Blatant Thievery

This morning the smaller hawk landed on top of the privacy fence clutching something small and furry in its talons, a mouse or a vole, I thought.  It spent some time spitting out fur and munching away when the larger hawk came galumphing down the fence, wings raised, and stole the food.  It flew over to the garden trellis and perched there with its wings cupped around its stolen gains.  I got a photo of the two of them, the larger, thieving hawk on the trellis and the smaller, bereft hawk on the ground.




I went out to take a couple new flower pictures and found a Japanese beetle on this wildflower that looks like Queen Anne's Lace but isn't...

and one was lodged in the center of the most open one of these daisies.  It's a good thing that the roses are just about done with the first blooming so that the beetles won't have roses to devour and ruin.

The day lilies aren't following my suggestion of having only one blossom a day.  I guess no one listens to my ideas.







The white salvia is blooming.  It doesn't look anything like the red or purple varieties.  Must be different hybrids.

I ran out of knitting yesterday, cast on a shawl that I decided I didn't like the yarn, ripped it out, and kept looking.  Today I went through my queue on Ravelry and came upon the Colonnade Shawl that I've already knitted once but have yarn I bought years ago in Lexington for another one.  So I cast it on this afternoon.  See?  I'm only 12 rows in but I think it'll be beautiful.  My knitting friend, LB, knitted a lace shawl a couple weeks ago which motivated me to want to knit a shawl but I'm no good with skinny yarn.  I'm just not patient enough so I found thicker yarn and a pattern to go with it.

02 July--Barbara Malcolm, Tropical Obsession. 

         The rain came down hard, slashing at the leaves of the oleander, swirling in the palm fronds. Mona stood, drink in hand, watching it pound the surface of the ocean. Absentmindedly she raised the glass and sipped, surprised when the ice cubes clattered into her teeth. Her inner voice kept repeating two words “Jack’s dead” over and over, sounding unreal.

         The hours she had spent in the police station being bombarded by Detective Inspector Rooibos’ gentle questions also seemed unreal. Her hand shook as she lowered the empty glass, the pale dawn light glimmering on the near solid curtain of raindrops that kept her on the patio.

         They don't look natural, like real birds, when they fly. They look like cartoons, their elongated necks in the lead and their spindly legs trailing behind. Even the sparse lump of the body spreads out making barely a hump, only the wings slowly flapping changes the vision of them from alien being to something quite possibly earthly and natural. The vivid pink of their feathers is lost in the deepening orange of the sunset, their silhouettes slice across the sky and their raucous honks sound too much like Canada geese to be believed. Mona lay on the chaise longue on the patio facing the sunset, her empty glass barely held by her fingertips above the tiles as she watched the skein of flamingos trail across the sky on the way to their roost in Venezuela, sixty miles across the sea.

I went down to Zambaldi to visit with DS today.  Man, it sure was hot in the brewery.  He's got cherry sour beer in one vat that he drained a bunch of the yeast off of and it looked like
melted Silly Putty coming out of the hose.  He drew me off a bit to taste and I liked it.  It was so good to spend half an hour just talking about stuff, being with another human for more than the moment it takes to check out at the store.  I did go to ALDI on my way home because they have pineapple, strawberries, and blueberries on sale so I came home and made a big bowl of fruit for snacking.  Yum.
--Barbara