View of the Day

The wet flower photos I took last week in between rain storms!

This is a closeup of a day lily just after a storm. We had many severe storm warnings last week.

But this weekend we've been blessed with SUNSHINE! That's right. You know, that round yellow thing up in the sky.

And it's been hot too. Hot enough to get you thinking about going to the beach along with 10,000 other people who are feeling exactly the same way you are :)

I had a sleepy, lazy day today. On my right slept Tom cat and on my left slept Tigger. I sat on my backyard swing for a few hours this afternoon and read some books and did some journaling. Most of the time though I just watched the birds and butterflies swooping back and forth.

Tom and Tigger have spent most of the summer outdoors and I've had a hard time convincing them to come in, even in the rainy weather. I have a roofed porch off the garage with cushions and that's where they can hang out all year round.

Tom and Tigger visited the vet today and had their shots. Tom weighed in at just over 16 lbs and Tigger at 13 lbs. No one could accuse me of not feeding them. If anything, they should probably be on diet food... shouldn't we all though?

I still have not done my back yard landscaping yet.

It was my plan to get most of it done this summer but the broken arm back in April kind of threw all my plans off schedule. There's always next year.

So my bags of soil and iron dragonfly will have to wait to be properly placed next year. I'm pretty easy about not getting it done. I wasn't completely set yet on how I wanted it so a delay will give me more time to think about it. I'd love a little pond.........maybe with an arched bridge....... Well, at least dreaming is free.

Most of my blogging this summer has been over on my other blog The Bee Journal

where I've been going on and on about my latest obsession: Beekeeping.

And here is a mystery that is solved, although I have no photographs of the culprit. Every year I'd find these perfect round holes in the soft leaves of my Red Bud tree. Now some people would be upset that some insect or creature had done this, thinking it was unsightly. Me, I thought it was pretty cool to see such perfect circles and all I wanted to know was who was doing it? And why?

When on my beekeeping course I learned that this is done by the leaf cutter bee. It cuts a round top and bottom and makes a perfect little leaf tube, and inside the tube it lays its eggs.

Just think, there's an insect out there that can cut a circle better than a kindergarten student and can fold it like origami better than you or I could probably do. Now that is cool.