(Technically, I was the guest in the cat’s house. She’s just a guest on my blog.)

Today’s Feline Friday is brought to you by Keta, small and grey, who lives with my sworn-brother Stephen. Every so often she would look up at me and say “mraaaaaaah.” I’m not sure if that means “give me treats,” or “what the heck are you doing in my house, human?” or if it’s just a friendly hello.

She was very patient about letting me take pictures of her. Here she is showing off her super-fancy Soft Paws, which prevent her from tearing the carpet into small ragged bits. I have been tempted on more than one occasion to apply these to Floyd and Kipling’s claws, but I think I could probably only successfully get them onto Floyd. The claws still need to be trimmed before the Soft Paws go on, and if I can get Kipling’s claws trimmed then he wouldn’t need the Soft Paws in the first place.

Unlike Floyd and Kipling, Keta is happy to sit right beside the fire. (Unlike my fireplace, this one is gas and less likely to startle cats with sudden noises.) Whenever we had it burning, she was up on the hearth soaking in the warmth. I can’t say that I blame her!

Keta’s favourite toy is a small rubber alligator, which she carries around the house with her. It seems to be the only toy she’s interested in, though she did stare pretty intently at my yarn while I was finishing up the Warm Hat, and once or twice considered making a grab for the dangling ends.

Thanks for being a guest cat on today’s Feline Friday, Keta!

My name is Floyd, cat of cats. Look on what used to be your slippers, ye human, and despair! (He actually doesn’t really mess with the slippers too much. He just likes to guard them so that no one else can have them.)

He is such a handsome and dignified cat. At least, he likes to pretend that he’s dignified. There is something incredibly undignified about falling off the back of the couch, or deciding that one’s left rear foot has become a mortal enemy.

Kipling is considerably less dignified. What can you say about a cat who sleeps upside-down, other than “awwww!”

He sure does know how to work his cuteness to its maximum potential.

Thanks to my new camera, I was able to get some pictures of Floyd that are more than just a black silhouette of a cat against a blurry background. Here’s my sleek and handsome cat-loaf sitting by the front door, pretending that I don’t exist. It’s better than running away and refusing to have his picture taken!

Floyd has actually been very lovey lately, which is a nice change from his previous emo-cat behaviour. He likes to sit on my lap when I’m on the couch; there is no convincing him to sit next to me the way Kipling does. I think this is just fine except that it’s very difficult to type with his head draped over my wrist and his paw covering the spacebar. I also have a hard time knitting with him in my lap, because he hasn’t yet learned to leave the yarn alone.

And, marvelously, he’s been better-behaved through the night. A few nights ago I had to evict Kipling from the bedroom at 04:00 when he had an attack of the crazies and started building a fort with the surplus sheets at the bottom of the bed, but Floyd stayed with me, curled up against my side, and snoozed quietly until my alarm went off.

Because he was so well-socialized as a kitten, we can do all sorts of torturous things to him like pick him up and snoogle the daylights out of him, as demonstrated here by friend Stef. He just sighs, puts on a long-suffering look, and lets us do whatever we need to do. I can even trim his claws by myself without assistance! Even his rare baths usually go smoothly, though that’s better managed with two people involved. He might complain about it and give us the cold shoulder for an hour afterwards, but he rarely argues (and he never turns down the treats afterwards). For all his quirks, he’s growing up to be a great cat.

Kipling, on the other hand, is not at all fond of being picked up and snoogled. Have you ever seen a cat look so worried? We’re trying to teach him that being held is a good thing. With gentle patience I think he’ll eventually come around.

Unfortunately, all the pictures I tried to take for this post came out horrifically blurry. Oh cats, why won’t you hold still for me? Don’t you know how many people wish to admire you?

Fortunately, my incredibly talented sister the Ninja drew an adorable portrait of Kipling, so this post isn’t completely without pictures! She is having a sale on toony-style pet portraits this month. If you’re interested, you can read more here, and see some pictures of her border collie Finnegan looking ridiculous while playing “catch” with snowballs.

Unfortunately, Kipling’s sensitive stomach is acting up again, so he’ll be visiting the vet next week. We’re not sure if it’s just stress from having bunches of people in the house over New Year’s weekend, or if it’s something else. Floyd has been turning into a nine-pound Napoleonic bully about the litterbox, lying in wait for Kipling to step out of it and then pouncing. That probably doesn’t help much, either, although I can’t blame him for being annoyed about the smell. My ninja-sister (who knows a *lot* about pet care and nutrition) suggested adding a little bit of canned pumpkin to their food, and I started that this morning. I was afraid that the cats would turn their noses up at the new taste, but both of them dove right into their breakfasts and happily nommed away. Floyd doesn’t need the pumpkin, but since the cats switch off on their bowls, I’m putting a little bit into each dish. Hopefully it helps, because the next step for Kipling might very well be an expensive biopsy to find out what’s wrong with his innards.

Fortunately, I got a new camera, and that means there should be much better pictures on the blog from now on. It’s a Canon SX230HS, which is one of their medium-level point-and-shoots. It’s a lot more complicated than my last camera, with all sorts of scene settings and facial detection. It even has modes for aperture priority and shutter priority, which I didn’t expect on such a small camera. And, friend Stef is going to lend her DSLR to me for a while, since she isn’t using it very much at the moment. It’s a Canon T1i, very similar to the one I’d buy if I won the lottery, so I’m really looking forward to the opportunity to learn how to use it properly, and to taking non-blurry pictures of the Dynamic Duo. Especially Floyd – I realize that I don’t write about him nearly as much on Feline Friday, but he’s so hard to photograph. Having a better camera should help with that.

It is the final Feline Friday of 2011!

Kipling is snuggliest in the mornings.

It’s my favourite time to spend with him.

It’s been cold here on top of the mountain, and we’ve been setting the thermostat low to keep the electric bill down. With the chimney freshly swept, a brand new cap installed thanks to Pirate-Husband’s handiness and skill, and a sky threatening snow, I thought it was the perfect time to light a fire. (Even though this does very little to warm the house past a three-foot radius around the fireplace, there’s still something about a roaring fire on a cold night that’s quite comforting.)

Kipling had no idea what was going on. He sniffed at the new fire for about thirty seconds and then wouldn’t go near it again. I tried to convince him to sit with me on the hearth, but he wouldn’t have any of it. Even after the fire had been going for an hour and was putting out significant warmth, he stayed up on the coffee table looking from a safe distance. After about two hours, he realized that hey, it’s *warm* over there! and moved closer to the fireplace.

Sir Not Appearing In This Post, AKA Floyd, wouldn’t go near the fire either, even though I asked him to just pose in front of it for a moment. For the sake of a picture, of course. He said that he would do no such thing, turned up his nose, and stalked away. What kind of crazy cats don’t like sitting near a warm fire on a cold night? There really is nothing like it; I’ll sit on the hearth if they won’t! And I’m certainly not complaining that the house smells of woodsmoke now, either.

When I lit another fire the next day, Kipling didn’t hesitate to sit near it. It’s good to know that he’s got a few brain cells in his spotted head. Floyd, on the other hand, still hasn’t figured it out. He slept on the couch the whole time the fire was lit. Silly cat!

The management would like to apologize for the lack of pictures in this post. It has been too dark by the time I get home from work to get good shots of anything. Hopefully this situation will be rectified over the weekend. But it is still Feline Friday, and so here is the latest about the Dynamic Duo:

One morning this week I woke up with Kipling snuggled up to my chest. At ten pounds he’s a little small to spoon with, really, but he was trying. And he was also mashing the top of his head into the underside of my chin. “I love you!” *headbutt* “I love you!” *headbutt* “I really really love you!” *wet nose and headsmoosh*

Pirate-Husband often filks songs to or about the cats. The latest goes something like this:

Don’t stop the feeding
Hold on to that fee-eeli-iiine
Kipling wants kibble
all the tiiiiiiime

I’m sorry. That’s going to be a terrible earworm. It was for me; I couldn’t get it out of my head, so this morning I tried to work out the rest of the song.

Just a spotted cat
living in a mountain house
he walks the hallway rail going back and forth

Just a small black cat
playing with a furry mouse
He’ll pace the other cat going back and forth

Two cats in my living room
roll in catnip and act like loons
in a second they will steal my seat
They’ll meow on and on and on and on

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Kittens waiting, sitting by their dinner dish
their pink mouths meowing in the niii-iigght
Sunbeam kittens, living just to take a nap
Hiding, somewhere in the night

Please don’t kill me.

The “Black Paw of Death” is one of Floyd’s favourite games. I think it’s one of Pirate-Husband’s favourites, too.

Happy Feline Friday!

There is absolutely no progress to report on the Dancing Cranes stole. I spent Wednesday after work configuring my new computer (yay, new computer!) and so didn’t have time in the evening to knit. Last night when I sat down to put my two rows on I completely misread the chart and knit, then painstakingly unknit, about 80 stitches. Unknitting the SSKs was not particularly enjoyable, but eventually I’d gotten back to my mistake and worked forward again until I realized that my eyes were crossing from tiredness. Since sleepy lace knitting is a recipe for making mistakes in lace knitting, I put the stole down halfway through a row and went to bed.

I’ve been thinking about design again! The weather is getting colder and that makes me want to knit cozy warm things. I had the idea for a double-thick fingerless glove/convertible mitten, with colourwork on the outside mitten. Already I’m sketching out how it would be constructed. Both the inside and outside would be worked in DK weight yarn, possibly using different yarns for each. The outside would use a strong and smooth yarn so the colourwork would show up well, while the inside could be made of a softer luxurious yarn.

Happy Feline Friday! Could these two be any cuter?

Yes, Floyd does have bald spots around his lips. When he was a young kitten he had an allergic reaction that gave him horrible skin crusties in his ears and on his pawpads and lips. Poor little guy! We’re still not sure what caused it, but fortunately the crusties cleared up quickly and have never come back. Usually it’s difficult to notice that the fur doesn’t grow well around his mouth; the camera flash reflecting off his skin makes it seem worse than it really is.

The fourth washcloth has been giving me no end of troubles. I must have started it seven or eight times, with four different patterns, just trying to get it right. Each time something went wrong – I missed a stitch, I chained the wrong number of stitches, the colours were playing out in the ugliest blotches. Finally I gave up and decided to do another Woven Stitch cloth, since the last one came out so well, and I had much better luck. I didn’t get another argyle, but I did get some nice zig-zags. So much better than splotchy blotches! (But man, I really need to get a better camera, or wait ’til daylight to take pictures.)

I ordered the Silken Kydd yarn from Elann for the Dancing Cranes stole, and I’m totally impressed with their shipping time. I placed the order on Sunday night and got the yarn on Wednesday morning! The pattern calls for three balls of yarn and three pattern repeats to make a 14.5″ by 80″ stole. I ordered a fourth ball in case I’m crazy enough to want to do an extra 8400 stitches of a fourth pattern repeat for a slightly wider stole, or just in case three isn’t quite enough. Since I want it finished for cousin Dianna’s wedding in May, I’m going to have to get started right away. Even if I only knit one row a day, it will be done in time. I’ll cast on this weekend and see how far I can get.

Floyd and Kipling are the best laundry helpers I could have wished for. They’re also a great incentive to put the laundry away as soon as it’s out of the dryer. Otherwise they will shed on it, use it for a jungle gym or as a hiding spot for guerrilla warfare or as a perfect napping hammock.

Cats are great, aren’t they? Happy Feline Friday!

This has been a very slow week for me, thanks to my achy back. Limiting the physical activities I can do makes me fidgety, so I’ve been crocheting a lot. As soon as I finished the blue washcloth, I got started on a third, using this free Woven Stitch Dishcloth pattern and the “Earth Ombres” colourway of Sugar ‘n Cream which I had picked up at Jo-Ann on Monday.

Then, disaster! (Well, not really, but it sounds better that way.) I missed a stitch only a few rows in, which was throwing everything off… and I didn’t catch the mistake until much later, when I was looking back at my work and thinking “Hm, it seems to step in on the side there, and these stitches aren’t lining up the way they ought to.” Perfectionism won out over laziness, and I ripped all the way back to the mistake to begin again, knowing that it wouldn’t take too long to redo the work. Probably no one would have noticed, especially if I put an edging on the cloth, but I would have known and it would have bothered me. Besides, the cloth was working up into the perfect argyle pattern, and I wanted to keep the right stitch count so the pattern would keep going smoothly. By Thursday night I had recovered the work I lost and then some.

Happy Feline Friday! As the weather gets colder, Floyd and Kipling can often be found one on top of the other, or tangled together. They’re just so adorable! We’ve started calling them the Dynamic Duo – Floyd is Batman, naturally, leaving Kipling to be the Boy Blunder. For all that he appears to be a sleek graceful jungle cat, he’s actually kind of clumsy. The other day he tried to jump up onto the garbage can just as I was opening the lid, and oh, the look on his face as he missed and fell backwards onto the floor. He has startled himself off perches, fallen from the hallway railing, and tripped over his own paws. Of course, I love him anyway.

I needed something that would be a quick and easy project, and I thought that crocheting a washcloth would be just the thing to keep my mind occupied. I chose a pattern and got started. Chain 28, that’s easy. Except I wanted a larger washcloth, so I chained half again as many stitches, wondering why the pattern didn’t include anything about how to make it larger. Some quick sketching on paper seemed to indicate that it would work with any even number of stitches, and I figured if I was wrong about that, then I’d just tear it out and start over. Because crochet is fast, right?

By the end of the second row I was sure I’d done something wrong. It didn’t look like the pattern and there were many more stitches than there should have been, even accounting for my upsizing by 150%. I tore it out and started over.

I have a copy of “The Happy Hooker” and I pulled it out to see exactly where I was supposed to be making the single crochets into the chain. The picture of the chain in the book looked a lot like mine… mostly. I *know* I know how to chain, and I know I made each stitch of it exactly the same way, so why do some of the stitches seem backwards and some forwards? To heck with it, I said, and began to work the first row. Single crochet, chain one, skip one, and so on. Halfway through I realized that I again had many more stitches than there should have been.

I tore it out again, and then I chained the same 42 stitches three more times, and three more times ripped it out. When I chain tightly, it looks like the picture in the book; I can figure out exactly which two strands I’m supposed to be hooking through, but I can’t actually get the hook through them. When I chain loosely, I can’t tell which strands are which. One day I’ll be able to read crochet as well as I can read my knitting, but today is not that day. That’s when I gave up and went to bed. And that’s why today’s picture is not of a washcloth, but of the ball of yarn that will eventually become a washcloth.

Kipling doesn’t worry about things like washcloths (unless he’s being threatened with a damp one). He just wriggles around until he’s upside-down, in what looks like the least comfortable position he could possibly be in, and then he purrs himself to sleep. Last night he slept like a normal cat, right side up, snoogled into the small of my back. I had never thought of using a cat for lumbar support before…

It may be impossible for a cat to enjoy being scritched more than Kipling does. He would be happy if I spent all my time scrubbing his ribs with my fingertips like he was a washboard, with brief intermissions for bellyrubs and ear-scratches.

I think I’m going to be taking a summer break from blogging here. I’ve got a camping-trip vacation coming up, followed by travel for work, and a bunch of other distracting stuff going on.

Pirate-Husband and I are embarking on a big home renovation project. Log homes require much more maintenance than I’d realized. We need to wash, strip, bug-proof, repair, stain and seal the entire house. A contractor gave us a quote that was way too high, so we’re going to be doing it ourselves. To be fair, Pirate-Husband is going to be doing most of it. Just not today; the heat index is up around 127F/53C and it’s a day for staying inside.

Once that is done, we hope to be putting new windows into the house before winter sets in. That one, we’re not doing ourselves. We’ve gotten quotes from a number of window companies and picked the best one. It’s still going to be some major work!

On the knitting front, I’m almost done with the first of the stockinette socks I’ve been carrying around, and I got started on the second front half of the pink sweater. I’ll probably end up making my own buttons for the sweaters, either from shrinky-dink or out of polymer clay. Store-bought buttons are so expensive!

I’ve managed to spin a little bit for the Tour de Fleece, but not nearly enough as I’d hoped. Ah well, the wheel is oiled and ready to go, even if I only have a few free minutes. I have it next to my computer so that I can turn 90 degrees and spin a few yards at any moment.

And that’s the State of the Pirate. I didn’t want to just drop everything and leave with no explanation, but I can safely say: I’ll be back!

The blanket is finally, finally finished! I crocheted like a madwoman through yesterday afternoon and into the night. This morning I worked the last edge of the border and did a crazy dance throughout the house shouting “It’s done, it’s done! I’ve done it!” And just in time, too – thanks to my incredible speed when I’m crocheting under pressure, I’ll be able to give the blanket to friend Gwen at her “welcome baby” party this afternoon. Perhaps that was cutting it a little close, huh.

Now to apply that sort of dedication to the pink sweater…

I guess it’s Caturday instead of Feline Friday, but here’s your weekly dose of the Dangerous Duo. They’ve been very patiently waiting outside the door for me to finish up the hexagon blanket so I can go out into the hallway and pet them; I think they were disappointed when I pointed a camera at them instead.

The latest adventure of these crazy cats involved an obstacle course around the bedroom at 01:30 this morning. I’m not sure which cat it was, but one of them kicked over a none-too-steady laptop table when he leaped off it. The table fell into a standing lamp, which in turn fell onto our laundry basket and shattered. Phooey! I liked that lamp. Pirate-Husband and I weren’t exactly thrilled to be cleaning up tiny shards of broken glass at that hour. I’ll have to see if I can find a replacement glass for the lamp. Amazingly, the lightbulb didn’t break!

Happy Feline Friday!

I’m not sure what they find so interesting about the collection of XBox games and the Scrabble set. Lacking opposable thumbs and a capacity to learn more than a few words along the lines of “dinnertime,” “off the table,” and “out! now!” they can’t possibly have any interest in either of those things. Right? I hope? I can’t imagine that playing Scrabble against a cat would be much of a challenge. The only words my two know are meow, mew, myeh, prrrt, ook, and a long, drawn-out rooooooo sound.

Ah, it wasn’t my games but some impertinent squirrel they’re after. I haven’t been able to catch Kipling chattering on video yet, but I keep trying. The squirrels wriggle their tails at him or a brave bird comes right up to the window; he gets so excited that he starts to whine and chatter. Bengals aren’t the only cats who chatter – I found an interesting article explaining what it’s all about. It has a video at the bottom if you want to hear what it sounds like! Cats make the funniest noises…

We did find a pink harness for Floyd to wear, along with a retractable leash. The problem now is that he seems to be terrified of being outside. When we bring him out, he meows nonstop until we let him back in. He does explore a little and I think he will eventually get used to being in the Big Room With No Walls, especially if we bring some treats out for him. The great thing about taking him outside is that for the remainder of the day he’s calm and affectionate. Maybe he just needs to be reminded that he’s not the biggest cat in the world? He only weighs about eight pounds, but he definitely thinks he’s King Cat.

I wish I had a camera with a faster shutter so I could better catch shots like this one.

Floyd still doesn’t like having his picture taken.

Both Floyd and Kipling take their lounging very seriously. I suppose it’s a cat thing.

Up here on the mountain the raspberries are starting to pop out of their fuzzy little covers.

The whole mountainside is covered with them. They’ll be ripe in about a week or so. Looks like we’re going to have a lot of them this year, hooray!

Still life with cat and wineglasses. Floyd has been getting more affectionate lately, snuggling up to us on the couch and asking for ear-scritching. This welcome change might be due to his getting used to life with Kipling, or it might be because he had the snot scared out of him by going outside and he knows that we’re big and protective. We didn’t mean to scare him with the outdoors, but it might just be a little too big for him to process. We’ll keep taking him out for little visits and giving him treats on the porch. Hopefully he’ll get used to it soon.

Last week I mentioned wanting a pink harness for Floyd. Yes, he’s named for Pink Floyd – but also for several other Floyds, including Floyd the Muppet, Floyd from True Romance (one of my favourite movies), Pretty Boy Floyd, Hurricane Floyd, Heywood Floyd, and Floyd Rose.

On my almost-sixteen mile (!) bike ride the other day I passed a committee of vultures. They let me get close enough to take pictures, but when I crossed an invisible vulture comfort line they reluctantly lifted their gigantic wings and flapped away into the field. When I came down the same road on my way home, three of them were sitting in the middle of the street glaring at me. For a moment I thought I’d be involved in some kind of bizarre vulture incident, but when I yelled “I’m not dead yet!” at them they flapped off again. They’re such graceful birds when they’re gliding around in the sky, but much more ungainly when they’re attempting liftoff.

Kipling is not exactly a lapcat – actually, he is very hesitant to step onto a person – but he’s very much a next-to-lap cat. I’ve never met a cat who’s so enthusiastic about being petted. He throws his whole body into it and purrs louder and louder. The more I scritch him the happier he is, and as he gets happier the probability that he will invert gets greater until he’s wriggling on his back, paddling his paws in the air, and scrubbing his face against my hand. (And drooling. Why must the cat drool on me? Does he think he’s a dog?)

He watches movies just like I do, gradually slouching farther and farther down and then falling asleep before all the storylines are tied up. We watched an entire movie like this last night, with him flat on his back next to my leg on the couch, and he didn’t even move when I got up to take his picture. He doesn’t seem to have any dignity at all! I think he’s ridiculously adorable and I keep pointing his cuteness out to Pirate-Husband. “Look at this cat! He’s upside-down again!”

Two things led up to this picture: the first is that last weekend at the wine festival, Pirate-Husband and I bought a hammock. The second is that we’ve been trying to convince Floyd to come outside with us. He doesn’t particularly care about wearing the harness but he seems to be a little bit scared of the outdoors, so we’ve been taking him out, giving him love and treats, and letting him go back inside where it’s safe and air-conditioned.

So here is Pirate-Husband enjoying the hammock, and Floyd demanding (in pathetically small mewing noises) to go back to the air-conditioned living room. He looked pretty upset, so we didn’t make him stay outside for very long. Hopefully he gets used to the Big Room With No Walls and we’ll be able to hang out with him on the porch this summer.

The hammock, by the way, is awesome.

I’m not sure if we’re going to try training Kipling to the harness. He doesn’t seem as if he’d appreciate the Big Room very much either. Unlike Floyd, when Kipling gets spooked he stays that way for hours or days, so I’d rather not push him past his boundaries too quickly.

Here’s another shot of Floyd, wearing the harness this time, again yowling to be let back inside. (Credit where credit is due: this picture was taken by friend Stef, who takes really good pictures of lots of animals.) My neighbor Morrie is always teasing me for not letting the cats roam freely around our properties, but perhaps he doesn’t know that Floyd is at heart a couch-cat who likes the safety and security of being inside and doesn’t really want to enjoy the great outdoors? Floyd did wriggle free of the harness at one point, and instead of fearlessly running into the yard to explore as I might have expected, he ran to the front door and demanded entrance. At least I don’t have to worry about him trying to escape; he really just wants to stay inside!

I wish I’d been able to find a pink harness for him!

We will often buy large packages of meat when they go on sale, and freeze them in portion sizes for later consumption. Then we go on “clean out the freezer” kicks when we don’t feel like shopping or if there aren’t any good sales going on. Earlier this week, Pirate-Husband took out two pounds of stew beef to defrost. Well, we’re in the middle of a heat wave over here, so the idea of our regular thick and hearty beef, bean and barley stew was a little less than appealing. I suggested beef bourguignon, since we’d brought home a few bottles of wine from the event last weekend, and that was the impetus for us to finally get around to purchasing an enameled dutch oven. It’s a six quart Lodge, it is beautifully gradiated shades of red, and its inaugural run caused us to say things like “this food is magically delicious” and “why the heck didn’t we buy a dutch oven a long time ago?”

Since the oven was occupied, our thought of roasting sliced potatoes wasn’t going to work. Instead, we nuked wedges of red potatoes until they were fork-tender and finished them in the cast iron pan with herbs. They came out perfectly brown and crispy on the edges. I was sad when I ran out of room for more food; it was so good that I just wanted to keep eating! Fortunately the leftovers came with me to work, and I’m sure the scent emanating from the kitchen when I reheated my lunch was enough to make anyone in the office jealous.

Last weekend, Pirate-Husband and I volunteered to pour wine at Vintage Virginia, a local wine festival. We were working in the Top Five Tasting Tent, so we were in the shade all day. I put on my extrovert face and ended up having lots of fun, much more than I’d expected! We split the sixteen tables between the volunteers, and one of my patrons took this picture of me. (They also gave me a completely unexpected tip!) As thanks for our service we were given free entrance to the festival on Sunday, but I think I actually had a better time working than I did waiting on line to taste wines.

I’ve been keeping up with Operation: Badass. It’s definitely made easier by the beautiful scenery. Farms with horses and cows, the mountain rising up in the background, old buildings with boards over the windows being reclaimed by nature. The way the trees arch over this driveway make it seem almost like a magical place. I don’t like thinking that it’s “just” a driveway; I couldn’t see the house from the road so I imagined what it must look like, and I’m sure my imagination did it justice.

Most of the time I stop to take photos when I’m recovering from speeding up a hill, but other times I stop just because something is so pretty that I need to have a picture of it. This driveway was one of those times, and I’m glad to have stopped for it.

The flower season is almost at its end, as we’re turning the corner into summer’s oppressive heat. The mountain laurels are starting to look sad and wilted. But these two were still going strong, hiding in the shade next to a cow field. It occurred to me after I’d leaned in to take the pictures that I was likely to be bitten by a tick, but fortunately that didn’t happen. Anyway, does anyone know what kind of flowers these are? I especially like the ruffled petals of the pink ones.