Ohio's high summer beauty

Been doing a fair bit of waiting lately. Waiting for scans to happen, waiting for the results, waiting for the follow up to talk about the results and to set up the next thing, as one does. 

Waiting is easier when walking. That's why pacing was invented. Since you can't always pace in a doctor's office because it tends to make non-pacers nervous, I gotta get that energy out somewhere. Often I go outside where sometimes you get beautiful flowers or fun friends along your walk.

That redwing blackbird was posing so nicely until I took my phone out to actually frame him. Then he turned head on and kept fluttering to different shrubberies and I couldn't get his handsome stripes. Hold still! I just want to take your picture!

"Blue weed" is what they're called, but I love them!

I love that water bird. We've discovered there are at least two of them in our area. They're shy and often we'll see them because we've startled them into flight with those huge wingspans. I always say a joyful hello, at least in my head, and it's all one word: helloooooWaterbird!

We skipped the garden this year (as in, "you would be horrified if I sent pictures of the crop of thistles!") , but you know what we also have a good crop of? Cattails! 

 

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File this one under Texts I Never Thought I'd Get:

Sure enough, it was one of our machetes. Thing Two had taken it out back for reasons unknown and had then forgotten about it. Fortunately, our lovely neighbor (read "who is SO patient with us") discovered it and it wasn't hidden and therefore mowed over or anything like that. I shudder to think the damage a machete could do to an unsuspecting riding lawnmower.

And then there's this one, which perfectly sums up not only our lovely fall weekend but our family dynamics as well:  

I believe it was last fall that I posted about once you see a cattail begin to poof, get that sucker out of the house as fast as possible without making any wind while doing it or you're going to need stock in vacuum cleaners. Cattails are outstanding outside toys. Even Dada had a good time squeezing them and watching the endless amounts of seed fuzzies spread. 

Our yard is still coated with pockets of seeds, might I add...

Fancy Big Sucker at work

 

Well, our resident Big Thing got busy and churned up enough dirt for a garden. These were taken the last week of May. Dada put our Fancy Big Sucker to work and still had to rent a rototiller to finish the job. But now we have a garden plot:

 

 

And now we have a moat:

 

 

Haha! Okay, this was taken today- June 28. You see tomatoes, a pepper plant, a watermelon plant, and a canteloupe plant. We'll see who likes having a lot to drink, that's for sure!

 

The apples are coming along and some are blushing rosily. It'll be a fun fall of applesauce and apple chips in the dehydrator, methinks.

 

This is the moat creek behind our house. I don't remember the name of it- I'll have to hunt it down. The cattails in the middle of the picture are usually in the middle of the creek and the vegetation you see on this side of them is where the creek bed starts. This is almost a whole day after it's stopped raining. Every time I glanced out the window yesterday to watch it rise higher I thought of Anne of Green Gables and her "Lake of Shining Waters."

 

We're supposed to have rain again tomorrow and much of the week, but as you can tell from the last photo, it's a gorgeous and sunny day here today. We'll take it!