scratch and sniff frogs and origami seed baskets

Every once in a while, you need to pull the refrigerator away from the corner and clean the floor underneath it. The only remedy for having done so, is going outside with the camera. So this afternoon, we visited the little wetland across the road. The water’s low, and we only spotted one frog, and one tadpole.

This, I believe, is a green frog (Lithobates clamitans), not to be confused with its northern cousin, the mink frog (Lithobates septentrionalis), which you can identify by its scent of rotten onions. It’s the “scratch-and-sniff” frog. See, had I known that ahead of time, think of the fun we would have had!

Sunflowers: good for the soul.

And now for musk mallow.

Sweetpea refers to this as an origami seed basket.

I defy you to come up with a better design.

Indeed, it’s hard to improve on mother nature.

just do it, already.

I had an epiphany today. Those things you love to do, that feed your soul?

You should do them.

It’s not enough to know that you love doing them.

You need to actually do them.

I know, brilliant, right? That’s what you get for having an Ivy League degree. Smarts, folks. Smarts.

I had this epiphany today, when I checked out a community garden a handful of miles from our house. The plan was just, take the recycling in, and pick up something at the coop. A wise angel told me to bring the Nikon w/ macro lens with me. The community garden is across the street from the coop, and I was lured in by the spectacle of sunflowers the size of dinner plates looming over the broccoli and kale. That’s what that phantasmagorical thing in the above two pictures:  sunflower seeds in the act of gestating.

And then all the rest of the ornamental flowers sucker punched me.

The place was swimming with bees. Here’s one in the act of lift-off.

 

Morning glory calling it quits for the day.

 

Who can resist this fire? Not me!

 

Hi. I’m a wedding cake.

 

Focus here!

No, here!

 

Blaaaaaaaahhhh!

Let’s make ALL of the parts a pretty color.

 

Glug glug glug glug *burp*

I’m so pretty you can’t resist me even when I’m overexposed AND out of focus.

 

Truly, this is flower porn. No, really: this flower – all these flowers – have been BRED for the seductiveness of their reproductive bits. Think about that.  The confection above – its rays (petals, you might say, but technically probably rays) haven’t even unfurled and it’s already put on make up and a party dress and started dancing. It’s a kindergartener  competing in a beauty pageant.   

The hallucinogenic glow-sticks of echinacea.

Ahhhhhh….much better. I hope whatever you love to do, you’re out there doing it!

little miss cranky

What a gorgeous weekend we just had here in beautiful southern Vermont, and gosh golly ma’am, what a CRAPPY MOOD I’VE BEEN IN. I’m having trouble adjusting to the season changing. I’m already half in February in my mind, when there is nothing and I mean nothing, blooming, and it’s so cold I can’t dawdle outside the way I like to and even if I could, the camera doesn’t work well in the cold either. And I haven’t run even so much as five miles at a pop in weeks, and I miss my endorphins and I’m MEAN.
Mind you, it’s not even the fall equinox yet, but I didn’t let that get in the way of my perfectly miserable mood.
Instead, I went to a friend’s birthday party yesterday. That’s right, I left the house, while in a foul mood. I hung out with our mutual friend, and the two of us groused about how crabby we were, and then I bonded with my hostess friend for a bit, and she confessed she was grumpy too – something about All These People Coming Over. So that lifted my mood considerably, I had a fine old time, and watched these other people I didn’t know fire potatoes off into the woods with a potato rocket. It’s some PVC pipe and it involves lighting hairspray on fire. Brilliant.
I burned off some of the bad ass attitude with housework, and with a (for me) furiously fast 4.5 miler today. And yesterday I worked out on the treadmill AND went for an aggressively paced 4 mile walk. Plus, I forced myself outside as well, to prove to myself that things are still growing.To wit:

wild rose hips. See that spooge? Remember it from here? It’s all the dried up stamens and stuff. Nice!


thank god for hawkweed.


yellow foxtail. Try and eat my seeds and I’ll STAB YOU.


aster flowers having a perm.


cattails are starting to lose their minds.


morning glory starting to pack it in for the day.


“stick out your tongue”, aka butter-and-egg.


riots of queen anne’s lace, above and below.



more yellow foxtail, above and below.

onwards and upwards.

a parade, ladies against women, and a wormhole

Those of you who enjoyed my Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the local Fourth of July parade will be pleased with this particular blog post.
Today, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village we live on the edges of had its annual community fair, complete with library book sale, silent auction, white elephant sale, sit-down barbecue lunch, and…the cutest-ever parade. The parade route normally goes from the elementary school to the church, a distance of (brace yourself) a quarter mile. But FEMA asked the organizers to re-route it so that their trucks, needed in the Post Bitch Irene recovery effort, could get through unimpeded. (While our town made it through relatively unscathed, the next town up-and-over got completely hammered – my guess is they were on their way there).
So instead, the parade route wound around the church property. The church sits in a little wedge in the center of the village, so the route was a pointy triangle. I realize that all triangles are pointy. What am I trying to say. A VERY pointy triangle?
First came the kids on tricycles, upstaged by the kid in the stroller.

This parade was apparently in honor of our local elected officials.

Then came the students of one of two village schools:


Here comes the tractor!




He’s pulling a percussion group. At least one of those guys is a neighbor. Another one fronts our favorite local band.

As for the giant puppet: is that a ghost? a chicken? the ghost of a chicken? I’m not sure.
Rounding it off, we have another band.


That’s it! That was the parade! Hooray!


Next was the silent auction.

I didn’t bid on this globe. But I like it. (I have an aversion to owning objects.) (That doesn’t mean I don’t own a ton of objects, just that it pains me to own more of them.)
Here’s something I did not know existed: a gaming chair. You sit in it to play video games. I believe it has speakers up by the shoulders.

The sign on it says that it comes with a “power chord”. Awesome. If it came with a catheter so you don’t have to get up to pee, it would be even more awesome, don’t you think?
The “Ladies Against Women” society gave an informal concert, singing songs of the delights of staying in the kitchen, where ladies belong.
Afterwards, I flirted with them and they posed for a picture.

And now, for their name tags:

I love Vermont.
We didn’t stick around for the barbecue this year, but here is the set up for it.

That’s Kevin, with that sexy hat.

For the flower report, I have this: the tall anemone, also called thimbleweed, are starting to pop open a bit more.
Unpopped:


Popped:

And that’s Kevin’s foot over on the left.

Also, did you ever wonder what wormholes to different universes look like?


I think when this lifetime’s over and I’m heading back to Source for debriefing, this is what the last thing I’ll see will be:

here, have a rainbow

day lily


honeysuckle

orange hawkweed


calendula


black-eyed susan


katydid nymph

sensitive fern, fertile front thereof


possibly blue-eyed grass. never was quite sure about this one.


morning glory


thistle


siberian iris