Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Sanitation crew

When we moved into this house, we put Toby's food bowl & litter box in the spare bathroom and called it "Toby's bathroom." Unfortunately, once George reached the shrieking-and-chasing age, he terrorized Toby enough that he would no longer use that litter box.

After some intense negotiation, we set up a litter box in the living room (eech!) which has worked out fairly well. But as George and Toby have gotten on better terms, Dean and I have wondered if we couldn't get the litter box back into the bathroom and OUT of the living room.

So I set the second litter box up in Toby's bathroom. It hasn't been a huge success, but he does use it occasionally. George likes to use that bathroom, too, though, and he is not crazy about sharing.

Saturday we found the door closed, with this sign on it:



I'll let you guess who got to do the unstinking.

Father's day

For Father's Day we made Dean a shirt (surprise!)





He liked it.

Later on, the kids helped with water changes. Here Charlotte is scraping algae off the hood, while George pulls out algae.

Monday, June 11, 2007

Safety Town 2007

George spent a week at Safety Town again this year -- an hour in the evening, learning bike & pedestrian safety from the police. I wondered if he would get much more out of it, since he went last year, too, but as it turned it he really liked it and I think it solidified the lessons he learned last year.

He and Grayson were inseparable -- odd, because they knew each other as babies but haven't played together much in recent years. I love the Abbey Road look here.


Here they are a block apart. This is a tiny town in the parking lot of the local shopping mall, used only for this purpose. Safety Town has been held every summer for 30 years -- many of my (younger) friends went as children. The traffic lights and streets are the right size but the buildings are diminutive.


Leader of the Pack.

Gardening

I am woefully behind in my gardening, and it has gotten HOT. So my big task this past weekend was to get the garden beds in shape and transplant the poor leggy seedlings that need it so badly. I got much of it done, though not all. Part of the reason I got as much done as I did is because of George's help. He and I worked over the center bed and planted it with eggplants and peppers. He really worked hard, and it was hard work. It was fun to do it together.

Here he is chopping away at the clods down at the west end. The soil quality is much worse down there -- I think maybe I've always started at the east end and given up before I reached the west end! I hope we did enough & added enough compost to even things out. That end is where we'll be growing cotton this year.



Our first daylily is blooming. Isn't it lovely? George found the idea of a flower that lasted only one day quite sad.

Butterfly tree

Early last week the children took me to an oak tree outside their school, saying it was the Butterfly Tree. Sure enough, there were dozens of butterflies on the tree when we went up to it. They fly off in clouds when you approach, but quickly return. Some even landed on us. I was fascinated, and brought the camera back for pictures the next day, and the day after that. One of the days was really windy, but it didn't seem to deter the butterflies.

We mostly saw two species. This, I believe, is a Hackberry Emperor:



These two, who seem to be jousting for position, are Question Marks:


If you look closely you can see that they are drinking sap from the cracks in the bark:


This should give an idea of how densely covered the tree is. I count six butterflies on this root, and there were many more right out of the frame:


Unfortunately this is the closest I came to a spread-wing shot of the Question Mark. They are stunning: