It's the little things that are my life.

 

She sights a Bird—she chuckles—

She flattens—then she crawls—
She runs without the look of feet—
Her eyes increase to Balls—

Her Jaws stir—twitching—hungry—
Her Teeth can hardly stand—
She leaps, but Robin leaped the first—
Ah, Pussy, of the Sand,

The Hopes so juicy ripening—
You almost bather your Tongue—
When Bliss disclosed a hundred Toes—
And fled with every one—

    ~ Emily Dickinson

~ July 29

A severe thunderstorm warning has been announced.  Of course, I can see it with my own eyes.  Besides cats and dogs, it seems to be belching out hippopotamuses and alligators with all that never ending baritone thunder rumbling across the sky.

Second week of under ninety-degree weather with most afternoons filled with raindrops; some pounding the earth into a moonscape while other days see it caressed ever so softly with the love of an angel.  We need the moisture, but I think the tree frogs floated down the street two days ago in a swift current for an adventure over the horizon.

I’m stuck indoors.  Hmmm… says much about my home, that outside is preferred to inside… or, maybe not.  My home is in a never-ending fluctuation of messy, not so messy, messy, not so messy, messy… you get the drift.  What ever happened to clean?!?

My houseplants are a redeeming feature of the lesser sort, since I chose the uneventful Peperomia’s as my plants to cuddle with care.  Personally, I think they are torturous creatures in that they just sit there, forever.  That’s it… just sit there!  The diva of the group did sent up a “flower” of sorts proclaiming it’s top-notch of the bunch this year.  Hip hip hooray.

I’ve fried them, baked them, starved them, drowned them, parched them to a crisp, and sunburned one that grows a cover of fuzz to prevent sunburns… I feel a bit guilty.  I know I saw one the other day trying with all its tiny might to dislodge it’s roots from its pot to run away from home.  I’m a bad mother.

Two more bite the dust.  I’ve tossed them into the trash can… my bad.  Two will be repotted into straight Fox Farm Ocean Forest soil, and the juvenile, still in its infant pot, hopefully will be repotted before August.  It’s really difficult getting the lighting correct with the indoor plant lights, plus I seem to have more bad days than good, and a green thumb that is becoming quite black.

Dinner is Calabria Brick Oven Pizza Supreme with black olives and spinach punting to kingdom come the green peppers, per Vic’s choice; and a Pepsi.  I know… it’s a treat, so enough about healthy.  I’m tired of never eating things I miss from younger times.

Until I feel like writing another day, I’m off to enjoy a sinfully delicious feast.

Above - Joe Pye Weed in bud

Below - Joe Pye Weed in bloom

Eastern Rosemallow, Hibiscus moscheutos

Three new plants to join the older ones in pots.

We get a lot of bee activity with this plant that prefers damp soil.

Rosemallow seed pods,

One is green and still ripening,

and the other has dried and opened up. 

European Honeybee, not a native species.

We have many this year.  While they are beautiful creatures, 

they eat food that should be for the native bees.

on Joe Pye Weed

The lavender flowers are

Ruellia humilis, Fringeleaf Wild Petunia

Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis

Common Sage, Salvia officinalis

Grown on the back deck, and used in cooking.

Clematis viorna, Leatherflower Clematis

I think this is Leaf-cutter Bee damage.

Green unripened berries are on the Winterberry Shrub.

~ August 1

While this date is the one I have envisioned these writings will be posted, I have been slowed down by a fall in my living room.  Come to think of it, all my falls are in my living room.

I’m in love with my stuffed hassock that broke my fall bruising my butt big time.  I needed my cane and became frustrated at not knowing where I last left it while in the process of shutting everything down for the evening.  I became slightly faint and however I stepped, I took a tumble.

I’ve cut the blood pressure pills in half, per doctor’s orders; and a chiropractor visit put my neck, shoulders and knees back to feeling good.  The egg-like bruise on my right forearm, the bruise covering my left elbow, and the one across my hindside are hindering comfort, but this too shall pass.

This morning as I sit in the coolness of air conditioning, cuddled by an overstuffed armchair, with television remote in hand; I am distracted by a group of young squirrels fighting over the ownership of the sunflower chips in my bird feeder.  The one holding its ground while eating in the feeder, is quite feisty at keeping the others at bay.    It will leave the feeder, hanging onto the pole while chasing any who dare to climb that pole.

I could hardly believe my eyes as one dropped from a branch four feet above and landed on the dome, instantly sliding downwards towards the edge and doom.  Somehow it actually managed to grab the feeder but dropped to the ground when attacked by feisty one.  Although this branch is quite high, it does bend with squirrel weight.  This was repeated many times by those hungry tykes, some succeeding in grabbing the feeder, but most sliding right off that dome, down, down, down to that rocky hard ground.

This spectacle lasted through a cup of hot English Breakfast Tea, and as the entertainment dwindled to nothing, a Downy Woodpecker came in to hang off the side of the feeder to feed, and as it left, a Red Bellied Woodpecker came in for a few nibbles.

I’m off to photograph bees on the wild bergamot plants along the side of the front porch bed, as Vic says they are covered in bees.  Bye!

Silver-Spotted Skipper Butterfly, Epargyreus clarus

on Joe Pye Weed.

Most likely the Fiery Skipper Butterfly, Hylephila phyleus

Horace's Duskywing Butterfly, Erynnis horatius

The white dots are where the wings are clear.

Poison Ivy

Euonymus americanus unripened fruit capsules

Rudbeckia triloba, Brown-eyed Susan

Under the Beautyberry Shrub and its unripened berries.

~ August 2, 2024

I took so many photos before dusk yesterday, that I had to give up the idea of publishing any of them on this post.  They must wait until a later date.

Next Tuesday our huge White Ash Tree will be cut down, and I’m sure the aftermath will be a total shock for me and the garden.  It will certainly leave an enormous void in the center of the backyard, and a sadness in my heart.

No doubt the added light will coax wild seeds out of dormancy that have waited for years to once again feel the warmth of sunshine.

Perhaps they will be beautiful wildflowers,

Or…

Perhaps just ugly weeds.

Do I feel lucky?

Not really.

I’ve been crying here and there this week as memories of loved ones of my past rise to the surface of my thoughts and take over my emotions.  Happens once, twice, or three times a year, and lasts a few days.  It's about regrets formed when I lose someone.  A flaw, I think,  in the way I process it all.  I know it would be to my advantage to think differently, but the doing never happens.  

I’ve been typing, then erasing so many times, I think it’s my que to give up and say goodnight.

    Much love,

        Yvonne 

This Post Is Linked To:

Saturday's Critters

My Corner of the World

Buttermilk Biscuits and a Handful of Magic

The luxury of all summer's sweet sensation is to be found 

when one lies at length in the warm, fragrant grass, 

soaked with sunshine, aware of regions of blossoming clover 

and 

of a high heaven filled with the hum of innumerous bees. 

    

~Harriet E. Prescott, The Atlantic Monthly

Maybe a juvenile blackbird

Hibiscus moscheutos, swamp rosemallow

Hibiscus Bee - Ptilothrix bombiformis

Maybe a type of Longhorn Bee, or a Leaf-Cutter Bee

    In the sky alone is infinite variety. Yesterday, it bent above the earth a hemisphere of thinnest turquoise, fleckless as those Tuscan skies travelers delight to recall. Looking upward, I watch the sunlight as it spills itself upon the foliage, and I see the oak leaves making argent-green arabesques upon the blue of the sky.
    To-day a chain of cloud-cliffs guards the coast of some cloudland Albion, while all below is a faint blue suggestive of leagues of ocean that had fallen asleep at their feet. But the moments stealthily move on. An hour ago, the sky, like a sea, was covered with cloud-yachts, all their white wings spread. Now, I look up from my book, and lo! the airy shallops have sailed away to far harbors of the nether world. 

    ~Sister Mary Blanche (Elizabeth King, b.1852), "A Summer Siesta," Idyls and Sketches

Clethra alnifolia, Summer Sweet

I'm not sure of the bumblebee species.

It's not one I have noticed before.

Right lower corner: Green Sweat Bee and Honeybee

Summer Sweet, 'Jeana' Phlox, Purple Cone Flower

Here and There

Sweet Charlotte

Silver-spotted Skipper, Epargyreus clarus

on Rough Blazing Star, Liatris aspera

Lilium speciosum

(Pollen fatal to cats if they consume any.)

On such a day, the mere intaking of one's breath is a joy. The sky spreads above us, a shimmering sea of blue — not the cool and crystalline sapphire of early morning, but the deep dense azure of midsummer noon. How hot the bees must feel in that furry coat! As we lie basking in the sunlight, and watching the buttercups dancing and dipping above the grass, like golden banners amid an army of green-bladed bayonets... We see the hot air quivering and simmering above the clover fields, but all else is drowsily, dreamily, still. The streets of the far-off city are reeking with dusty heat, but here we are in another world, and the bees and the butterflies are our brethren. This meadow is our boundless prairie; our heads are below the level of the grass tops which spread filmy arms above, like the boughs of a miniature forest. 

~Coulson Kernahan 

I'm all ears - Austin

Joe Pye Weed flower buds

Thread-Waisted Wasp - Eremnophila aureonotata

Mating on a windy day.

Tuckered out...

A moth.

'Tokudama' Hosta

For years this was thought to be a species,

but it has never been found in the wilds in Japan.

It has been changed to cultivar status.

When the girl returned, some hours later, 

she carried a tray, 

with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; 

and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, 

cut thick, very brown on both sides, 

with the butter running through the holes in it 

in great golden drops, 

like honey from the honeycomb. 

The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad; 

and with no uncertain voice; 

talked of warm kitchens, 

of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, 

of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, 

when one's ramble was over, 

and slippered feet were propped on the fender; 

of the purring of contented cats, 

and the twitter of sleepy canaries. 

~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Chickadee on the flying trapeze

Okay, you little show off, it can't be that hard.

What the...

Whoaaaaa... change direction!  CHANGE DIRECTION!!!

What do you mean, I'm top heavy?!?

Getting there... getting there...

WHOAAAAA!!!

Pump them wings...PUMP THEM WINGS!!!

Upright successful... coming in for a landing...

THERE!!!  Easy peasy, you little twerp!

What a duffus cardinal.

Is that Mr. Cheshire at the window??? 

Family of juvenile cardinals on the hornbeam tree

in the front garden.

Hitting that cardboard cylinder with metal ends on the edge of the countertop ended with an explosion of the smaller variety as flour coated dough squeezed through the opened seam while little hands quickly twisted the cylinder all the way open.  What a delightful moment for a youngster helping mom with the preparation of dinner.  I grew up on lighter than air biscuits from the refrigerator section of Joseph’s Market.

At some point, I acquired a small Shaker Cookbook, and the first recipe I tried from that cookbook was Sister Lettie’s Buttermilk Biscuits.  As a person who never understood the attraction of lighter than air biscuits, I was intrigued by ingredients that looked more appealing than just plain biscuits.  They were amazing!  They doubled in pleasure with half of the white flour changed to equal parts whole wheat and stone-ground cornmeal.

I must admit, I have neither sifted the flour, nor measured the buttermilk that goes into the biscuits.  I just mix it all until slightly sticky. divide into eleven pieces, roll each into a ball with lightly floured hands, place into a buttered pie pan, flatten with back of my hand until biscuits touch each other, and baked.  Perfection!

It’s quite magical how the simplicity of just flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, butter and buttermilk can create such a dense buttery delight.  A dollop of preserves to the finished product pushes it up a notch, while adding strawberries and whipped cream is as if one has died and gone to heaven.  To say more would be too much.

This beginning to my writing is all that is left, as I condensed the rest into nothing to save face for my mind being a sea of alphabet soup with letters not coming together into words that interest me.  It is what it is, and that's all it is.

Love and hugs -

Yvonne

This Post Is Linked To

Saturday's Critters

Talking About It Tuesdays

Through My Lens

My Corner Of The World