Justfolk's photos

Until sometime in the early 1980s, I called this plant "Poison blueberry." Then I learnt it was called Clintonia -- for some obscure American politician. However, I immediately associated it with the "other" Clinton who, for reasons I cannot remember since he was merely a state governor at the time, was in the news at that time, forty years ago. Its blue berries look almost nothing like the edible blueberry, and not as pleasant either. Its flowers are very pretty. This was this afternoon, mid-June.

We've got three rhododendrons and every year they follow a pattern in blooming:. The front one always opens first; then the one by the garage; and finally the one in the backyard. This is the middle one. None of them produces a very deep burgundy like the one we miss, one we planted 42 years ago at the house we lived in back then. It grew to be huge and had beautifully deep-coloured flowers. The three we have now (we planted these too, about 20 years ago) are all shades of pink once they open.

This is the nest that a junco whose picture I posted a few days ago was making with its partner. And now they have four eggs. I knew the nest was there but I had not seen the birds in a few days. Today I thought I should try to mow the lawn, and I would skirt the area with the nest. But one of the juncos was present and became very distressed at my presence, so I gave up mowing at all. Each egg is about 1.5cm long.

I half expected this starling to speak to us this afternoon. There we were, on the deck, minding our own business, with cool drinks in hand, and this one arrives, hopping around the deck, back and forth to the spot where peanuts usually sit for him. He/she was obviously demanding service. (Uhh, service which was given.) He/she came back a little later with a fledging starling, presumably this year's offspring. The introduction wasn't made properly though because the young one disappeared up into a tree.

Little do you know, if you don't do the same, the trouble we currant-growers go to each year to get red lipstick on each of the blooms to aid them in their dating efforts. When we miss a bloom, we carry some regret for the bloom's chances. But sometimes it is the changes that bring fruit.

So R W Emerson thought this was a "rival to the rose." Pfah. The rose has the rhodora beat in only one area: smell.

If you look closely you can see the shape of the moon last night, less than a half moon. It was over-exposed, sacrificed, for the stars. But as always, I hand-held this shot, rather than invest time in setting up a tri-pod, and the stars streaked into little lozenge shapes. Well, there you go. I still like what I got.

I don't know whose bag of tools was stolen but the signs are in my neighbourhood.

That moustache doesn't help me know if this is a he-junco or a she-junco. (I'm assuming their pair is a he/she one!) For the past couple of cold wet days, the couple has been gathering dried grass and bringing it to a spot underneath some goutweed leaves on our lawn, making a nest there. It seems a dangerous, wide-open spot. Usually the juncos around our house make their nests under the metre-high clumps of yew bushes and the like. But, there you go: it's their choice, iddinit? After they gather their grass moustaches, they fly up to this branch or near-by, to survey the scene before they dive down to their secret walkway under the goutweed. When I took this picture this morning, it was three degrees above freezing, and raining. Unpleasant weather to be out in, but it wasn't stopping them from their construction work.

Standing on my back doorstep I saw this little bird jumping around checking out the edibles in the bushes. I didn't see much red marking on the chest, so I thought first it was a female Wilson's warbler. But on second thought, and some advice from friends, I think it is a yellow warbler.

It was uncommonly warm for me on our back deck this afternoon, especially given it is still May. Despite it still being May, I've been seeing lots of insects, including several of these two- or three-cm long yellowjacket wasps. This one lit for five minutes on the trunk of our Christmas tree (still not quite blasty enough to take down) to soak up the sun.

I'm just grooving on the warm deck on a Sunday afternoon. With Pet Pine and the Bluejays.

There is a fairly small number of starlings (half a dozen, maybe) that have settled in to our neighbourhood and at least some of them have been pretty tame. And garrulous: conversing with me as I imitate their squeaks, squawks and screels. Well. *I* think it's conversation. I don't know what they think. This is one of them.

Today a friend dropt off to me a brochure she had put together on "heritage colours" on houses in St John's. One of the photos she had included was a colour slide I took in spring 1975 at the bottom of Pilot's Hill in downtown St John's. She used it to indicate how drab the greens and burgundies and browns were that people used on their houses fifty years ago. I found the scan of the slide tonight and made this b&w version of it. In b&w you can't see much to indicate how drab the colours were back then. You can just see the handlebar of my red-and-white three-speed CCM bicycle in the left lower corner. Sigh. It was already twenty years old and third-hand. Someone stole it from my backyard about ten years later; maybe someone is still riding it.

This guy, a sac spider, I think, was wandering around the window of the kitchen door. I got bitten by a mosquito yesterday so I left the spider alone in hopes s/he'll kill any more of the blood-suckers.

We were out for a short walk up the street and came back via the steps by the church up there. I put the camera on a hand-rail on the steps and aimed it down the street towards our neighbourhood.

Oh, you know: soon there'll be clouds of spruce pollen getting trees knocked up with fat cones; and then seeds scattering around. And eventually it'll start all over again.

They have started to bloom a little earlier than usual, the forget-me-nots. These are just below our back door, in a comparatively sunny spot, and thus they are the first to bloom. In a couple of weeks I expect to see a carpet of these little gems across our backyard.