

Waved Spinx Moth

(not a clear photo)

Blends in well with tree trunk

Clematis Seed Head

Blue Lobelia

Milkweed Bug on Echinacea 

deciding to hide from camera

An eerie beauty in drought

Leafcutter Bee resting on native sunflower seed pod

Tree Cricket (I think) on spider daylily

Pucker Up!

Bumblebee on "Hot Lips" turtlehead plant

Dustin and Vic

I've had the bestest time on my walk this morning!

Snacked on a tootsie roll in the cat litter pan while daddy looked for my leash, gobbled up a cicada while daddy was on his cell phone going down the steps, licked up some upchuck while daddy petted that ugly dog next door, snacked on a wad of rotting something while daddy cussed at the speeding car, and found a delicious mouse corpse behind the nice lady who pets me's mailbox while we stop to chat.  I licked daddy all over his face while he was removing my leash, because I love him and want a repeat at the end of the day.

...sink into a dream of quiet thoughts

This is the spot; -how mildly does the sun
Shine in between the fading leaves! the air
In the habitual silence of this wood
Is more than silent; and this bed of heath,
Where shall we find so sweet a resting-place?
Come!  -let me see thee sink into a dream
Of quiet thoughts, -protracted till thine eye
Be calm as water when the winds are gone
And no one can tell whither, -my sweet friend!
We two have had such happy hours together
That my heart melts in me to think of it.

Travelling    - William Wordsworth

Carpenter Bees

~ Mingling with these gentle souls ~

Lacey

Sometimes mommy wishes I were but a dream ~

I love her anyway.

Small Potatoes in the Stew Pot

It's a strange thing...life.  You go to bed happy, and next morning you're crying remembering your parents who left you ages ago, even though you wanted them to live forever.  Then an almond butter and jam covered cracker breaks into three pieces as you bite it and two pieces plop jam-side down onto your dress.

You moan a bit (I'm being nice here), put the two pieces - minus half of the almond butter and jam - back onto the sandwich plate, which then falls face down onto your lap when you accidentally nudge it the wrong way.  I might be better climbing back into bed and calling it a day.

It's a lazy day; therefore I'm watering my yard still in my jam stained dress in the early afternoon, since it took a few hours to motivate myself beyond the front door.  A cool afternoon of 91 degrees; I'll blame that on not remembering to fill the bird feeder discovered empty hours earlier when I peeked out the front window to see if my yard was still there.  The squirrels must have been starving this morning.  I would prefer if they snacked here and ate regular meals elsewhere, but I fear it's the exact opposite  :(

Dustin doing what Dustin does best

It's an odd mix that I need to water in the less shady parts of my yard, while the concrete patio has green growing near all the planters in the shade.  I purchased spray to kill the mold, but I also have the common five-line (blue tail) skink lizards of all sizes traveling and hiding all over my yard - so the question that never seems to get answered is spray - don't spray, spray - don't spray, spray - don't spray?  I limbed up the potted shrubs yesterday, so we shall see.

I'm not a 24/7 type of television watching personality, and yet lately I've found myself immersed in a ton of subtitle foreign films and series on Netflix more in the mystery type genre.   It's not to be watched at dinner unless one can hold their plate to their mouth so their eyes don't miss the text.  (Sadly, that's me.)

Whatever happened to non-depressing endings?  Do they not exist anymore across the ocean?  After the latest "The Break"; I'm wondering if it's title had something to do with the urge, after watching season two, to take a break by plunging my head into my toilet bowl and breathing deeply.  I'm moving on to Britbox and hopefully a little bit more positivity.

Centuries ago when I was young, my parents gave me a Brownie camera that focused my life on photography.  In my twenties a boyfriend gave me a used Cannon Pentax 35 mm (SLR) camera which I pretty well wore out over years of use.  I took many black and white photos in the beginning, because he taught me how to develop them.

A day might find me on my stomach in a muddy puddle or on my back in a weed patch to take that perfect macro shot.  But alas, my collection of photos mistakenly found their death in a dumpster, in a not so good year of my life.

In later years my half-brother gave me a used Nikon camera with a telephoto lens, so some distance could be left between myself and the subject.  Eventually, when I was slightly old, I purchased a Sony digital camera with so many bells and whistles it did me in, or maybe I just got tired of the complexity of it all.  It sat in a drawer, until a few months ago we gave it to one of my stepdaughters.

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Joe Pye Weed

Now my life's complicated twice as much with a smart phone that thinks it's one of the big guys.  Of course, it isn't, but I don't have the heart to ruin the rest of it's deluded life telling it so.  I'll take, say...maybe 500 clicks of wings flying all around me as I wade into that Joe Pye Weed patch, and hope for the best.  First edit deletes the out-of-focus and downright boring ones.  Sometimes that leaves me with nothing :(  

Honeybee

Isolated comfortably in my artificial silence behind a closed door to the outside world, I sit and concentrate on how to finish this mulligan stew of disconnected thoughts with an ending that sublimely hides just out of my reach.  It's no use...I give up.  Opening the front door and looking out into the moonlight darkness, my world of quiet suddenly becomes this melody of nature's nightlife that seems to fill the cosmos with a quiet beauty that day can never bring.

Turning the porch light on to rule out a night spider's web greeting me in the face, I turn it back off and sit on the glider bench.  I'm trying to not imagine something invisible crawling up my leg, or hopping off the top of the glider onto my neck, or bumping into me as it flies through all that darkness.  It's a tall order to achieve :)

Gliding back and forth, the smell of fresh air is pleasant.  A chorus of a zillion tree crickets fills the void with a gentle high pitched hum that is relaxing.  Katydids can be heard above the cricket songs... KATY did it... KATY did it... KATY did it...  Add the twinkling stars overhead, and it doesn't get much better than this at the end of an ordinary summer day.

Austin 

Soft comfort for a weary soul.