Justfolk's photos

A half-hour ago I would not have been able to tell you anything about Antares other than that it is a star. But a half-hour ago I saw a red star fairly close to the Moon and wondered what it was. So I looked it up and found out that it is Antares. I also found out it is so-called because of its reddish colour, a competitor in the sky for Mars (a.k.a. Ares, right? You following? There may be a test). In my picture none of the reddishness is visible. You'll have to take my word for it. Or get out on A-deck and see for yourself. If you can zoom in you'll see two or three other stars, even one closer to the moon than Mr Chase-Mars. I don't know their names.

A few minutes ago, just a few minutes after local sunset, I took this picture from our back door. I exposed for the moon so the sky is greyer and darker than it appeared to the eye. But I like it like this.

We stopped mowing next to our driveway and we keep getting interesting flowers as a result. This pink (or God's flower, dianthus, if you like) is one of them. Though "pinking shears" is a modern term, the verb "to pink" (to puncture, perforate or make ragged edges) is indeed older than either the adjective or noun referring to the colour pink. *Maybe* -- only maybe: the OED is very cautious on the point -- maybe the flower pink was named for its petals' ragged edge. Maybe. But the best etymologisers are not sold on the idea.

I almost always first notice waxwings by their call. It's a high-pitched nasal sort of whistle. And I heard one this afternoon while sitting on the deck. Having finally given in to birding technology, I had the ipad open with a call-recognition app. It said to me, "Yes, b'y. That's a cedar waxwing." (Okay. it doesn't speak like that. . . ) But the waxwings visually blend in. My wife saw it before I did. There were actually two hanging around for a couple of minutes and then hitting the road again.

Two of my most favourite neighbours, Vera and Helen, in the heat of today. I bought two glasses.

In my in-laws' garden last night, we'd just eaten a leg of lamb and other assorted deliciosities at the table just out of the picture, and we started lounging at the fire pit. There were flies but they knew where to go when the fire started. And there were flankers flying towards shoes and pant cuffs. A water-hose was in the grass nearby; it didn't need to be used.

All my adult life I called these things wasps. In my easy-going old-age and retirement I have found out they are hoverflies, something altogether different. They just mimic some aspects of wasp behaviour. Duh. I understand this one is the thick-legged hoverfly. Go ahead: say "Pleased to meet you."

I was parked for a few minutes this morning next to the steel frame of a building being built. At least a couple of these large things were pushed out on one floor and hoisted to the upper-most floor by the crane. Leaned over to point the camera out the window on the other side of the car, I couldn't hold it straight, so this picture is turnt somewhat.

The big, old apple tree in the backyard has produced apples about half the 21 years we've lived with it:. Nothing great -- most times fewer than a dozen apples. This year there were a couple of hundred blooms and they were open on warm days when bees and other pollinators were hanging about. Today we could see the result: a few fattening bellies of some having-done-the-job flowers. Fingers are metaphorically crossed for a bumper crop.

As I drove by this sign, I thought to myself, "So *that* is why they were so successful. It certainly wasn't because, to my mind, they were good." So I parked the car and walked back to get the picture.

This afternoon on the deck in the sometimes hazy, sometimes clouded sun.

Two nights ago, not long after supper, I looked out the kitchen door and saw the rain was stopping. This was the view past our trees and across the valley.

The Moon seen in the daytime is always a little surreptitious, As if it's trying to hide. And perhaps trying to get outa here quickly. This was in the late morning; it is scheduled to drop below the horizon in about three hours.

It opened last night or this morning and the front is pretty nice too, but I liked its backside.

A new addition to our back doorstep. A dahlia, I'm told.

I'm pretty sure this is a junco, a fledgling junco. I'm not at all sure that it hatched from the nest two juncos cultivated on our front lawn, about twenty metres from the apple tree it is sitting in. But maybe.

In our house we don't get many chances to drink old good wine. And to be honest we didn't expect much from this bottle of a 1997 Chablis. It was a gift from a friend who, now in her mid-eighties, has decided she really doesn't need any longer to keep the wine she's been hoarding for a quarter-century. So she gave me and another friend each twenty bottles. Very nice. This was the first bottle we opened. We sat in the sun before supper this evening and finished it off in short order. It was delicious.

Two years ago, all the public paths around here sprouted signs indicating which direction for walkers to walk to reduce congestion and the close passing of people during the Covid-19 epidemic. As time passed, the signs lost their arrows and people became less concerned about that particular kind of interaction. And now those signs are getting some graffiti, like this endearment between R and G.