Musings

What has happened to the year? Zooooooooom. It’s May…MAY. I know this, but at a deep level, I’m not there yet. Similarly, I’m not quite groking that it is foxglove season yet.

Posted at 9:57 PM | Comments Off on Month five

On a typical day in this household, we lack scheduled activities (say: retirees). Today, we acted! We early voted, no small thing because there was a long slate of offices needing consideration, although many were unopposed, incumbent judges 🙁.

The second activity was I went to an outdoor meeting of BookClub. The evening sky was fabulous from the poolhouse (autocorrected temporarily to poorhouse 🤣). We talked about “The Women” by Kristin Hannah, a novel about American women nurses in Vietnam in the late 60s. We had a retired nurse from slightly earlier among us, and so a fascinating discussion. She was more in and near Saigon than Hannah’s nurses, so the nursing was slightly different, but still: war. Excellent read.

Posted at 11:10 PM | Comments Off on Oot, aboot

When the morning sky looks this captivating, ya just gotta smile.

Posted at 11:09 PM | Comments Off on Even before coffee

I forgot to mention yesterday that the night before I dreamed that I was visiting with a crew excavating an archaeological site, and we were sitting around the crew house and Jay-Z was discoursing knowledgeably about the site.

A late Easter poinsetta?

Posted at 9:54 PM | Comments Off on Disjointed

The peony-blooming process strikes me as accelerated this year. I also don’t remember the petals loosing so much color, but that may simply be my inattention to (retaining) detail.

Posted at 9:52 PM | Comments Off on Peony progression

Usually my activities are light on Sunday. Today I lazed, and did very little.

Posted at 10:22 PM | Comments Off on Spring slump?

I went out early in the moist sunshine to see the morning humidity. I found it in the air…

…and on the vegetation.

Late morning, we went to the Swedish store of exports from Ukraine and Poland…and got the…point.

Back home, a peony was new-opened.

Posted at 7:26 PM | Comments Off on Fresh sights

I usually keep an eye on the weather predictions for the immediate future where I am, yet somehow I managed to momentarily be surprised that a storm/rain front would be coming through “roit-now.” Which it is.

Posted at 9:44 PM | Comments Off on Thunder

I think of this as immersion red, as in I gaze at it an want to immerse myself in the blossom. What a lovely space that would be!

Posted at 9:00 PM | Comments Off on Except for the ants

We did see the eclipse. We perhaps didn’t prepare our recording equipment for the event. This is taken with a “real camera,” that is, one that you can’t talk to, with eclipse glasses held in front of the lens.

Here’s the total eclipse—again, not a stellar photo, yet still a wonder. Phenom witnessed, photoed, and oohed over…so we hopped back in the car and turned south into what became a series of traffic jams. Remember, we were in southern Illinois, and we had only a few bridges near enough to get across a major river. [We heard that an academic prognosticator in Carbondale estimated at several hundred thousand folks would visit southern Illinois to eclipse-watch.]

En route, we encountered a double rainbow—with both ends on the ground! Sorry, not shown. I saw no leprechauns or pots of gold, although I had a good view of the rainbow-feet. Still, we took it as lucky…

…that we encountered the front that brought this a few miles before the hail, and, as it happened, we only had to drive through hail-on-the-ground, not plummeting hail, whew. We motored along with great care between hail-piles, and within two miles, were out of the ice and headed for our traffic-jam fate. For the record, we reached home safely at 12:45am, at about the end of my energy.

After seeing photos today of Etna’s “smoke rings,” I wonder if there’s another phenomena sighting we should put on our short list?!!—and perhaps arrange tickets???!! 🤣 Kidding.

Posted at 8:37 PM | Comments Off on Phenomena