I made a wrong assumption that with tomorrow being 4th of July, a holiday, that the school would be sans students this evening so I took my camera and went on my regular trek to and through the campus. I was 1/2 right. There weren't a lot of students by the time of my 6:15 PM arrival but there were enough. I simply feel more relaxed when these kids aren't milling about. Nevertheless, I stopped to take some pictures.
I followed this monarch butterfly for several minutes trying to get a shot. I didn't realize it was so beat up until I got home. I wanted to point out the lack of butterflies here these days. I remember when I was a kid you'd see butterflies all the time, spring-summer. I hardly see any these days. Something's wrong there.
One thing, at least with monarchs anyway, I don't see that there is very much milkweed around. Milkweed used to grow wild nearby but a lot of where I remember this has now been developed or it's simply dead. I know that a lot of herbicides were used just behind my street here when I was a kid. I remember everything dying along a street-wide strip which bordered a railroad track that went several miles through this part of the Valley. It never bounced back.
Monarch caterpillar on one of the few milkweed plants in the garden back 1st week of April. Monarchs only lay their eggs and develop on milkweed. I'm considering adding some milkweed to the "garden" here only for this reason. I don't find it very attractive.
Another furry cactus. This one reminded me of a dream I had when I was probably about 6 years old. There was a cat in the backyard here which had spike-like "fur." It was rubbing up against my legs out by the clothesline and I saw blood on the sheets as they were hung on the line. Creepy huh? Even creepier, I still have a vivid memory of this dream. I never brought it up in therapy.
Another bold jack rabbit. I wasn't going to take a picture, my left hand was busy with my iPod at the time but it just stood there so I popped off a couple of shots with my right hand. Cameras are right-handed, ever think about that? Left handed people like me think about those things.
Unknown butterfly on lantana. Had I been able to get a good shot I'd look up the butterfly or try to at least. It was difficult maneuvering around this bush without stepping on young plants and I'm really good about watching my step.
I was taking pictures of the flowers anyway. The butterfly had surprised me.
So the point about "chatty"... There are no pics of any of this. I had a long first-time chat with Scott today. We've passed each other on occasion for two years now with only nods, waves a quick hi, hello, how are you?, in passing but we never spoke. This time I stopped him. Turns out, although 15 years younger than me, he and his family have some history in this neighborhood so we talked a bunch about how stuff used to be and how they've changed. Scott is considerably taller than me and I say that almost not knowing how tall because then you're 6' 5" and not hanging out with an NBA crowd you don't realize your own tallness until you come across someone taller. At least I don't. He also takes advantage of this extra size and walks quite a bit faster than I do--something I never see. It was nice to finally stop and meet Scott.
Next I saw Robin and Joe who I stopped briefly to ask a question about one of their more immediate neighbors. Turns out they didn't know them. This house I was referring to had a broken sprinkler system for at least two days. No one was home. I pulled good Samaritan for these folks and called the DWP on Monady and someone came out and at least shut the water off. We're taking 100s of gallons spewing out so I'm sure this saved them some money and hopefully this wasn't causing flooding under their house. There are no brownie points in the outside world but I felt good for doing this.
Lastly I met Alex (?) and some other cat who's name I'm even less sure of at the moment, maybe his brother. Anyway, these two guys were out front of their house flying a DJI Phantom Quadcopter with a GoPro Hero3 camera mounted. This is something that interests me a lot--it's just not a reasonable expenditure anytime soon. It turns out they do creative work. I gave them my card. I used to be very deliberate about giving people my card. If we crossed paths 2x, you got my card. I need to get back to that.
My card... (something else I need to redo)
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