Early July Flower Photos

Who's This Guy?

Here's the challenge with some of the visitors to the garden: they eat things.

In some cases, this is okay. For example, if I saw a bunny in the yard nibbling on, say, some alyssum, I'd be completely fine with that. Bunnies are wonderful and rarely show up in my yard now that we're in Minneapolis (a stark contrast to our yard in St. Paul, where Dozer and Zoe frequently napped under the tree near our back steps), plus I've got a ton of alyssum.

Ditto the goldfinches (although I thought they were orioles at the time) that visited the dwarf sunflowers last year. The flowers ended up looking pretty scraggly, but part of my goal was to lure more birds to the yard, so I was perfectly comfortable with the result.

On the other hand, one of the stupid fat squirrels was eating a bunch of George's berries (which are surprisingly yummy, tasting like a combination between a pear and a blueberry) the other day. This is not okay. The squirrels have given me plenty of reason to hate them, and although George is doing really well this year, his branches are still pretty small and were clearly taxed by trying to hold the weight of a big honkin' squirrel.

So what about this guy?

Kinda cute, but doing some noticeable damage to my African blue basil. The issue is that I don't know who he is.

Is he a pre-butterfly? If so, I'm pretty okay with him hanging around. After all, my garden is intended to be, in part, a butterfly garden. That means not only choosing plants to attract mature butterflies to their blooms, but also limiting the use of pesticides (even the organic ones) and providing food sources for butterflies in their larval state (caterpillars). So it seems disingenuous to discourage this little guy if he's going to become a Red Admiral or something.

On the other hand, what if he's "just" a bug, eating my plants?

I don't have the answer, so for now, I've picked this little fella off the basil plant and put him onto the goutweed out front. He's welcome to stay, but I've only got the one African blue basil plant so I'm a little protective.

Sign of the Times

The former Dain Rauscher Plaza:

One Side of a Conversation …

… that I had yesterday afternoon with a co-worker:

Thanks! Yep, Ann Taylor. I just got it. No, I literally just got it, like five minutes ago.

Because I was walking outside on the way back from lunch and a pigeon pooped on my sweater.

No, I’m dead serious. It was in two places on my sweater and all over my wallet.

But did you see what I was wearing earlier? It was a green-and-white argyle sweater, and the poop landed on the white part right in the middle of my chest. And I’m not sure I knew this before, but pigeon poop is not white. It looked like I dropped a Hershey bar on myself. Even just in the four blocks back to the office people were staring and I really didn’t want people staring at my chest all day, so I had to get this.

Oh, sure, I love an excuse to shop. I’m not denying that.

You’d think, but this isn’t even the first time. When my husband and I went to visit his folks when they were living in Dallas, we went to the aquarium there and in the rainforest exhibit, a parrot or a toucan or something pooped all over my sweater then, too. And that one was cashmere! I was so pissed.

No, you’re fine -- it’s totally funny now. It wasn’t funny when I was walking around wearing pigeon poop, but it’s funny now. See you later!

Anniversary

Because M is an incredibly good sport, we spent last night -- our fourth anniversary -- at a Twins game. The tickets came courtesy of Tom, one of the outside counsels used by M's company and an all-around mensch who helps M keep his sanity at work. Turned out to be good seats, too!

The cute couple next to us, who took the picture above, have been married thirty years.

The All-Star ballot. Had to vote for some current Twins and my former boyfriend.

Home-town Joe.

Shortstop Brendan Harris. Pros: He wears the short pants, which we likey (the long pants look more like pajamas than baseball). Cons: His performance at bat.

The Good Doctor, Justin Morneau (the best thing to come out of Canada since the round meat on eggs benedict), just before he homered up to the second deck. Boom!

Ladies and gentlemen, closer extraordinaire Joe Nathan.

And on the walk home from the train, we saw two bunnies and six kitties. It was a good night!

P.S. We were especially tickled to be sharing June 17 as a wedding date with some very happy couples in California.