Monarch butterfly on iron butterfly stake.


















This afternoon I was playing hide and seek with the yellow finches in my yard. They were landing on the coneflowers and monarda and eating the seeds. There were three females and one male. The male flew up on a shepherd's hook and tweeted, then one of the females flew up and sat beside him, then another female went kamikazee on his ass and knocked him off his perch. When I moved on the porch, they'd all fly off. There I was standing perfectly still on the porch steps, camera at the ready, while cars went by. I'm sure the drivers were wondering WTF, but I got some good shots. I have pantyhose filled with nyger seeds hanging from a hook but these birds wanted to get the seeds directly from the plants. I love yellow finches.

Male finch on my coneflowers 

Female finch feasting on coneflower seeds 

Pat Buchanan

I caught part of Catherine Crier’s CourtTV show yesterday. Pat Buchanan was hawking his book on illegal immigration. And God help my soul, I actually agreed with him on several points, although I’d never buy his book and put money in his pocket.
One of his main points centered around the idea that illegals drive down wages and thus make it harder for working class Americans 9the tax base) to find jobs that pay enough to support their families. He said immigration laws will never have any teeth due to the fact that corporate America love low paid illegals. (Of course I’m sure ole Pat isn’t in favor of raising the minimum wage to make it a living wage.)

BB All Stars Quote

Will: "There's three things in this world I'm scared of: robot clowns, baby corn, and freaky little gnomes."

This made me laugh

This is mostly for Tree, but you loved Natalie, Blair, Jo and Tootie you might enjoy it as well

Facts O Life

I hope Mel approves

A few days ago I was at a concert in the park and happened upon this scene. Everyone looked happy. I like happy pictures so I snapped this one! I hope everything's in focus! 

Gnomes

If you're a Big Brother All Stars fan you'll notice that last night's episode was all about gnomes.

la dolce far niente

Today is a perfect day to experience The Sweetness of Doing Nothing, or as the Italians say "La dolce far niente." This picture is for Spidey and Orbie. See the beautiful fat yellow and black garden spider? If you look closely the web is visible in the lower part of the picture. This is as close as I could get because it's in back of a Russian sage plant that was covered with bees. 

These sunflowers are ten-twelve tall. They're volunteers and almost obscure my birdfeeder. 

It's a beautiful, beautiful, humid-less day