Did Something

The weather guessers are saying that as the next couple days pass it will get hotter and more humid so I forced myself to get out and mow the lawn this morning.  Taking walks around the block every few days the last couple weeks made it a little easier on my legs but the uneven surface was still jarring to my shoulders and arms.  (I know, wah, wah, wah, but I have no one else to complain to and I do love to complain.)  I couldn't figure out how to take a lawn mowing picture so I gathered my lawn mowing tools, minus the mower, and took this.  I was amazed how much noise these little earplugs eliminated.





Both hawks were here this morning before I mowed but they flew away when I went out.  The darker one came back in the afternoon and spent quite a bit of time surveying the garden.  I don't think it caught anything.  I'm sorry to keep posting hawk pictures but I get such a thrill to see them that I can't help myself.





The lantana is happy in a hanging basket.  I'd hoped for the red and yellow variety but instead got the pink and yellow one.  That's okay, butterflies and hummingbirds like the flowers no matter what color.



And the zinnias are blooming.  Next year I'll plant seeds so that these planters are full to overflowing with flowers.  Butterflies like these too.


16 June--Barbara Malcolm, Tropical Obsession. 

               It was quiet in the museum in the afternoon. That was why Bunny went there then. In the heat of the day the un-air-conditioned display rooms were empty of tourists who roamed from case to case quickly reading the little labels and feeling superior. He hated to see the sour little smiles on people's faces that told him that person thought that where they came from was somehow better than Bunny's adopted island. Just because there were a lot of rich educated people in America or Europe to pay money for scientists to search and to build fancy museums didn't make them better. In fact, Bunny thought, he liked Bonaire's dusty and sparse displays better because the people who found the shells and pottery, who saved the old photos, and wrote down the old stories did it out of love for their own history not because they would get fame or be paid well. The things in these dim and dusty rooms were real, Bunny thought, not like the glittery trash that Manning and Jack kept arguing about.

            Jack sat in the shade of the ruin of the plantation house up on the hill overlooking the dive site called Karpata. Since early morning he had sat there watching the trickle of diving tourists gear up and enter the water in pairs. He had thought when driving up from the villa in the pale dawn light that he would conceal his pickup somehow but nearly every dive site he passed had at least one pickup parked there, windows open and no one in sight. On an island this full of tourists, he realized, it was hard to tell why someone was parked where they were. And with the number of divers on the island and their habit of independence, it meant no dive site was empty for long. Sooner or later someone was bound to drive up and park, ready to dive. Jack figured that very randomness was his ace in the hole for staying alive.

It was rare to find a seashell on the beaches of Bonaire. There was plenty of coral rubble especially after the latest hurricane wave had swept over the leeward shore and rearranged so much, both above and below the water. The Gaudy Natica shell that winked up at Mona in the early sunshine was a special find. Whole and unfaded, it looked fake but when she held it up in the strong sunlight she could see where a shorebird had pecked a hole right into it to devour the original inhabitant. Thinking that it had to have happened recently she raised the shell and gingerly sniffed, but the clean smell of the sea told her that any traces of that unlucky mollusk had long ago disappeared.

Lots of things have buds on them.  I'm looking forward to the daylilies, daisies, and bee balm.  I picked two more asparagus this morning and had them for supper.  Speaking of supper, I've got ten servings left from the last investment cooking session.  Time to start gathering recipes and making a shopping list.
--Barbara