A few comments

Fall is a terrific season for the garden. Those dead leaves make great mulch to protect plants from lower temperatures in the winter. But another neat thing is that many of the annuals begin to go to seed. So now is a good time to begin harvesting. I have been getting seeds from the purple cone flower


and the Indian blanket flower. Both are shown here.



Of course there is the delightful changing of the leaves. They turn glorious colors as the sap leaves them to dry and to fall. The Japanese maple shown here is pretty red most of the year. But it gives an idea. The hard woods, such as maples are the most colorful. But birches, aspens, and Bradford pear also put on a fine show.



This afternoon, my wife and I were having lunch in a Mexican restaurant. There were a couple of people who sat and talked on their cell phones while feeding their faces. That's slightly rude. Ruder still was the fact that they were having lunch with other people. I fear that if one of my friends were to do that, they would get some pretty stiff words on the subject. Fortunately, most of my friends are, like me, from the stone age when almost all telephones were attached to the wall and only portable as far as the cord between the handset and the telephone body. There some radio phones. These were considered a rare novelty and were quite expensive. They were also big enough to make them inconvenient or impossible to carry anywhere but the car.

The saddest part of that cell phone attachment was a young woman who was having lunch with her children. The kids were very well behaved. And in between the calls she made, wanted to talk to her. She appeared to enjoy the conversations. But she still went back to the phone and made more calls. The kids were bored to the point of putting their heads on their arms and napping while she chattered away.

Truly, I feel a little sadder for that woman. Time spent with your children when they want to be with you gets increasingly rare as they grow up. Often, by the time they reach teenage, they don't want to even admit that you are their parents. That woman wasted half an hour that she can never get back. When the kids leave home, or just begin to be independent, she may recall that time and wish she'd talked with them instead of chatting with her friends.

My opinion is that cellular telephones are only appropriate in certain places and at certain times. Too many accidents have been caused by people talking on their phones, texting or just dialing numbers. When they are using their phones, they usually don't have a hand free to operate their turn signals. They certainly are not paying much attention to their surroundings. I sat behind a woman who didn't move through two cycles of a stop light. When I got out of my car and approached, I saw she was yakking on her phone. I guess my approach got her attention. She burned rubber getting onto the road, then stayed in the turning lane, still talking. [I heaved a big sigh here] Hey, you all, hang up and drive!!!

Butterflies

Right, I said that I was going to deal with other subjects in my next posts. But I found a neat caterpillar on one of the fennel plants in our garden. I think that it will become a black swallowtail butterfly next spring.

I learned something that anyone who wants a butterfly garden should know. Having plants that attract butterflies for nectar is not enough to insure you will have lots of them next year. You also have to have food plants for their larvae nearby. Monarchs prefer milkweed. Swallowtails like fennel. Most of them will not lay eggs on plants that their caterpillars can not use for food.

One butterfly expert suggested taking the food plants in pots and placing them near the nectar plants... having your bar and restaurant next to each other. If you do it that way, you may also want to build a little butterfly house around the food plant. Then when the caterpillar forms its chrysalis and mutates into the winged form, you can watch and the butterfly will be able to dry its wings without the danger of being picked off by a passing bird. You will also have the experience of releasing those lovely things into your garden again.

a note from July 22

Even with the oppressive heat, I find time to get out in the garden. Our first surprise lily has bloomed next to the gardenia bush. I was pleasantly surprised to find that we still had a gardenia blossom, a new one. I had been sure that the heat would have stopped its flowering.

My only tomato plant has some fruit on it too. This is the "mystery mater" that was forced on my wife as she left a greenhouse sale at which she had been volunteering. Not only does it have fruit, but it has set three fresh blossoms. I may yet get home grown tomatoes from my garden this year. Even if not, Mr. Vang's are delicious.

Our new cat (Spooky) seems to be starting to get along with the old. But I am surprised by the increase in dominance activities of the old cat (Little Kitty). Not only will he stalk her, but he will try to jump my feet when my back is turned. Happily, I worked with tigers for five years. This is their favorite hunting behavior and they think its funny to jump on the backs of their friends. When they were younger and weighed less than 250 pounds, they would hit my back and slide off. When they were mature and rising twice that weight, they just rode me down, got off and laughed. Yes tigers can laugh.



Little Kitty appears above and Spooky, below.



Looking carefully at the photos, neither appears terribly happy. Perhaps it is because I disturbed them at their favorite cool spots on the floor. One will try another time.