False Spiraea, ©voyager, all rights reserved
The upcoming weekend promises to be hot and humid and neither Jack nor I do well in that kind of weather. We’ll probably need to get up early and hope for the best. Today is gorgeous, though, and we enjoyed a pleasant walk along the meadow path close to the Thames River. I’m pretty sure this plant is False Spiraea and it’s one of my favorites. I’m a fairly tactile person and I really love those fuzzy plants that invite you to touch them.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
From Lofty, click for full size!
© Lofty, all rights reserved.
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
The fun way to have a bath,
©voyager, all rights reserved
Jack has been skunked!
I was having trouble sleeping last night and Jack was (mostly) staying awake to keep me company. Around 2:30 am he asked to go out for a pee so I let him and that’s when it happened. Right in our own yard and 5 meters from our front door. He got a big dose too with sticky, stinky skunk goo from his nose to his tail.
There’s a fairly simple recipe that works well to break up the oils in skunk spray and I went around the house gathering supplies. Pails of water, dog towels, Vaseline (to keep water out of his eyes), dish soap, baking soda and….no peroxide. No Peroxide! That’s the liquid into which you add the dish soap and baking soda to make the shampoo. It’s essential, so I got in the car and started driving around to convenience stores trying to find some. We live in a fairly small city of about 40,000 people and none of the big stores are open 24 hours. Finally, at my 5th stop I found 2 overpriced small bottles of peroxide, which was not quite enough, but it felt like I’d just won the lottery.
We bathed him in the back yard and got enough of the smell off that Jack was allowed back inside. It was almost 5 am by the time we were finished and fell into bed. Jack wisely slept in his dog bed instead of trying to get up with us. At 8:30 the alarm went off and I trudged to the drugstore to stock up on peroxide and then I took Jack down to the river, waded in wearing old sneakers and repeated the shampoo and let him rinse himself off with a frolic instead of the unpleasantness of having buckets of water (warm water!) poured all over you.
I still have a stinky pile of towels plus the clothes we were wearing to wash, but that’s just going to have to wait. I need sleep first and that’s exactly what I’m going to do now. Night, night.
Modern Meaningless Hieroglyphics, © C. Ford, all rights reserved.
A bit of fatigue is setting in from radiation, so I’m going to kill the alarm clock for the next several days, and sleep until I’m done, so things will most likely be starting late on Affinity for the next little while. Voyager and Charly of course, will continue to post whenever they feel like it – I’m just going to join in with them for a bit, and say the ‘hell with discipline’ for now. :D
From Giliell, click for full size!
© Giliell, all rights reserved.
Branta grazing together, from Ice Swimmer, click for full size!
© Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved.
Smoke tree
©voyager, all rights reserved
We haven’t had much rain lately and the lawns are suffering and turning brown. I think that’s a good thing because it means it’s easy on Jack’s feet. It’s the moist, green grass that makes his big, webbed feet itch so now he’s free to spend some time checking out his own nieghbourhood. Telephone poles and trees are of particular interest, but so are hostas, car tires, kid’s toys, flower planters and garden hoses. I swear a 3 block walk took us longer than a 3 km trail, including the car ride there and back. It’s Jack’s walk, though, so I let him take as much time as he wants. I figure it takes me a while to deal with e-mail, so it must take just as long to deal with p-mail.
No, not that orange blob, but fantastic fungi from Lofty, click for full size!
© Lofty, all rights reserved.
A beautiful Long-tailed Tit from Nightjar, click for full size.
© Nightjar, all rights reserved.
There’s a new feature starting today at Affinity and we’re calling it Tree Tuesday. The idea came in response to all the interesting photos Caine has been posting lately of the trees near the cancer center she attends. They’ve been so enjoyable that I think it would be fun to see more trees from lots of different places.
The idea is as straight-forward as the name suggests and we want your submissions. Any tree is fair game so grab your camera or dig through your stash and send those photos in. Submitting is easy, but a bit different from the usual route for other things. Send your tree photos to me, voyager, at [email protected]. The address is also on the sidebar now so I’m easy to find.
Caine and I will continue to post trees on other days as usual, but Tree Tuesday is a sure bet and the day when your tree photos take center stage. Thanks and happy snapping.
Waiting for Halloween, ©voyager, all rights reserved
Strawberry Season
Better than candy
Too good for pie
Cherry, Cherry
Our local strawberries have been uncommonly flavourful and sweet this year. The small ones in particular are almost like candy. I’ve been overindulging, but the season is almost at its end and soon they’ll be gone for another year. That’s OK though, because now local raspberries and cherries and blueberries are ripe and ready and they too seem extra sweet this year. Maybe it was the late spring or the early heat wave, but whatever the cause I plan to keep overindulging in all the fresh produce that’s on offer.