My mother’s family took photos. Lots and lots of photos. Mother always meant to organize and scan the pictures. She wanted a digital archive that could be saved and shared, one of the many projects left unfinished when she died.
I’ve been making slow progress with the photos, which is fascinating, frustrating work. Most are not labelled, so scanning is the easy part. The hard part will begin later, when I try to match names and faces, to reunite families and trace their paths through time.
This morning started with anxiety, and the day has continued with anxiety. It’s a nebulous, eerie sensation of “something wrong” that has absolutely no basis in observable fact. Except, there are these clouds…
The yard’s nests are having a tough year. In April, I discovered a robin’s nest in the wax myrtle. A few days later, a heap of feathers hinted that hawks had claimed another victim. Broken eggs soon joined the feathers.
Now the recent dove’s nest is also empty. I don’t know what happened, only that the nest held two eggs one day, none the next.
Both losses tempt me toward sadness, but how dare I claim sadness? Failed nests are blissfully minor tragedies. Wouldn’t it be a joyous day, if the only news worth reporting involved bird nests?
After a few days of intermittent rain, the sky has thickened into an impenetrable gloom. Just in time for the transit of Venus. 😦 Fortunately, NASA has scheduled a webcast.
And there’s no doubt the sun will return in time. It always does.
We bought this speedwell because it was advertised to attract butterflies. I haven’t seen any butterflies on it, but it draws a lot of wasps.
The wasps chase everything away from the speedwell’s bed, but Blue Dasher dragonflies patrol all the other beds.
And, as predicted, Halloween Pennants have begun to arrive.
The bird feeders get less traffic than the flower beds, but not by much. Doves are our most frequent diners. And the hungriest. This one ate so much it could barely fly.
Doves are the most numerous birds in the yard, but the blue jay fledglings are the loudest.
However, their cries cannot compete with the Blue Angels, who are in town for a weekend airshow. The show’s flight path takes them right over our yard…
Rae Spencer 