I think…fingers crossed…that the hot and extremely humid weather we’ve been having for over a week and a half has broken. I’ll know more when I venture outside. For the first time in what seems to be a long time, the windows are open.
Yesterday, I glimpsed a butterfly near the butterfly bush. It seemed to be darker than the Eastern Swallowtails that hang around here. Could it be a Monarch, so rarely seen nowadays? I grabbed a camera, ran outside, verified that a gorgeous Monarch was perched on my bush and snapped a picture. Want to see it?
It was so humid that my lens steamed up. By the time I realized it and wiped the lens, the Monarch was gone.
And then I surprised a hummingbird – twice – who was dining on the phlox. Again. The steamy lens.
That’s how frigging humid it was here yesterday. At one point, the clouds were covering the sun and I thought it was less humid than it actually was, so I decided to mow the corral. Thirty minutes later, dripping wet, I acknowledged that I had misjudged the atmospheric conditions.
Second shower of the day.
Today, however, I think we’ll be able to tackle the front lawn. Every blade of grass around here is at least 6 inches long. It’s making me crazy.
I have this transferware plate that lives on the sideboard. It holds ‘found treasures.’ A fossil and seashells found in Florida and California, an agate, a crystal, a broken sand dollar, a pod, blue glass, broken china found on our property, birds eggs, a decorative nozzle also found on the property. The newest addition is the green teacup handle. Somehow these things just emerge from the ground after years of being buried. I found this in the Memorial Garden.
That’s a wild turkey feather on the left, along with another recently found feather.
As I said on Instagram a while back, these remind me of the treasures that Boo Radley painstakingly hides in the tree – gifts for Jem and Scout. Oh, that book, it melts my heart.
A zinnia getting ready to open. The leaves on this one were being attacked by a darned Japanese Beetle. I thought they were gone for the season, so I was rather outraged when I found a beetle eating the leaves on one of my long awaited zinnias. Get out of here, Japanese Beetles! You have overstayed your welcome.
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Heads up! Just got a message that Don’s episode of Mr. Robot airs tonight at 10 pm on USA!
Happy Wednesday.
That humidity is awful! My glasses steam up when I go out. Its cooler here today and the hummingbird has buzzed by a few times getting his drink from the flowers in front of the window. Mr. Toes just watches! I need to make a list of chores I want to finish, painting a set of shelves, painting a cubby and rearranging my pink pottery is a couple of them. Maybe the weather will cooperate. Hugs!!!
Have a good day, Linda! Cooler weather sure helps when trying to finish chores.
Our windows have been closed since April or May – who can remember? – and we’ll be able to open them again sometime in October. Probably. Summer was my least favorite season when I lived where there are seasons, so for my sins…
We just closed them again, Margaret! Hot and humid – less so than yesterday, but still humid.
I love your found treasures. I do a bit of that myself. It seems the strangest things find their way into the forest. Your monarch photo reminds me of the view inside my oven when I forget that I have my reading glasses on…steamy!
The humidity is really hanging in there this year.
It really is, Shanna. Enough already!
Sounds like the humidity I encountered when living for a few years on the Gulf Coast. I could never endure it at this age; I was younger then and, actually, before living there in my 30s, I’d never really looked at a weather report in my life because, living in Southern California, back in the day, ‘weather’ was a sort of a non-issue. Oh, I hope you can get out today without too much frustration and discomfort!
Intriguing shot of the baby zinnia. I thought for a moment that you had a new species there!
Yes, the monarchs. Never see them now. There’s a nearby town with a particularly huge stand of equally-disappearing eucalyptus trees…once such a common sight in this part of the world, especially when used as windbreaks between orchards, the latter of which are also disappearing due to housing development…and, it used to be, in the eucalyptus, monarchs on their journey would ‘rest’ for awhile. You had to catch them at the right time and my fresh-out-of-college entomologist/agricultural biologist boyfriend back then knew just WHEN. So, off we’d go, cameras and net (his…he’d catch & release) in hand…and, wow, it was such a treat to see those large clouds of beautiful creatures. They were big, robust butterflies, too. Any butterfly I see now resembles a small moth. Very sad.
I’d taken a break from headlines yesterday and didn’t realize we have another, new, raging wildfire in the San Bernardino area. Sounds like I had a lot of boyfriends in my youth…I didn’t…but one of them had parents who owned a vacation home in Wrightwood of that fire-threatened locale up in the mountains (eons ago in my life); we drove up in snow and ice, crazy ‘kids’ that we were, and I had to borrow his mom’s snow boots. I’d never really seen falling snow before that and had not yet learned how to snow ski, so it was a standout experience. I loved Wrightwood; I hate to think of it all burned up. Many Los Angelenos have getaway places in Wrightwood, Big Bear, Lake Arrowhead. I’ve been lucky enough to be in those places many times because it’s equally as fun in winter as summer. One of my dad’s clients had a cool A-frame at Big Bear Lake we’d stay in, usually for June, and at other times we had a favorite destination featuring bungalows not unlike what I’ve read about from when they were very popular in that same time frame of the ’60s in the Catskills (one of my most-beloved films, directed by Tony Goldwyn and produced by Dustin Hoffman, called “A Walk On The Moon” with Diane Lane, Liev Schreiber and Tovah Feldshuh [of the Broadway stage] was about a family staying in one of those delightful ‘camps’ ). They had a lending library on the premises, a pool, bicycles; as kids, it was Heaven. Lake Arrowhead is a beautiful community; my aunt and uncle rented a house with its own rickety dock and small boat each summer. Anyway, good memories and, although school has started in a few SoCalif counties, a lot of folks are still on August summer vacation at the beaches and lakes so, gosh, more prayers for safety of people and places…and wildlife. We used to expect wildfire in the fall but never so early as lately. Devastation of long-term drought, no doubt. Or global warming? Both. I’ve begun to curse it frequently (again); I’m seeing no promise of rain in long-term/’winter’ forecasts either. I can’t believe we’re going to be in for yet another dry winter and am seriously wondering if the drought will break in my lifetime. It just never ends, year after year now; YEARS. I say to anybody even THINKING about moving to California: Do Not.
Those camps in the Catskills are more and more a thing of the past.
Yes, I’ve spent some time in Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear – in fact, it was the first official trip that Don and I took when we were courting.
We wouldn’t move back to California. What’s happening there breaks our hearts.
This was a big, beautiful Monarch. I’m going to look for him again today.
And I thought you mis-focused! Lots of hummers in my yard, but few butterflies. Just cabbage moths, which bother my gardener daughter to distraction. Hope the humidity does break for you. Enjoying these days that transition to autumn will be a lot more comfortable.
That darn steamy air did a number on my lens, Wendy.
My glasses fog the same as does your lens. It is a pleasant morning, but the humidity is supposed to be raging again later today and for the next couple of days again. I don’t ever remember a summer when the grass was so wet even at noon. I just went out in the garden to pick a few tomatoes, and my feet are soaked. And it is nearly noon and the sun has been out all morning. It seems it never really is dry out there with all of the never-ending humidity that we have had this year.
They say when you find a feather in your yard, it has been dropped from heaven….. that should bring a smile!!
We were just mowing and the mower kept getting clogged because the grass was so long and wet – at 11:30 am!
I like the message about the feather! I hope it’s true.
I love how those bits and pieces that you gather make such a pretty display when you put them together..My son and I used to go on many walks when he was little…We would gather treasures such as yours along the way and he would keep them in a little box…every once and a while we would sit and look through them..I believe that was one of the best things we did together…It is a bit less hot and humid today here but still enough to be annoying and the rain should be starting any minute now…Yea for Don..I always look forward to seeing him on TV and sometimes I get a surprise when I’m watching a show and he suddenly appears in it…Stay cool!
We’re back inside after the massive mowing of the front lawn. Tired!
Thanks for the heads up about Don’s appearance in tonight’s episode. I love the show and rush home every week from dance practice so I can savor every minute!
Enjoy, Kim!
Love the plate of bits and pieces! I have one of rocks, collected from various travels, and times. I did find a crane feather from the family that visits daily….they have a regular route! The humidity is supposed to break on Sunday….I cannot wait! ;)
I’m ready! It was less humid yesterday, but it was still humid!
Dear Claudia,Interesting, Those are the Exact kind of things that I call Treasures!
Judy A-
They sure are treasures to me!
P.S.To: Dear claudia, A friend of mine just brought in to work today, a container with, I guess you call a pre Monarch Caterpillar,just growing and eating his huge milk weed leaf, They(this family) started out on the 4th of July looking for the eggs under the leaf then carefully picked the leaf, hatched them in their back porch, and then put them in these containers to morf, as it were into Monarch Butterflies. This way everyyear they are putting dozens of Butterflies safely back into the neighborhood. Judy A-
Good for them! I got pictures of the Monarch last night. We have milkweed growing all over the property, so I’m fairly sure he came from one of our plants.