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Archive for September, 2012

It is OVER – a Kidney-Shaped Tale

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on September 28, 2012| 2 Comments »

My life is so exciting that an update on the Invincible Kidney Stone is in order.

I’ve been dealing with this stone for a year and nine months now. It’s been through a lot with me, and I’m going to miss it’s constant companionship.

Maybe that’s an exaggeration.

I almost backed out of surgery this time. That is not an exaggeration. There is something fearful about consenting to go under General Anesthesia.

I am glad I did not back out.

I am also very grateful to the wonderful staff at Legacy Meridian Hospital and my urologist, Dr. Michael Gardner. The staff is professional, friendly, reassuring, and they are always washing their hands. I knew the team in the OR was a good team by the way they joked with each other in my pre-op room, and the back-handed compliment the OR nurse gave my surgeon (“quietly unassuming” was the terminology he used for Dr. Gardner, and I would say that is quite accurate). The anesthesiologist, Dr. Zack, was reassuring and humorous.

My husband hovered. ♥

I was scheduled for 2PM; the hospital had an opening and bumped me up to 10AM. Then they had a no-show that bumped me up a little more. I had to wait until 9:30AM only because the back-up plan wasn’t ready.

Yes, my surgeon had a back-up plan: if the laser didn’t work, he was going to try shock waves from the outside. Last year, he tried shock waves, but they didn’t work, hence the laser this year.

I dreamed something pleasant while under, but I don’t know what it was.

Surgery went like this: the laser scope went all the way up the narrow urethra tube to my kidney. There are several openings into the kidney, but only one where the stone – which should have passed a long time ago – was lodged. Last year, Dr. Gardner didn’t get this far because the tube contracted. This year, he discovered there was an abnormal growth of tissue blocking the tube where the stone was located. Cut the tissue out and, lo & behold! The stone had already been blasted into tiny pieces by last year’s shock waves! Dr. Gardner was able to remove all the pieces plus a new 2mm stone.

He put in a stent (“in case”) and gave me a whole bunch of wonderful drugs to take.

I was up on my feet (a little wobbly) and out of the hospital by 12:30PM; home and in my own bed by 1:30.

So what causes a kidney stone?

I copied this from this site: http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/

“Who gets kidney stones?

For unknown reasons, the number of people in the United States with kidney stones has been increasing over the past 30 years. In the late 1970s, less than 4 percent of the population had stone-forming disease. By the early 1990s, the portion of the population with the disease had increased to more than 5 percent. Caucasians are more prone to develop kidney stones than African Americans. Stones occur more frequently in men. The prevalence of kidney stones rises dramatically as men enter their 40s and continues to rise into their 70s. For women, the prevalence of kidney stones peaks in their 50s. Once a person gets more than one stone, other stones are likely to develop.

[Top]

What causes kidney stones?

Doctors do not always know what causes a stone to form. While certain foods may promote stone formation in people who are susceptible, scientists do not believe that eating any specific food causes stones to form in people who are not susceptible.

A person with a family history of kidney stones may be more likely to develop stones.”

I fall into the category of having once had a stone, more likely to develop a stone. The good news is this: the first stone I had was passed in 1980, when I was 24 years of age. I am now in my mid-50’s, when the prevalence of stones hits its peak. To my knowledge, those are the only kidney stones I have ever had: the one in 1980 and these two.

To my hopeful mind and heart: this will be all I ever have to deal with. I don’t drink much soda pop or consume a lot of dairy, foods which traditionally have been associated with the formation of kidney stones (despite what the article says, they still do consider diet – my urologist quickly determined diet was not a factor for me).

Anyway, I am in a bit of pain, mostly from the little bit of cutting and the stent. I will be able to return to work on Monday. The stent comes out on October 8 or very close to that date. And I can move on to the next exciting part of my life (which is, thankfully, not very exciting, medically speaking. And I hope to keep it that boring!).

For your enjoyment: Master Sha’s Soul Song for the Kidney:

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Autumn!

Posted in Uncategorized on September 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I really am not looking forward to the new season. It isn’t that I dislike Autumn – I love it. I don’t hate winter, either. I just hate long grey days full of foreboding clouds and very little sunshine. I am solar-powered and the lack of sunshine through a long Pacific Northwest winter can sometimes pull me down.

I am also not looking forward to the 22-mile one way drive in the dark and the rain. At least it will sneak up on me.

I have looked into public transportation. It would take me longer on public transportation than it does to drive the darn thing, plus I would have to walk from one bus stop to another in several places and wait for over 20 minutes in at least one other place. That seems rather inefficient to me. I prefer to be inside a warm vehicle and moving, even if moving is only at five miles per hour.

My car got in a wreck the other day. Just my car. It did this by itself, didn’t think to invite me.

I park in the very far corner of the parking lot at work, between two large V-8 extended cab pick-up trucks. There is usually an empty space on either side of my car (which is a very small car when you park it next to big trucks). Apparently, someone parked right next to me. And apparently that person did a pretty poor job of backing out of the space. S/he hit my tire and then scraped across my bumper. The scrapes are several millimeters deep.

At least it’s “just” my bumper. And my tire didn’t suffer any permanent damage, although I kept an eye on it all weekend. I’m just ticked because I know that whoever did it knew they did. And kept going. And didn’t leave me an “I’m sorry” note. I wouldn’t have taken it to insurance – it isn’t worth the piddly amount insurance would give me to repair my bumper to pristine. I just want an acknowledgement that whoever hit me, knew it.

I know they knew it.

And, yes, I am looking at the bumpers of other cars in the parking lot this week. I’m sure I’ll find bits of black plastic on someone’s car. They left enough paint on mine.

Something I love about Autumn: spiders.

Spiders spend the greater part of the summer hunting prey and getting fat. Of the bazillions that are hatched in the spring, only a few million are still living by the end of summer. The larger they get and the greater a target they become. By the time winter rushes in, the few million have been reduced by half by hungry birds. But they will have left behind egg sacs full of kazillions of eggs that will hatch into bazillions of babies in the spring. Kill or be killed.

Spiders have us in sheer numbers.

She’s a hungry one, this one.

I can tell you that she is probably an Argiope spider. She is definitely and orb-weaver (my favorite kind of spider). When I was a homeschooling mom, my favorite Science class to teach was taught in the Autumn: we could collect fat female spiders and make prints of their webs.

My mother was not a homeschool mom, but she loved the big Cat Spiders that made webs on our windows and the mailbox. She even left a note for our mail-delivery person: “Please do not destroy the spider’s web.”

The mail-delivery person (the wife of my high school chemistry teacher) left my mom a note: “I will try. But I HATE spiders.”

People fear spiders. Most spiders won’t hurt you. I get the heebie-jeebies if one crawls on me and I know it. My photos of spiders give me the heebie-jeebies. But I love them and all their eight eyes and legs all the same.

I am still watering. We have had a record dry summer here. No, we’re not (yet) in a drought, but it has been wonderfully dry and sunny with no end (yet) in sight. I have a few newly planted items that need the additional water. And a volunteer tomatoe that might actually give me eight fat, juicy tomatoes. I hope.

I love the glitter of light on water droplets.

Ah, Willamette Falls. Upriver dams, irrigation needs and a long, dry spell have left you… high and dry. I look down on the falls and am amazed at the amount of concrete that man has poured, trying to “improve” the falls and make the Willamette navigable to boats. There are locks on the far side.

I do not have photos of the locks, but they are of a very old design: Leonardo da Vinci designed the type of locks we have on the Willamette. It’s pretty cool to watch them work.

Occasionally, a stray boater drifts into the falls and goes over. When that happens, we’re always regaled with stories about how they “did not know the falls were there” or they “did not know how dangerous the falls were”. Seriously. It’s marked well upstream that there are falls and Willamette Falls are the second largest falls in the continental USA (by volume). Eighteenth in the world. That’s pretty impressive for some falls right here in downtown Oregon City.

I’ll save those photos to compare with when we hit flood season next year.

One more thing before I wander off… It has been almost 2 years since I started this crazy medical adventure with a painless kidney stone. You can read about it in my archives, starting here (but I wouldn’t bother – just fast forward to now where it is a simple kidney stone that defies surgery – so far). Last surgery  was unsuccessful. the kidney stone remained firmly entrenched in my kidney.

This Thursday, my doctor is trying again. Instead of ultrasound technology, he is trying laser. There’s no guarantee. But at least we will have tried.

I am praying specifically for a painless resolution to a bloody kidney stone. Key word: painless.

Happy First Week of Autumn. I think. ;-P

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A Tale of Two Birds

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on September 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Several Band-Tailed pigeons were sitting in the half-dead Lodgepole Pine that commands our front yard. Oh, heck: the Lodgepole is the only tree in our yard. All the bird feeders hang from it’s lowest branches. The fungus that is slowly killing it is hidden deep in its heartwood and the birds don’t know it is dying.

Most of the pigeons flew off when I opened my car door.

“What happened to you?” I asked as I stood beneath the tree, looking up at her. I assume it is a ‘she’. She didn’t answer me.

There are some common misconceptions about Band-tailed Pigeons. They are not the same as “Rock-Doves” or the common Rock Pigeon. Those are the birds you see perched on public statues, along bridges and overpasses; pooping on everything; cooing and begging for crumbs in public parks; and generally making a pestilence of themselves.

Rock Pigeons are introduced from Europe, and like the rest of us former-Europeans, they have edged out the native birds. But the Band-tailed pigeon is a native bird. It is much shier than it’s city counter-part and a very nervous bird at the bird feeder.

One bird posts as a sentry while the rest vie for a place on the feeder.

Apparently this bird did not have a spotter and she tangled with a neighbor cat. I found feathers in and around the disputed territory of my bird bath in the front yard.

I think the cat did not know how big of a bird the pigeon was. She escaped, with a few ruffled feathers and a mild case of indignation.

I think I should name her “Fluffy”.

Days pass. Birds come and go. Cats drink out of the coveted bird bath. Birds continue to use it, too.

There were several Western Scrub Jays at play in the bath today, but this is the only one I captured. He was having too much fun.

Water droplets everywhere and not a care in the world!

Nothing like diving into the bath. This guy wants water everywhere.

He closes his eyes and takes a long sip of cool bath water: ahhhhh!

There were several poses like this: he’d pause, look around and try to identify where sounds were coming from (like the clicking of my shutter) or just to make certain no cats were sneaking up on him.

Speaking of cats.

This guy is either parked under my car or curled up under the hydrangea. He doesn’t live with the other cats that come into my yard: the black-and-white ones or the orange-and white one that cross the street to drink from the bird bath. This cat lives somewhere on the same block I live on.

“Excuse moi? I live here. You, human – and your pestilence of canines, are the guest. Capice?”

Yeah, I love this cat: he always looks at me like that and hes very slow to move when I walk toward him. He figures we’re the interlopers and this is his yard. (Yes, I know he is a tom. I have actually petted him.)

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Seriously Awesome Bird Photos

Posted in Uncategorized on September 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

OK, they would be better if I had a spotting scope, but dang! I got some serious photos today.

I was sitting in the sunshine, letting the summer’s last rays warm my aching muscles. The birds were ten feet away, in the shade. I zoomed in on them, but I had sunglasses on and I can’t “see” what the zoom lens sees. I just had to hope that the lens did what it should do: collect all the light and focus on the subject.

I don’t have to wait for film to be developed (although sometimes I miss that step). I had “instant gratification” instead.

Song  Sparrow in the bird bath. I called it a Fox Sparrow in FB but I think it is really a Song Sparrow.

 

 

 

House Finch on the fence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Female House Finch on the fence.

 

 

 

Oh, seriously? Silly finch!

I love birds. 🙂

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Celebrating Womanhood

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on September 16, 2012| 13 Comments »

The idea for this belongs to my dear friend, Amanda, at Living, Loving and Learning.

Amanda gave me an HTML snippet to use to link to all the other participating sites, but I’ll be darned if I am just plain not Web-savvy. WordPress used to be a little friendlier to the HTML ignorant, but they have changed their format and I am a little lost. But if you go to Amanda’s blog, you can find links to all the other bloggers participating. Happy reading!

For one day, we want to drown out negativity and celebrate the beauty and pride of women.

These days it seems that some people want us to be ashamed of being women. They want us to believe that we’re less: less intelligent, less important, less human. There is so much negativity out there. For one day, we want to flood the internet with positive messages about women.

I thought this subject would come easily to me, but I am lost in the whispers of all the voices of all the beautiful women I have known, some of them lost forever and some of them still living, still encouraging, still fighting the good fight. Some of them live in my own head.

I have decided to share the stories of two women who live in my head.

Here, in my little studio at the top of the stairs, I have created some strong women creatures, Zith & Mitzi. As I worked with the wire and recycled materials that were their bones and clothes, they whispered their stories to me.

Mitzi.

      

 

 

 

 

 

She whispered of a hard life, a life that sapped away at everything she loved. She lived in the sagebrush land. She liked the desert and the desert creatures, and she could often be found sitting on a rock shaded by a quaking aspen tree, next to a trickle of water. In her youth, she was a beautiful faerie with delicate gossamer wings and flowing long hair. She faced no hardships and no long winters of the soul, only the hopeful days of youth.

But winter came to her. The darkness that creeps into our hearts as we age and as we face ferocious opponents took their toll on her beauty. She had her throat slit by barbed wire. An enemy took a swipe at her head with a hatchet. Age ravaged her skin. Her hair thinned and receded. Her wings were plucked during an escape from a predator. She lost her lover, her family, and most of her contemporaries.She battled illness and defeated it.

But through it all, Mitzi never lost her dignity and her soul. She reached into her heart to find strength she did not know was there. A deeply spiritual creature, Mitzi found faith to rise above her circumstances.

Zith.

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She is a Woodland Elf, just under 2′ tall. She strides through the woods and meadows with a purpose, silent as a hunter (she is a huntress). She is bold, outrageous, out-going. She is never at a loss for the right words and her heart beats with compassion for the down-trodden.

Confronted by an enemy or a bully, Zith is a fearsome adversary. She will not back down. Zith knows her heart. Zhe is compassionate and passionate, strong-willed and determined.

She is also wounded and broken. The walking staff is a cane. She has a gimpy left arm that she must use to support herself. Still, she takes long strides and rarely pauses for a rest. Rest is for another time. Rest is for when there are no longer hungry mouths to feed and injustices to battle. Rest is for someone else.

Zith and Mitzi. They aren’t living and breathing as we know living and breathing, but they are alive. As my hands formed them, women from my past whispered bits of their stories into my ears and the models became symbols for living women. They carry the spirits of many women in their hearts of recycled wire and cloth, dryer lint and silk fabric.

Isn’t that what we all are, anyway?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now go read Amanda‘s post. At the bottom of her post is a link to all of the other bloggers participating today. Maybe you will decide to join us and write something positive about women. If you do, add your link to Amanda’s linky on the bottom of her page. Or go like Celebrating Womanhood on Facebook.

 

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Wildlife in the Backyard

Posted in bird watching, tagged , , , , on September 15, 2012| Leave a Comment »

This is mostly about wildlife in the backyard, but there might be some mechanical devices involved as well.

Today was a good day, mostly pain-free and very lazy. I am considering the comments made on my last post very seriously, but I have other things to do before I go asking a doctor for a dx of fibromyalgia. I do take it seriously: three friends in one week said the same thing after I whined to them about how I was feeling. I just hadn’t seriously considered it before because… well, I never thought my symptoms matched up properly.

But that isn’t what I wanted to write about tonight. We have a backyard full of wild creatures and I would love to share them with you, my small following of friends and family.

Unfortunately, I don’t have photos of everything.

For instance, a couple weeks ago my husband called me at 6:30AM. “Is the opossum still there?”

Um. What opossum would that be?

My husband lets his dog out very early in the morning, like about 4:30AM. And on this particular morning, Murphy proudly carried a dead opossum to the back door. Don chased him down in the yard and made him leave the poor body out in front of the shed. And now, at 6:30AM when it was light out, he wanted me to go out and see if the opossum was truly dead.

I assured him there was no body in the back yard.

Dumb dog! The opossum went into a stupor and “played” dead, and Murphy thought he had a prize. I’m sure it was very relieved to wake up from it’s self-induced coma to find it was still alive, and it made it out of the yard post-haste.

Last Monday, Don let his dog out at 4:30AM. And there was a terrible ruckus in the back corner of the yard, with barking and growling and scuffling. I woke up and held my breath, waiting to hear a cat scream. No cat. Whatever it was, it fought back and held Murphy at bay before it jumped onto the compost bin and over the 6′ bamboo screen, onto the neighbor’s little tin shed.

I moved all the hazelnut mulch bags into the backyard and stacked them onto the back stoop until I can find time to spread the nuts. I did this because something moved the bags around in the driveway and attempted to chew through thee plastic fiber.

Last week, I stepped out the back door in the early morning to discover the bags that were still unopened had been rearranged on the back stoop.

The critter left his mark.

Pretty certain that is the same critter that Murphy tangled with a few mornings earlier. I’d just spread hazelnuts over the flower beds in the back corner. Apparently we have a neighboring raccoon who is fond of filberts.

Darn thing also dug up my freshly planted mums and killed them. Guess it was also hunting grubs??

Today, I lazed around. I pulled out the lawn chair, set my camera on the bench beside me with a glass of ice water for refreshment, and opened the last book in the Cornelia Funke series I have been reading (Inkheart, Inkspell & Inkdeath). I kept one eye on the new birdbath.

I purchased the salad bowl at Goodwill and filled it with water. The stand is one I bought at a yard sale not too long ago. I also added a “bubbler” to make the water move and I have since moved the entire set-up to a different location. It has taken the small birds about a month to discover it, but now that they have – they love it.

But before I spotted any birds in the birdbath, there was a chattering and commotion in the hazelnut tree that my husband has allowed to grow wild along the back fence. It’s in a part of the yard where we have done no landscaping. Neglected, wild, and overgrown. And now there was a squirrel chattering back there, presumably at Harvey as he wandered the perimeter of the yard.

Harvey is hunting cats and doesn’t care about squirrels.

Harvey is not especially bright and he’s on a mission to get out of our yard to hunt cats.

I grabbed my camera and headed to the wild side of the yard.

The squirrel was upset with this large blue bird, not Harvey. The Steller’s Jay was working the hazelnut tree over.

Steller’s Jays are harder to capture than scrubjays. They aren’t as gregarious. But they are one of the most beautiful birds I have ever seen. I think they are prettier than the Eastern Bluejay.

The squirrel is a young Eastern Fox squirrel that only recently started coming over to our bird feeder. It seems he (or she) has also discovered the wild hazelnut in back.

The birdbath didn’t disappoint me. You can see the bubbler in the middle of the bowl there: it’s powered by two “D” batteries and just spins, making the water move. I was worried that it would put off the little birds, but this red-breasted nuthatch doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.

The Black-capped Chickadee was more worried about me and I was sitting 20 feet away.

We live along the Pacific Flyway, the major north-south migration route for thousands of birds annually. Our back yard is also on the flight path for airliners coming from the south, headed for PDX. We are also relatively close to several small airports and since we sit on the bluff over the Willamette River, we have some great thermals overhead. Small aircraft often buzz the house in the summer months.

Today, we were buzzed by three Vintage WWII airplanes. They’re noisy, but they don’t leave large bird droppings like the occasional Turkey Vultures that gets lost on the thermals overhead do.

The chickadee started to warm up to my presence. Or maybe this is a different bird.

The sun was dropping low and the shadows were getting long when I decided it was time to come in and fix dinner for my husband. But I couldn’t resist the squash bug. Pestilence.

 

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Frustrating

Posted in Uncategorized on September 9, 2012| 4 Comments »

It has been something of a frustrating weekend for me. I have these strange episodes where all my muscles just ache and I can’t find any energy to do anything and I end up doing very little physically. I happen to be in the middle of one of those episodes and it is extremely frustrating. The weather is nice and I want to get my garden winterized.

Or go hiking with my husband.

But instead of doing either, I curled up in the recliner for most of the weekend and read a book.

A good book, mind you, but all the same… I am frustrated by the tenderness and ache in all my muscles.

Harvey is frustrated with it, too. I took him for a walk every morning of the weekend and I kept my promise to him that each walk would be at least a mile long, but a mile isn’t long enough to wear him out and make him a tired but happy doggie.

He has this doggie dream of breaking into the area where we (normally) have a vegetable garden. He wants to catch the cats that he thinks hide in there. He wants to finish tearing off the boards on the fence and escaping. He wants to Run Free.

(what movie does that remind you of? Or, worse – what song from 6th Grade Choir does that remind you of?) (The latter question only applies to people of my age)

(Hint: it has to do with a lioness.)

Have news for Harvey: we have begun the process of rebuilding the Fence That Harvey Ate. It cost us $83.00, so far. I think it will stay under $100.00, but the point is… Harvey is not allowed into the veggie garden area.

Neither is Murphy, but he doesn’t sit and pine away along the fence like Harvey does.

I asked Harvey today what was the matter. Don’t we love him enough? Isn’t he happy here? Why does he always want to run away?

Last week he escaped again. I was struggling with the lawn debris container and the front gate. Harvey slipped between us and into freedom. There was a split second where my heart sank, I quit breathing, and a decision. I knelt down and commanded in my loudest voice (which is never very loud because I have an irritatingly small voice), “Harvey! Here!”

And there was a split second where Harvey vacillated between the Call of the Wild and his conditioning to Come when his owner kneels and points down at the ground with the word, “HERE!”

He came to me and I grabbed his collar. I praised him up one side and down the other, but I could see that he regretted his decision as soon as he was captured.

All I knew was that if he had gone, I would have let him. I hurt too much to give chase.

I am tired of hurting.

If this episode follows the cycle of episodes like it, in two weeks, I will feel fine. No aches, no pain, and lots of energy. In the meantime, I am down to just plain feeling like crud.

In good news: once it gets dark outside, Harvey just wants to stay home. I think he’s afraid of the dark.

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Random Photos

Posted in Uncategorized on September 4, 2012| 1 Comment »

    August’s Blue Moon. I really lucked out: usually the moon is too bright and the digital camera doesn’t want to focus on the image, leaving me with a huge blurry light in the center of the photo. But there was just enough cloud cover to create a natural filter, and I walked away with three nice photos of the full moon on August 31.

I have spent half the summer trying to get a decent photo of one or another of the several hummingbirds I have finally coerced into my garden. This is one of my favorites.  (Female Anna’s Hummingbird)

I can’t tell you how many missed opportunities I’ve had because the darn hummers seem to know when I am sitting in wait with a camera vs. when I am just sitting out in the yard. When I have no camera, the birds are plentiful and friendly, but when I have the camera – they all but disappear!

The male Anna’s Hummingbird. Different day.

I am thinking of putting up a sign next to the bird bath:

Jaci’s Bird & Cat Spa

Birds – free

Cats – $0.25

I doubt it will keep the cats away, but it would be funny.

I do not know what kind of fly this is. It is a fly: two wings. Diptera. My husband suggested it might be a Bot Fly (ewwwww) but I couldn’t find any matching images on the all-powerful Internet (which is not all-powerful but has more images for flies than my Field Guide to Insects by Audobon). It was a large fly: 3/4″ long. Almost as large as a small horsefly and not quite as large as a deer fly. I would have squashed it if it had been a horse or deer fly. They hurt!!

There’s a term for pieces of driftwood that resemble something living, but I cannot remember what the term is. That’s my “squirrel” piece of wood behind the white Chrysanthemum.

What to do with a rotting old stool. Support a Hollyhock, of course!

Why is there an oak tree growing in my lawn? Why is there an oak tree growing anywhere in my yard? I used to blame it on squirrels but I have caught the Scrub jay red-handed with a filbert in it’s beak. I have filbert trees in my yard, too, but we encourage those. The oak must go (although, I confess, it would be a pretty tree…)

Just takes a life time to grow.

(That was a stupid sentence and I know it: of course it takes a life time. The oak’s life time. What I meant was: it takes longer for the oak tree to grow than I have to wait for it to grow.)

Besides, Don will mow over it.

Bags of Hazelnut mulch waiting to be opened and spread around my garden.

Did you happen to notice that I used the term “filbert” and “hazelnut” in the same post? They were Filberts when I was a kid. Somewhere along the line, they became Hazelnuts. We made up a story about that: Filbert died, and Hazel inherited the orchard. So what used to be Filbert’s is now Hazel’s.

Sort of like “The Legend of Falling Rock.” The Legend of Falling Rock is by no means limited to West Virginia mythology: his signs are all over the West, too: “Watch for Falling Rock”, “Fallen Rock”, “Rocks on Road”. My little sister, my older brother and I spent hours in the back seat of the car spinning yarns about Fallen Rock as we traveled on vacations. But our dad always had the best versions.

Honey bees on the Sedum.

I’d love to know whose backyard honey bee hive we contribute pollen to. They should give us free honey for taking care of their honey bees. That’s what I think.

A beautiful anenome. I am so amazed! When I first planted anenomes in our yard, Murphy – the puppy, then – followed me around and dug them all up and ate them. They did not kill him, but I wanted to. This year, I planted a bunch and every single one of them came up and bloomed and thrived.

Murphy must be a wiser dog.

I am so fascinated with the dozens of bees, hover flies and bee flies in our yard! I sneaked up on this drone and started snapping away (digital photography – setting on “Sports” to capture the bees as they moved from flower to flower since the stupid camera argues with me over F-stops and film speed).

And this was a totally accidental capture: the bee on the move! You can see it’s trajectory and the stop-motion as it turned and faced the lens with a little frowning face.

What! Get out of my face, camera! Buzzzzz!

Such a happy photo!

And that’s my life update through my camera lens.

 

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