Friday, 26 August 2022
With our early spring and late summer timings of our visits, we caught the beginning of lilacs and lupines, and the end of the sweet peas. And apple season! We had our first of the year last night, and it was sweet and fine (albeit slightly mealy, but it was a mealy kind that I forget the name of). No insects, either! Yay.
Thursday, 25 August 2022
This afternoon, after the rain that started overnight stopped…
…I took a walk down to the beach as an antidote to the nauseating reporting by David Enrich in WashPo, “How a Corporate Law Firm Led a Political Revolution”…
…which discusses in detail how the law firm Jones Day inserted their (conservative) choices into the judiciary across the country, including into the Supreme Court.
Lest you think this was a side-effect and not a deliberate plan, note this quote from Rob Luther, one of Don McGahn’s assistants in the White House Counsel’s Office, soon after he left government service and joined Jones Day: “We did it! We reshaped the judiciary! We changed the country!”
Wednesday, 24 August 2022
It, indeed, was a foggy morn, but there was more than that going on. Here’s the earliest light. Just magical. My eye found more pink in the sky than this shows. If you like pink.
This was at the beach mid- to late-afternoon. I think this is a native mint/mint family. Love the flower-collar at the leaf junctions. [Kindly substitute the botanical terms, if you know/care about them.]
Monday, 22 August 2022
I treasure these ground-fog mornings. They only happen when many variables align…lack of wind all night, sufficient humidity, clear skies…and they aligned this morning. The fog thickens, thins, then thickens again over perhaps a half-hour. This was the first phase of thickening, with the earliest dawn light. So glad I was awake for this.
Sunday, 21 August 2022
It’s official. We’ve reached the land of calm waters (at present)…
…and glowing white birches.
Life is good. [Also no extraneous critters that breathe (like mice or bats) were in the house, only a few dead “bugs” (like flies and spiders).]
Saturday, 20 August 2022
We rolled out of Big A-Town as the sun came up. Whew.
And, after many hours, we rolled into (and through) The Motor City, headed for pizza in a ’burb with long-time friends. Whew.
Friday, 19 August 2022
This is where I’ve been dumping the coffee grounds. They are fresh…and yet, look, they’ve been colonized! I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, as I do know that fungi are decomposers.
Thursday, 18 August 2022
When I was first learning archaeological lab techniques for handling artifacts, I was told, and rightly so, that cleaning, even if done carefully, was likely to remove more than “dirt,” and whatever else got removed might be significant.
If you can follow that run-on sentence.
I have to laugh at some of the reactions to the “Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color” exhibit at the MET in NYC. It includes Greek and Roman sculptures that we almost always see in naked marble or other material, as if they were not painted when originally displayed…even though the fine art professionals that put them on display and analyze them know darned well that paint flecks are still embedded on their surfaces.
Without a doubt, they were painted. And painted brightly. Take a look…wait, here’s an example. This is “Reconstruction of a marble finial in the form of a sphinx” by Vinzenz Brinkmann (link).
Wednesday, 17 August 2022
This morning, this slope was saplings and ivy, over and over. We brought in a trio of pros with chainsaws, and the saplings are chipped and gone. We have ivy removal chores ahead of us. Whew. Better than it was.
Tuesday, 16 August 2022
Even though it was sometimes rather warm on the Galápagos, it was generally temperate or cool in the Quito Valley area. I think my body reset for autumn cool, and even though the highs all week are predicted only in the 80s (ONLY), I’m feeling indolent, lazy, and slothful these days.