cairistiona's place

I took Boom out for a walk and while he paused to do some business, I felt something watching me. I looked over at the flower pots and saw this...


We haven't seen very many pickerel frogs yet this year. I think all the rain we've been getting means they're staying scattered out in the woods. During drought, they all come flocking to the house and our well-watered flower beds, but right now, all of nature is well watered.

I also finally snapped a decent pic of a common whitetail dragonfly:


They flit away as soon as you get within ten feet of them, so unless you have your camera ready to go, you end up with a picture of a rock. :/ This one is a male--the females have white bodies (hence the whitetail name). I have no idea why, but they remind me of WWII fighter planes. XD

We still don't have many butterflies or honeybees, but there have been lots of fireflies this year. So that's something, I guess. But it's weird to go out to my pollinator bed and see NO pollinators. *sigh*

Happy Tuesday, all.

We headed to St. Louis this past weekend, to take in a St. Louis Cardinals game (they won, I was shocked) and just toodle around as we visited my sister. She'd been unable to come down here as she usually does in the spring because we've had so much rain there was always a danger the main highway that connects our area with hers could have shut down and left her to drive hours out of her way to get back home. We decided that it wasn't worth the risk.

It was too hot and sticky to do anything as elaborate as visiting the big zoo or botanical gardens--we'll save that for a fall or spring trip--but we went to several different shops on Saturday afternoon, plus had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory, so now we have all kinds of yummy leftovers to eat throughout this week. Hubby has long had a thing for really nice bath towels--it's a funny little quirk of his that I think is adorable. Our towels are all serviceable enough even after 30-some years (I don't give a fig about fancy towels and ours may look meh but they still do the job and that's all I care about). He finds this unacceptable, however, and in true hubby fashion, he has been reading reviews to seek out the best bath towels. He narrowed it down to some at Pottery Barn, a store that's lovely but far too pricey for me. So we sought out the Pottery Barn, which in St Louis is in the "posh" mall that has stores like Neiman-Marcus that carry high-end brands like Christian Louboutin shoes (those ultra high heels with the red soles that all the starlets seem required to wear). I used to be mildly interested in how the other half lives, way back when I lived in St Louis as a teen but these days I don't give a fig, but it was interesting to see shoes like that "in person." Dink has never been to a high-end mall--only the outlet versions of sort-of-high-end places, so it was fun to see her reaction, which was largely "deer in the headlights" combined with "they looked at me like I was going to rob the place"... which is exactly how I remembered feeling at her age when I dared venture to that particular mall.

Anyway, back to the Saga of the Bath Towels.... hubby bought one bath towel to try, and if it's to his liking, he'll buy more. This is a case of "you're the one that makes the money, so I won't argue", but inside I'm kinda O.O at the thought of making investments in... bath towels. But he rarely indulges in luxury items for himself and works very hard, so if a bath towel makes him happy, I'm happy. He could, after all, be out looking at Lamborghini's.

A couple pics from the alternative-to-the-zoo, which was a small park dedicated to farm animals, one I remember going to many times as a small child:

https://instagram.com/p/Bz6A0rkDj6f

And another park in my same childhood neighborhood, overlooking the Mississippi River:

https://instagram.com/p/Bz6AcYDjNHn

It was a nice trip full of small pleasures. I like those kinds.

This week may be exciting: the Great Puppy Hunt begins with seeing a lady about a Havanese puppy that looks remarkably like our sweet Domino tomorrow night. I'll let you know how that goes! I'll be spending today and tomorrow puppy-proofing and picking up the odds and ends that we need for having a puppy join the household (puppy food, bedding, toys). I'm excited (and a wee bit nervous. Been 10 years since I had a puppy and I'm sure I'm underestimating the chaos, however joyful, one brings to the house)!

On Labor Day, hubby and I went to our local botanical garden. It's been years since we've been, and back then it was mostly a Japanese stroll garden and a hosta shade garden and a lot of dreams of growing bigger, which it definitely has. Free to the public except for a small fee for the Japanese garden, it's very lovely, even late in the summer when a lot of plants and flowers are starting to look a little tatty. There's also a wee butterfly house! Nothing exotic, just local butterflies in a quonset-hut style netting-covered greenhouse that's only about 30 feet long. But still some beautiful flowers and flutterers:

https://instagram.com/p/BnRqysKn5B5

https://instagram.com/p/BnRqmQtngR6

https://instagram.com/p/BnRYrLLHNVn

This is a huge stained-glass window in the botanical garden's resource center/gift shop building:

https://instagram.com/p/BnRq9XnnL1i

It was very warm and muggy, but there was a stiff wind blowing, so not too terribly miserable. We were sweating by the end, though. We also paid to walk through the Japanese stroll garden, which is a separate entity from the botanical garden. I have photos on my "big camera," but I haven't had a chance to look at them yet. If there's any worth sharing, I'll post them.

Went to a sunflower field. :)

I've had a couple requests for a synopsis after I go see Captain America: Civil War Sunday, so I'm thinking about creating a custom filter for that, just to ensure only those who want to read it do and no one else is accidentally spoiled (even though I'd put it under a cut). If you want to be included in that filter, let me know so I can add you.

Now for pics!

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We're having a really sunny and beautiful weekend so yesterday we were out and about most of the day, both at home and in Springfield.

At home (and everywhere else), the early daffodils are in full bloom right now:

My artsy IG close-up...


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Random stuff I took pics of in the last week or so.

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Been a while since I crossposted any of my recent Instagram pics, so here you go...

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I chat with you more on twitter than here these days, but if you see this... have a rain-kissed iris from my garden this morning for your birthday!

Brain is still fogged, but the sun was at the right angle, so I took the camera out to the garden to play around with black and white photography, something I've not dabbled in much. But I wanted to focus on the shape and form of a flower, in this case a peony, which tends to be my floral muse each year. I can't resist playing with images of them.( Read more... )