a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It’s Caturday— and may I present my favorite picture of Leonardo, the Burmese cat that my brother and sister-in-law used to have.
Leonardo lived out the last of his nine cat lives some years ago, reaching a grand old age of 17.
It was lovely outside today (76°F /24°C), and I walked down to the Twice Sold Tales bookstore on Harvard Avenue.
I browsed around in the store but did not buy anything this time. (It’s just fun to look at all the books, so mission still accomplished).
There was a little rain on the ground this morning, and still enough to hear it patter down the gutter from the roof, as I opened my back door.
Summer is dwindling, and so are the flowers to be found on my neighborhood walk. Still, I got these two beautiful dahlias tonight.
Centuries ago, dahlia tubers were grown as food crops by the Aztecs. This use of the plant largely died out after the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-21). The dahlia was declared the national flower of Mexico in 1963.
The weather people say we will stay below highs of 80°F (26°C) into next week, so the summer’s really warm weather is behind us.
The Dixie wildfire in Northern California has now torched 500 square miles.
More than 100 homes and much of the downtown of Greenville (pop. 1,000 or so) have burned down.
I wanted to see what the historic Gold Rush-era Sierra Lodge on Main Street used to look like, and found it on Google Streetview.
Here is a cute cat picture for Caturday, as ailurophiles like to call Saturdays.
The city of Seattle had 83 °F (28 °C) today.
It’s been steady as it goes temperature-wise, with no rain. (A smidge of rain fell early Tuesday morning).
We might see 90 °F (32 °C) on Friday, say the forecasters.
These beautiful hollyhock flowers are from 18th Avenue here on Capitol Hill.
Damselflies (Afr. waterjuffer) are similar to dragonflies (Afr. naaldekoker), but they are smaller and have slimmer bodies.
Most species fold the wings along the body when at rest, unlike dragonflies which hold the wings flat and away from the body (for that ‘airplane’ look).
The woodpeckers were back this morning. Only a few of the mahonia’s berries remain.
There was a beautiful blue sky and white clouds overhead at 5 this afternoon.
We’ve been lucky thus far this summer here in Seattle: no smoky air from the wildfires.
Every year that summer that rolls by here in the Northern hemisphere now, I think: just let it be over (summer). When is it over (summer)? Of course: then next summer comes.
There’s the mega- forest fires, burning out of control under an extreme drought here on the west of the United States. Flooding in Germany, Belgium & The Netherlands, and now in China. Videos on Twitter tonight of dozens of cars washing away in Zhengzhou; a subway entrance collapsing; people trapped inside a subway train car, the water chest-high (12 people dead in the subway, reports Aljazeera).
It has been a tough summer for gardens here in the city, with that heat wave at the end of June.
The leaves on the long shoots of my little rose bush got scorched, but a beautiful red rose has bloomed on the lower one, in the shade.
The pair of northern flickers (Colaptes auratus) that I sometimes see here around my house, came by late this afternoon.
I found this display of two chatty dinosaurs on a rock by the sidewalk close to 18th Ave.
It was the first full day of the astronomical summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
We are just shy of 16 hours of daylight here in Seattle (sunset at 9.11 pm).
It was warm today (89 °F/ 32 °C), but there will be a little respite tomorrow & Wednesday, before the day temperatures go up again.
There was a half inch of rain yesterday in the city, and there will be a little more rain tonight. The flowers are from my walk after dinner last night.
It was a very pleasant 67 °F (19 °C) when I went out for a walk today.
Just as efforts to create a blue rose have stymied growers and plant geneticists, so have efforts to create a red iris. The flower has almost no red pigment naturally.
– Barbara Whitaker in a report called ‘The Hunt Continues for the Holy Grail: A Red Iris’ in the NYT, in 2006
Irises come in every color of the rainbow, but not in a true red. I found these ‘red’ ones here in my neighborhood.
It felt like summer today (76 °F/ 24 °C), but we will drop back to cooler weather tomorrow.
The shrubby peony plant has long been cultivated for its large showy flowers, and it’s easy to see why. This one comes out of my friends’ garden.
heath
/hēTH/
noun
BRITISH
an area of open uncultivated land, especially in Britain, with characteristic vegetation of heather, gorse, and coarse grasses.
It’s the month of May, so the rhododendron flowers are blooming here on Capitol Hill. These plants belong to Ericaceae, a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the heath or heather family.
