Happy Birthday, Alex!

My little boy Alex is 24 today! Happy Birthday, son!

Rural Summer : I've been noticing some interesting new bugs around this year. Last night, while accompanying Bounder on his night perambulation, this scary moth was hanging out by the front door. The "eyes" are to scare away predators that might eat it.

At 6:30 this morning, it was cool and overcast enough (only 80 degrees! Cooler than inside the library!) to go pick blackberries down at the pond.

Here is what they looked like a week ago:

Give these puppies a week of 95+ degree heat and a rain shower last night, and they plump up and jump into my bucket. Well, not quite. There are the thorns and the bugs and the frogs croaking in the early morning light. And there was some major thrashing about in the sumac up on the south slope, followed by some indignant snorting and snuffling. Deer, bedded down in the brush, resentful that my presence required them to get up early and move. But free food, yippee!