Saturday, August 17, 2013

Today's walk report: 081713

The sting.

It was an odd day. Even though I got up early, 6:30, I kept finding myself falling behind with every task at hand. Not that I really had a schedule to adhere to but everything seemed to move in slow motion or have this hiccup feel to it. I had planned to be outside before 8 AM to water. That also meant laying down some mulch that I picked up from the city yesterday.

Here's a couple of old shots illustrating what that's about. The Cherokee is ancient now (1993), it can be vacuumed. I've filled up the back of that more times than I can remember over the past couple of years. I just shovel it in the back with the back seat down. There's a sheet laid down but that's more to facilitate getting the last of the mulch out of the car than trying to keep things neat. It's filthy in there but the mulch is free and it borders on compost. The soil here at home is like clay so this was a cost effective method to try and get it to be workable for growing new plants once again.



Anyway, what happened once I finally got to this and it was already 93ยบ outside, was me filling up a large shovel and taking trips back and forth from the car to spots in the yard where I wanted to lay down the mulch. Somewhere around the 10th shovel full a bee had apparently decided it liked something about that mulch in the back of the car and I regretfully missed its presence whilst pushing mulch onto the shovel with my right hand. The bee took issue with that. Now without too much background story because this is already pretty boring--I was always led to believe growing up that I was allergic to bees. I often questioned the validity of this claim but I never wanted it tested. Bottom line... it hurt like a bitch but I was fine for the most part after the initial agony subsided. Thank you for caring.

Here's the deal with me and bees. I often tend to get very close to them...


Even closer...


and I enjoy having a good rapport with the little fellows.

In my confusion after the bee sting I ordered a $30 pizza (it won't happen again) just BECAUSE...


Evidently being 4 miles from that shop meant I had to pay $4 on top of the price of a rather exorbitantly priced large pizza with 3 toppings. Then I tipped the driver. No offense Barone's but $4 is a gallon of gas. I felt a little sorry for the driver thinking the delivery charge isn't going to him, or not much of it would and how it must adversely effect his tip situation. Obviously, it was his car.

So pizza and a movie. I saw the 2nd 1/2 of this on NetFlix, leftover from when Time Warner dropped my connection last night. I thought it was pretty decent but wonder how I'd react had I not such a keen memory regarding the Zodiac killer back when it was happening. At 12 or 13 when that started it was pretty creepy and the media really made a point of talking about how much ground this guy was covering from SoCal (near here) up to the Bay Area (San Francisco, etc.)

After that it was Dodgers baseball and me dozing off once Philadelphia got a hit. Dodgers won 5-zip.

Top of the 9th and 6:00 PM I was finally off to a late walk. A short walk. A not too exciting walk.

More bee... A black carpenter bee. There are more than 500 species of carpenter bees in 31 subgenera so take your pick.


Then these guys again. Boxelder bugs. They're everywhere and you know why? 'Cause they're doing this ALL THE TIME. They don't have a mating season they just mate. The narrow-leaved milkweed is censoring the action a little but trust me they are coupled and they do everything together like this.


Lantana up close.




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