A Rainy Start

It was dark-ish when I got up around 7 o'clock and it rained, but not before I got out there to check on the slug par-tay (bigger slugs came last night but I'm not showing you more drowned slugs, I figure you've got the idea) and take garden pictures.



The gourd-let is getting bigger as are her little brothers dangling right below her.  The lone (so far but there are lots of flowers) spaghetti squash is about as big as my fist or maybe a little bigger and you can see in the background that the Boxcar Willie tomatoes are ripening.  (I feel the need for a lonesome rail-riding song all of a sudden)

There was plenty of bird activity this morning.  Lots of Sparrows which remind me of a gang of kids wreaking havoc in the mall with the way they ALL have to crowd onto the platform feeder at once and ALL have to take a bath at the same time.  The Chickadees dart in for a seed and then dash off.  The teenage Bluejays continue to be entertaining as all get-out.  Today one of them tried to come in for a landing on the hanging platform, ricocheted off the roof, and landed in the grass.  He came back for a second try, didn't have better luck, and flew off.  A male Red-Bellied Woodpecker tried for a peanut from the platform when the Sparrow crowd was there, flew up into the apple tree to wait, swooped down for a single peanut in the shell and hasn't been seen since.  The young Orioles flock to the new feeder, even batting away bees and hornets to reach the nectar.  This one's breast is getting really orange.  (And that's the Wisconsin Bird Report for today.)

Just about every morning this loudmouth chipmunk sits up on the patio step and proclaims its ownership of the domain, cheek pouches bulging with seed it scavenges under the feeders.  Durwood just called out that it's climbing the crooks that hold the feeders but doesn't know what to do once it gets up there and climbs back down.  I wonder if it climbs in the Slinkies or over them.  I'll have to ask.

In knitting news, I bore down on Dobby Hat(s) #5 yesterday and got it about half-knitted, up through the little strip of Fair Isle (which I still do not care for but this was such a little bit that I went with it, but I will admit that I did think of simply making a white stripe and then finishing the pointy top with the dark red and calling it a day).  I have entertained the idea of knitting one or two rounds of the purple and then adding in the dark red and white to spiral stripe the top.  Do you think that'd detract from the Fair Isle stripe?  The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.  Then I'd make the pompom with all three colors.  I can start it and if I hate it I can always rip it back and start that little part over, can't I.  I think that's what I'll do just as soon as I run to the grocery to pick up the case of Durwood's favorite tomato soup I ordered for him. (It's on sale for ninety-eight cents a can instead of over two dollars like it regularly is; I'm getting three cases.  I figure we can store it as easily as the grocery store can.)

August 23--Bruce Peterson, Nuclear Family/Global TV.  Eve, Adam, and baby Cain sat in their cube watching the required hours of state programming.  Even at thirteen months Cain knew not to play or babble while the man in the glowing square on the wall was talking.  Work, eat, TV, sleep--that was their lives.  Eve worked in the greenhouses and hydroponics lab.  Adam drove a conveyor around the plat, some days carrying people, other days he had cargo.  Cain went to offspring care, he had been going since the day after his 3-month natal day anniversary.  Eve was fortunate that her lab was only a few squares from offspring care so she could visit him on her meal break.  They were lucky to have gotten chosen to procreate.  There was a strict quota and only a few couples were allowed into the program every month and not all of them conceived, like a lottery within a lottery, the number of offspring was strictly regulated.

Interesting but I wouldn't know where to take it from there.  I've read too many dystopian novels to not have it be derivative and unoriginal to the max.  I finished all the laundry yesterday, except for folding and Durwood will do that once I bring the basket up later, so I can knuckle down and maybe finish the Dobby Hat(s) today.  Toodles!
--Barbara