Chet Baker's Last Run

For the past week, I've had a song running through my head, Carol Burnett's farewell.



I'm so glad we've had this time together

Just to have a laugh or sing a song

Seems we just get started and before you know it

Comes the time we have to say "So long."



Over and over. I hear her voice and see her tugging her earlobe. I wondered why. Now I know. I honestly think it was Ida, a great Carol

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The Best Day Ever

Eclipse morning, August 21, started off partly cloudy and warm and beautiful. I went out to document the "Flying Saucer" morning glories that are giving me such a charge as more and more open.



Pearly soft against the pearly soft sky.




The amount of blue on them seems to vary by plant. Two of the plants have flowers with more blue. This is an hypothesis I need to test. I had thought that

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Jemima Jay Update, August 22

Against all expectations and hopes, Jemima Jay is still coming in to visit and wolf down delicious food at the Secret Studio Feeder. I watch her every day, watch her interacting with the resident jays, and I see her being assimilated into their ranks. Nothing gives me more joy than knowing this precious bird is on her way to full jay-dom, unhampered by strange notions about Chet Baker and humans

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What's for Dinner in the Vegetable Garden? Everything!

In the vegetable garden, the first two rows of beans are sighing their last. The second two rows are just kicking in. Oh huzzah! My goal was to have beans all summer long. That's my goal every summer, but it's always too dry to pull it off. Not this year! I'm so excited to pick them tonight. Nothing like a tender snap bean from the garden, steamed, with butter and salt. I'm drooling as I write.

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August Rocks: Garden Tour 1

The August cooldown is here. A Canadian air mass is holding sway and the air smells of hay and sweet wine.



I took a garden tour last night after spending much of the day mowing, raking, weeding, and preening my flower beds. I don't do a lot of preening. There's too much of the other stuff to be done.



I'm celebrating right now because I am no longer in pain. I returned home from New

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Butterfly Crazy!

I knew it was going to be a good butterfly day when I couldn't get a dang thing done at the drawing/writing table.



I kept seeing swallowtails.




Eastern tiger swallowtail on crocosmia




This was interesting to me because I couldn't remember having seen swallowtails fighting over the crocosmia my friend Bonnie gave me years ago. I was astounded when she told me I wouldn't have to pull

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Bug Crazy

I've always loved bugs. Everyone claims they were a lonely, nerdy child who spent hours alone. But not many people can claim they spent hours as a child nudging an assortment of small insects down the sloping sides of ant lion pits to see what would happen; digging them up to find the crazy little ice-tong faced critter that could only crawl backward in circles; playing with tiger beetle larvae

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