Bugs & Blooms

I realized as I was snapping pictures in the garden and yard this afternoon that every flower has an accompanying bug.

There was a copulating pair of Japanese beetles next to the cucumber flower next to what I hope will be cucumber number three.

On the purple coneflower there was a Japanese beetle that was the same color as the petals.

There was a tiny bee on the center of this daisy and a Japanese beetle, tucked under a petal, was just leaving.  (are you sensing a theme?)

The best one was the bee on the thistle.  You can see the pollen sacs on his legs are filled with yellow pollen grains.  He was very diligent about getting them filled.

I wore a different mask to the grocery today and realized that it really didn't fit all that well, that there was too much air space around it.  So I went down to the sewing machine and put darts in the sides which made a world of difference.  It really fits well now.

04 August--Barbara Malcolm, Better Than Mom's. 

Every day Fay flirted her way through the day and by the time three-thirty rolled around and Taffy, the college girl who was the supper waitress came in, her feet were aching and her ankles were swollen.  But on most days her apron pocket was full of tips, in fact she usually had to empty her pocket after the lunch rush, cashing in the stack of bills and coins for a couple tens to keep the weight down. 

Naomi got into the habit of either inviting Fay down to her place for supper or sending Marcus over with a plate when she learned that Fay really could not cook.  The idea that her friend was sitting down to either a peanut butter and jelly or lunchmeat sandwich, or a bowl of ramen noodles was impossible to grasp.  She could not believe that someone could have gotten to be close to forty without learning how to cook a real meal. 

Fay just laughed when Naomi asked her about it.  “My mom’s idea of cooking was prying the lid off a bucket of chicken, how would I ever learn?  I am pretty good at nuking frozen burritos and a few times I got food from the deli and reheated it.  I think my last husband, Butch, never knew that I did not cook.  He thought I had made the meatloaf and mashed potatoes and gravy that came home in foam containers.  I just threw those things away and put the food in pots and heated it up.  He never knew the difference.  Men are so dumb,” she said to Naomi. 

“Yeah,” Naomi agreed, “most of them can not see past the end of their peckers.”  

The more the two women spent time together the more they liked it.

Today's toss were four linen placemats and a box of six ramekins that were Mom's.  I never used them, don't know why I kept them, just in case I ever needed to ramekin something, I suppose.

I spent the afternoon binging the fourth and final season of The Durrells in Corfu on Amazon Prime.  It's about a British widow who moves with her four children to Corfu in the mid-1930s until the war begins.  The youngest son was a naturalist and wrote three funny books about those years.  I read the books ages ago and was interested to see how the TV show measured up.  I think they took liberties with the stories but I enjoyed it.

--Barbara