Recent Activity

Hi there folks! Here are some photos of stuff from the past several days:

Rhubarb Upside-down cake.

Recipe from marthastewart.com It makes a sweet, dense cake with a salty-ish crumb crust. I reduced the sugar in the cake (not the crumb) part of the recipe or the cake would have been salty too. The results were fine for the effort I put in but I think I'll keep looking for a recipe I like better.

Even dead peonies smell amazing. The three sad examples behind the fresh one made my entire house smell divine despite their crispy appearance. 

A dusty bug I spotted on a windowsill yesterday. It is the nymph of a Masked Hunter bug. They eat bedbugs and earwigs, among other things.

Garlic scapes! So pretty and delicious. I like to douse them with olive oil and salt and grill them. I'm growing much more garlic next year if I can.

My pal, Fay. She's doing great these days. Hope I didn't just jinx it. She'll be fourteen in three months.

I'd like to tell you more but I'm extra stupid from a head cold and I don't trust myself to make sense. 

I Felt Pretty Lucky

Today I bent to look at a dead caterpillar on our walkway:

As I stood up again a reflection in a puddle on the walk caught my eye. It's very subtle:

A rainbow:

I've seen iridescent spots around the sun before  but this rainbow arced away from the sun. That's something I've neer seen.

HUGE WHITE SPIDER!!!

Starting the day after tomorrow I'm going to have time to think. I know - can you believe it? Hopefully this will lead to some very inspired blog posts. Fingers crossed.

Today, however, will be all about wildlife. I found this spider in our vestibule, hanging over the front door. I wonder how many times we've passed below it without knowing it was there?

The face on its back looks pretty friendly.

I'm very glad that no one at our house has arachnophobia. We'd probably need to move. Actually, when you think of all the spiders that routinely live in our house this one wouldn't be an issue - we'd have moved already.

Update: Our friend and wildlife expert, Don, says he thinks this is a Barn spider. So exotic. It's latin name is Araneus cavaticus (slightly more exotic) According to wikipedia, it is the same kind of spider as Charlotte in Charlotte's Web.

More Garden Turbulence

When I returned home to Vermont the other day, I encountered this sorry mess:

Yes, this is one of the risks of mail-order gardening. These tomatoes arrived shortly after I left for Long Island. I asked Pete to put the box in the garage for me (the garage stays cool) Clearly I should have asked him to take the plants out of the box as well. They frigging rotted in there! Total loss.

This is one of those little things that Life is pissing me off with. If there weren't other, larger things going on as well then maybe this wouldn't have been quite so irksome. Maybe.

I have such gardening guilt. I try to talk myself out of it. So often I've had to be away at key gardening times. Still, I keep trying. I'm not a complete failure at it, I just wish I could do better.

This morning I woke up before five AM after dreaming that my mother and I were homeless. Funny thing, I couldn't get back to sleep. Maybe because I couldn't stop pondering the reasons why the dream was not entirely far-fetched?

It's been hot lately so I figured I might as well get out there and finish watering the roses and weed out the lettuce and see if I could find the pea vines which still need to be given supports.

So that's what I did and boy did it make me even surlier. First I was cursing myself for never being around. I was also cursing the many, many weeds sprouting up in my lettuce and in the paths between the beds (The beds looked more like paths than the paths did) I also cursed the lettuce that had already bolted. I did find the pea vines but it wasn't easy. 

I got three mosquito bites through my bug shirt. I worried that it was getting too hot and that the lettuce would dry up and expire because I'd unsettled it. It was ten AM and already too hot for me to do any more. I didn't get the pea supports set up.

I dumped a little water on the lettuce beds and hoped for the best, then I went in and had second breakfast.

That, to me, is a great color to look at when you're feeling pissed off or down in the dumps.

The front walk looks pretty nice. I've never had pink lupines before. I love lupines.

I love garden photographs because it's so easy to make them look so beautiful: just don't put the bad stuff in the photo. Also, all the green stuff kind of looks alike. The weeds just blend away into the verdure, as illustrated below:

There are some big honkin' weeds in the front of this photo but even if you click on it and see it in a larger size the weeds are hard to spot.

I wasn't planning on posting this photo. I just took it for myself two days ago to have a record of the peony. It's called "Paula Fay." (I'll buy anything with "Fay" in it) 

It did delight me this morning when I was fortunate to see it wide open, its bright, golden anthers contrasting beautifully with the deep pink of the petals. Then along came a giant bumblebee to roll around in there and make it look useful and even prettier.

It got to be over ninety degrees today. Those kind of temperatures make me furious - not that I needed any help with that. The sun's setting now though and things have cooled down. I'll probably put my BuzzOff clothing on and have a Cuban Mint Julep on the patio. I cooled myself down earlier by going out and getting three pints of ice cream. No, I didn't eat them all. I did have plenty though!

But it was so hot, look what it did to those peonies pictured above. These are the same flowers but this photo is from this afternoon:

So bleached out. It looks like a completely different bloom. Still pretty though. The deep pink bloom that opened today is a better example of the color it would normally be.

Also, I went and checked the lettuce. One bed has some survivors, the other is pretty much decimated except for the lettuce that bolted. Go me! Oh well, what's done is done. It's supposed to be in the nineties again for the next two days. Maybe when it mellows out I'll plant some more lettuce. Or maybe I'll move on to some other plant. I wonder if it's too late to buy some zucchini pants? I've never grown them.

What If...

Okay, you know krill, food of whales?  I know you do but I linked to the wikipedia entry for it just because I could.  Also, I'm thinking "Krill" could be a good band name.

Anyway, I was thinking about bugs tonight and about how in a way mosquitos are krill of the air.  What if there were air whales?  What if air whales came to your barbeque and were swooping around devouring clouds of mosquitos?

This summer has been a big one for the mosquitos here in Vermont.  Many times this summer I've been out grilling food, hearing a thunderous hum of mosquitos at my back.  I've really expected to turn around and see a dense cloud of them right behind me just like in the Off commercials.  What if you turned around and instead you saw the gaping maw of an air whale coming at you?  It would probably take some getting used to.

I am always happy to see the bats swooping around in the evening.  I always wish them good health and hearty eating.  I guess it's good that they don't have to compete with air whales.  However I do wish they could improve their mosquito eating volume.  I have this idea that they really go for the large moths.  You know, one big meal, rather than a mess of hors d'oeuvres.  I would like to convince them that hors d'oeuvres are usually much tastier than an entrée.  If they went for the mosquitos that would really help me out.

Last Week's Hilights

This is so fascinating!  Here's my lunch from the Fourth of July:

Here's the glitter tattoo I got from the gumball machine at the grocery store.  When it's really hot out a glitter tattoo makes me feel cooler.

It came right off when I put sunblock on it the next day.  : (

"Mommy, why is that old lady wearing a romper?"

"Shhh, honey, it's not nice to notice mentally ill people."

Girded for barbeque in my Buzz Off hoodie and headlamp.  I actually had a whole suit going.  Matching pants and everything.  I thought I resembled an emaciated bear.  No photo though.  Sorry.

Me me me!  I'm so wacky!  I'd like to blame the heat but that wouldn't be fair.

Garden Visitors

I took Fay out in the front yard today at around 10:30 for her mid-morning squeezing.  While I was standing around looking at the weeds in the garden that I really ought to do something about it came to my attention that the birds were freaking out.  I had just read that chickadees make rapid chipping sounds when there's a predator in the area so I started looking up into the tops of all the tall trees.  I couldn't see anything so I thought maybe I was imagining things and returned to idly peering around the yard.  After a bit my glance fell on the apple tree.  There was a hawk sitting right there (where the red arrow is pointing) maybe thirty feet away from me, twenty from Fay.

Don't go looking for it in this photo - I didn't have my camera on me at the time.

Not your typical hawk vantage point.  I would never have looked for it there.  But there it was, looking right at me all nonchalant, like "What?  I'm just seeing how the apples are coming along.  I always relax here."

I try to be careful when I take Fay out in VT, especially at night.  There are things here that could eat her with no problem: big owls, coyotes, fishers.  I doubt a bear would eat her but I still wouldn't want her to meet one.  I'm pretty sure this hawk was smaller than Fay.  None the less, I went ahead and squeezed her.  When I looked up again the hawk had moved on.

I've been enjoying this volunteer foxglove that sprang up in the garden.  It has some fair competition from the mint but I'm hoping it will go to seed and start a colony.  I can hope.

I think it's elegant and etherial and that it goes well with the bird bath.

A Cool Thing In The Garden

Look at what my cherry tree is doing:

Naturally I googled "red nodules on cherry leaves" and I found out what it is, courtesy of "Ant Man" (page down in the comments):


"Cherries generally have glands on their petioles. They secret nectar that attracts ants. Studies on various plants that have similar glands (like passionflower vines) indicate that the ants help the plant by killing and otherwise interfering with insects that would otherwise eat the plant. Sort of like the plant paying "protection" money to the ants.

Also, as another poster indicates, ants often farm aphids as well for honeydew. The cherry tree's strategy is to provide nectar directly to the ants, removing the "incentive" for ants to farm aphids, This way the cherry tree avoids the damage by the aphids that ants would otherwise protect."

It's working!  I think that is so cool.

Impulse Buys

I am the Queen of impulse buys.

Today I received six butterfly bushes and nine raspberry plants in the mail.  I ordered them (and some other plants) last month thinking that it would be nice to have more fresh fruit and pretty animals (you know - bees, bugs, hummingbirds)  around the place.

I think I'd only meant to order three butterfly bushes.  They came as a sampler of three and I must have ordered two samplers by accident.  Oh well, I've got room for them and they seem to do well here.  You can put them anywhere that's sunny and has well-drained soil.  They die back to the ground in the winter so you can pile all the snow you want on them and they won't know the difference.  They'll be fine next to the steps that lead to the walkway to our house - and then no one will have to string-trim around the steps in the summer.  The others I can put near the patio, even in the area that gets pounded by the snow that sheds off the roof in the winter.

The raspberries could pose a little problem though.  They need a bit more thought and attention than butterfly bushes do.  When I ordered them I thought, "well, I don't know where to put them right now but there's plenty of time to figure it out before they get here."  Did I use any of that time to figure it out?  Heck no.

It might have been good if I'd had a plan and decided where to put them before I bought them - like last year - so the soil could be properly prepared.  My thinking was that brambles do really well here so raspberries probably would too.  I am a lazy gardener.  Then once I've figured out where to put them I'll need to find/make some supports for them.

Actually, ordering plants through the mail is always risky for me since these days I can never predict where I'm going to be.  It can be a total disaster (a waste of plant-life and money) if you're not home when your live plants arrive.  It worked out well this year, thankfully.

In spite of the danger I order plants every year.

Last week the cherry tree that was part of the same impulse order came.  I had no plan for that either but I'm extremely happy with the spot I found for it.  Time may prove me wrong (say, if the tree languishes and dies) but for now I think I'm pretty clever.

Yup, gardening's an adventure.  Especially for a doofus like me.

Certain Disgusting Bugs

I've been away. Now I have a backlog of things to write about. Unfortunately I'm really beat right now so I'll just tell you about my most recent gardening.

When I got up to Vermont a couple of days ago I saw that I had lily leaf beetle larvae the size of winnebagos (the vehicles) chomping down my lily buds. Honestly if I hadn't seen them in the act I would have blamed deer. No exaggeration.

Lily leaf beetle larvae have to be the most disgusting insects on the planet. They are revolting and vile. I don't like 'em. I like most bugs but these are just nasty.

I swiped this photo from a UMass website. The page has everything you need to know about lily leaf beetles on it, including photos of the much less revolting (actually rather attractive looking) adult form.

As you can see the larva itself is bad enough (gross!) but while it's up to its evil business of killing the hell out of your beautiful lilies it is also crapping all over itself to ward off predators. That's fine and dandy in Asia where it actually has predators but totally unnecessary here.

So this weekend's gardening consisted almost solely of me going around with a container of soapy water and flicking the nasty grubs off of my lilies.

I also did some reconnaissance and I hope to have time to post some photos tomorrow.

May, Week Two

We did an amazing job cleaning out the house and getting it ready for showing.  It is heartening to me to know that I can do something like that because now I'm going to have to do it in Vermont as well.

The first several people came to look at our house on Friday at noon.  It wasn't an official open house so Fay and I were still there.  It felt really strange to be there while people were going through so I popped Fay in the car and bolted.  We went to the reservoir on route 9 where the cherry blossoms were blooming and the grass is soft.

Fay and I went to the reservoir for at least an hour each of the next three days as well.  Our realtor said that the open house on Saturday drew a hundred people.  By Tuesday we had five offers, one of which we accepted.  Our house was on the market for one weekend.

So if you live in Brookline Massachusetts and you need a realtor, call Chuck Silverston at (617)264- 7900.  The man will sell your house.

On Wednesday Pete and I closed on the condo in Cambridge.

I love this house that we just sold.  Every day I'm saying goodbye to different aspects of it and of living here.  I know though that this is the right thing to do.  

One thing I think I'll miss very much is the greenery.  The block we live on is rectangular.  Our house is on one of the short ends so the back overlooks not just the back yard of the house behind us but the back yards of all the houses lining the long sides of the rectangle.  That's at least seven houses on each side.  It's very green for an urban setting.  We see more backyard birds in Brookline than we do in Vermont.  I've really been enjoying listening to the birdsong this week.

In Cambridge we have no trees near our apartment windows.  I can't complain because in Vermont I can listen to the frogs and the birds.  

Things in my life are changing at a rate that I can't begin to process so I'm not trying.  It's rather disorienting in a way.  Fortunately none of it is bad.

Well, except maybe this:  my dad's back in the hospital.  My mom called yesterday to tell me he was going in for a colonoscopy.  He'd been having what everyone thought was a bad reaction to his antibiotics but they just wanted to check to make sure.  It turns out he's contracted c. diff.  So dad's going to be in the hospital for a while longer.

Country Life At The Twilight Of The Year

Things are cooling off in Vermont. It happens to be an unseasonably toasty fifty degrees out right now. That and the moths out flying around got me thinking about salamanders.

There was a kind of salamander I'd never seen before hanging around the entry to our house last week. It looked kind of like a baby snake but with legs. About three inches long and narrow like a worm but with something of a head and, like I said before, legs. I hadn't ever seen a salamander in the fall so this one was new to me. It looks very different from a spotted salamander. We used to have a spotted salamander who lived near our front door and who would come out in the spring when it rained. When we put the patio in a few years ago one of the guys who was doing the stonework found it standing there looking at him. Michaela was there at the time so she told him to put it in the woods. I haven't seen it since. I hope it found a better home.

The frogs have all gone into hibernation and of course the crickets are done for the year. The snakes are probably all asleep by now too. To be honest, it's getting a little lonely. I miss all the creatures who eat bugs.

We used to have a bat who weekended in our barn. At least that's what the bat expert thought - the guy we hired to get the bat out. It was just one bat so he thought it would come to our barn once in a while for a night or two here and there. If we were using our barn as a barn that wouldn't be a big deal but since it's our studio spaces and Pete's clients sleep there we couldn't have a batty guest flying around. And that bat would fly around at night when the clients were there. So we hired an expert to find out where the bat was coming out and going in and attach one-way doors so it could go out but not get back in. It took him several months and five or so visits but we haven't seen bat poop on the floor since maybe September. I'm hoping that means that the bat guy was successful and not that our bat has succumbed to the bat fungus that's going around. I have a very large soft spot in my heart for bats and I'm very worried about them these days.

Unfortunately cluster fly season has begun. It's the time of year when the bugs head indoors. Now on a sunny day when I head to my studio I'll find dozens of flies buzzing at my windows from the inside. Yuck. At night when we go to bed it's not unusual to have to evict four or five flies. They make a lot of noise buzzing around and bouncing off the ceiling. I really don't miss them at all in the summer when they want to live outdoors.

The mice seem mostly content to stay outside so far this year. Soon it will get colder though and we'll have to stay on top of the traps in the basement. We've learned from experience that you can't be lenient with the mice. If you're not careful they'll have an orgy in your pillow and then where will you be? I'll tell you where: you'll be waking up in a pile of mice poop and fly parts. Nasty. Nonetheless anti-mouse warfare is pretty unpleasant for pacifists like me and Pete.

The bees and the dragonflies are asleep, the butterflies and hummingbirds have gone south. I have to admire the persistence of the moths. We've had a few frosts so I can't imagine what they're eating these days. Soon they'll be gone too. Things will get very quiet. At least we'll still have the owls for company.

A Bit Of Catch Up

I've been a bad blogger. One post (besides this) for the month of October. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe I'll make up for it next month with NaBloPoMo, or as I'll be referring to it, I-NaBlaPoMo. Really, it is international. Unless they're referring to "Blogger Nation" which would be ridiculous.

I've been doing a lot of cooking this month. Lot's of recipes from Harumi's Japanese Home Cooking. Behold, for example, the lurid pile below which I produced this evening:

This is a simple, traditional Japanese potato salad. I thought I'd bought red potatoes at the farm stand but in fact they are pink. Throughout. I think the pink gives my potato salad a certain Hello Kitty-ish air. Serendipity! This is the second batch I've made.

My favorite recipe from the book so far is Eggplant "Dengaku" Style. I also like the Tsukemono (Japanese Pickles) recipe which ends up being like a really tasty salad that will keep for a few days. What's not to love about a salad you make once and eat three or four times?

Speaking of salad, here's tonight's dinner:

Mixed greens, cucumber, raw golden beets, feta cheese, pecans and dried cherries. I don't know if eating a whole raw beet by oneself is allowed. If I have any problems with it I'll let you know.

Earlier today I also tried to make Kabocha Nimono from Let's Cook Japanese Food, by Amy kaneko. I'm not sure the item I cooked was a kabocha, a.k.a. Japanese pumpkin. I've never actually seen one that I know of. I bought a giant chunk of orange-fleshed, green-and-yellow-speckle-skinned pumpkin-like vegetable at the Super 88 market in Allston last week. It might have been kabocha. The dish didn't come out exactly as described but it's fine. It's not especially photogenic so just imagine rectangular orange chunks. That's about what it looks like. I've really got to work on my food styling.

Below is a photo of what happened to the last of the pears:

This is the Brown Sugar Pear Cake from Dorrie Greenspan's Baking, From My Home To Yours. This was another example of how things take longer to cook for me than they do in the book. While the cake looks well browned on the outside it could have cooked longer. I even tested it as directed with a long bamboo skewer poked to exactly half the depth of the pan and it came out clean. It wouldn't have if I'd poked it to a three-quarter depth. Think of that the next time you make a bundt cake. It's a very good cake though. You can really taste the brown sugar and the flavor goes well with the pear flavor.

That's not my kitchen by the way. That's the kitchen at my parents' beach house. Just if you care. And why would you?

Whoa, I've also been gardening my heinus off (that was a "Your Highness" pun - see, I'm clever and not very annoying) I ordered seven peonies and thirty-six lily bulbs this spring when I must have been smoking crack. It took me three days but I got most of them into the ground in locations I think they'll like. Never mind that I had a plague of lily leaf beetles this year. Well, really I do mind a lot. Along the way I learned that even when you have to make a really small hole (like for a bulb) it's much easier to use a full sized shovel rather than a trowel. A shovel can make a perfectly good, deep but thin slit in the ground between plants. It doesn't have to dig a trench.

Later in the week Michaela came by to help me with the garden's master plan, plotting which shrubs to buy and put in next and where they should go. While we were wandering around the jungle that was a vegetable garden about ten years ago (before I lived here) we stumbled on two more peonies. Michaela decided we should dig up, divide and move them. Well she dug them up and I was so glad it wasn't me that I told her so. One was normal sized and easy to split into three new baby peonies. The other was a mass of intertwined sweet potato-like roots bigger than a basketball. She said, "do you have a hatchet?" We need to go buy a hatchet but we do have an axe.

She was giving me all these directions like "Soak the root ball to remove the dirt until you can see where you want to make the divisions" and "when you divide the root ball make sure you wipe the blade with alcohol before each cut" and "don't worry if you lose a bud or two." She could tell I was getting scared about doing it myself. I gave her the axe and asked her to show me.

Then she took the axe and started CHOPPING AT THE THING like it was her ex's (or a certain politician's) HEAD! Now I was really scared. That's not peaceful, cool-headed "dividing," that's a massacre! And what happened to the alcohol? When she was done there were seven more viable baby peonies. She axe murdered that peony into a grand total of TEN MORE PEONIES that I had to find a place for! And then she left. She'd done the hard part after all. I gave her nine lily bulbs to take along. They'll be happier with her anyway. I don't think she has lily leaf beetles. She's my hero.

Somehow or other I found decent places to plant the ten new peonies (plus an armload of rooty things that might someday become peonies) by sunset the next day. With luck I'll have fifteen new peonies next spring (counting two divisions as old plants) Good thing I like peonies. They have beautiful foliage in the fall.

And now I will end with two photos of Fay that Pete took.

Today's Plusses And Minuses

Plus:
Sunny
Not too hot
Fay's feeling frisky
House painters aren't here
I get to stay here five more days!

Minus:
Pete's going back to Boston
Biting flies
Rough surf
Have to take the car to be serviced sometime this week

Luckiest Girl In America

This is why I can never leave Vermont. These are the views from my studio windows:








The view below is actually the view from my deck which the lovely folks at Single Speed Design threw in for me when they designed Pete's studio. Taken in front of one of the windows, it's the same view only no window screen or flies.


Finally, less scenic but somehow still compelling to me:

Bugs are SO COOL!!!!!! Have I used enough exclamation points in my titles yet?

I just took Fay out to take care of some business and there was an owl hooting its head off in the woods across the street. It's broad daylight. I love the country!

Today Pete and I chopped down some bug-infested trees (small ones) and hauled them up to the burn pile. Well, Pete did the chopping and most of the hauling. I told him what to chop down. We won't be burning them until the weather gets a lot more disgusting.

The trees were infested with woolly aphids. I went to look them up on my favorite bug identification site: whatsthatbug.com. If you page down on just that one page you'll see some really remarkable bugs. Like the Peanutheaded Lanternfly from Mexico or the "Cerogenes auricoma. No common name, but the Latin translates to 'wax producer with golden hair.'" That one flies so slowly it "looks like it's floating." Bugs come in the most amazing shapes and colors.

Cluster Flies. Beware, This Post Is Unsavory

This is the view from the top floor of our barn/studios to our house. The black specks you see in the upper-right-hand corner of this photo are Cluster Flies. What you can't see is that there are about thirteen of them.

Did you ever notice a giant, slow-moving fly buzzing around the room in the middle of January and wonder where the hell it came from? Chances are it was a Cluster Fly. We've got bajillions of them here in VT. If you live in a rural area I'm sure you're familiar with them.

In the fall when the days are warm and the nights are cool they bask in the sun on the south or west facing walls of buildings. As the evening grows cooler they worm their way into cracks in the buildings so they can stay warm. On cold sunny days they come out of hiding into your warm house and hang out by the warmer sunny windows, buzzing around annoying and disgusting everyone.

In fact, this window faces north. These guys got turned around somewhere and are doing the best they can with what they've got. My south-facing studio window had even more flies in it but I couldn't get as good a photo of them. Not that this one's so awesome.

On a sunny winter day I spend the first and last ten or so minutes in my studio opening the windows and evicting flies. They really don't understand windows so it can take some time till they figure out where the opening is. Unfortunately you can let out or swat all the flies you want but there will always be dozens more making their way in.

As gross as they are, the very worst thing about them is that mice eat them. They die overnight and fall on the floor or the windowsill and the mice come along and have a juicy snack. They leave the legs and the wings behind along with their mouse droppings. Such an attractive pile. I try to keep my studio free of anything edible but the mice always manage something.

It's only a matter of time till one of my paintings contains fly parts. I'd put in some mouse droppings too but I don't think they're as archival.

Eating and Stuff

Some days I really don't want to bother to eat. But then I get REALLY hungry and there's nothing for it.

Then I have to decide (like everybody else on the planet who's lucky enough to have a choice) do I go cheapo and have a bowl of cereal or a piece of pie or (heavens to Betsey!) stop at McDonald's (only on the drive to or from VT) or do I be a "good" grown-up and make a salad? Stupid salad. Why does it always have to be a salad?

Usually I love eating but today I wish it were optional.

I continue to be in MA, mainly because I can't stand to miss another trash night here. We have something like seven bags of recyclables waiting to go out and the curbside trash can is full.

I'm not enjoying it that much. I had dinner with my friend Tammy one night, Fay has seen some of her dog friends, I handed out candy on Halloween and I'm purging the house of detritus (since I live here there's plenty of it) but I'd rather be in VT with the birds and the bugs and my studio.

T.S. I guess.

Is there anywhere where nature and culture co-exist?

Vermont Nature News

It's dry dry dry here. I don't know when it rained last. Our pond is just about empty. The grass is brown. Our land has springs so usually it's a bit boggy in spots and you have to watch where you drive the mower. Not this year. It's a quiet year for frogs.

The cilantro and mustard greens bolted weeks ago. However I did just have a couple of really good pears from our pear tree and the butterfly bush is crowded with butterflies. We've even seen a hummingbird moth on it a few times. A hummingbird moth looks like it's part hummingbird, part lobster. The link leads to a really good bug identifying site: whatsthatbug.com

Today I was coming out of Target and three flocks of geese flew by right over the parking lot. Two nights ago Pete heard coyotes yapping in the night. Every night we hear owls. I haven't seen turkeys on our land lately though. And we have a new woodchuck - unless Sylvie, the neighbors' dog, got it yesterday. I like woodchucks. They're kind of cozy and domestic. I don't mean you invite them in the house, I just think of them as having nice families. They can really do a number on your foundation though - and forget about having a vegetable garden.

And yes, we're starting to get a little fall color here and there.