As before, I will start a new entry and hope that ploy continues to work to let me open a new short essay on something: notes on the neighborhood! So! After starting this new entry, I went out into the garden again and tried to count the red azaleas. As far as I could tell, there are at least thirteen bushes of varying sizes, the most stunning growing alongside the pond in the back. It was profuse today (Thursday). All the buds were fully open and the flowers were just magnificent. Since the bushes are from small to large there are splashes of color all around the garden.
Besides the red ones, there is also a later blooming white one, several pinks, and a lavender bush or two. What could be better for Holy Week than a garden full of blooming azaleas! I saw Mary aiming her phone at the flower array by the pond so perhaps we shall have a picture to go with this praise.
There was something else that is supposed to go with this entry, but I have forgotten what it is. Perhaps it will come to me.
Oh. The ISS was scheduled to sail by overhead at 9:44 p.m. tonight. The sky was clear, I put Designated Survivor on hold, left the house at 9:35 and walked down the street to the left and around the bend to where the whole sky is visible. The ISS was supposed to appear from the WNW, Though it seemed to me to come from the North. The fused vertebrae in my neck make it difficult and painful to look up. But I wasn't about to be denied. The space station appeared on schedule and just as I was thinking it had overstayed its two minute time, I glanced down to ease the pain in my neck a bit, then glanced quickly back up only to discover that the space station had vanished. The email said it would be visible for two minutes. It was two minutes. Two minutes, no doubt. Since Jupiter was clearly visible and bright, I walked, more like stumbled to the cul de sac, did the circle and started home, glancing at the sky from time to time. One of the Psalms says that God knows all the stars by name. Considering that we know now how full of stars the heavens are, that makes a truly arresting image.
Calling it quits for this morning.
Just read what I wrote over a month ago. The azaleas are only a memory and a photo now, many photos actually. The photo most interesting is the one I think I will attach to this entry. We were walking the dogs out on the Stephenson trail. Mary and her three were just over the bridge and down in the water. Frollie loves to swim there and little Schuster follows him into the water and loves it too. Simon and I were up on the other side of the bridge where there are rocks lining the side of the trail. He was sniffing and snuffing as only a dachshund can when I saw this triangular head sticking out of a hole in the rocks. I stopped and my stomach did a slight flip and rearranged itself. It was an ugly head, big, very big (ha; couldn't resist), like the head of a snapping turtle. Talk about ugly and dangerous. In any case, needless to say, it wasn't a snapping turtle. When it noticed me watching it, it pulled itself back into the hole with not so tiny little legs. It had legs! Not a turtle, not a snake with those legs. Simon and I moved on and it took me about half a mile on the trail to remember the creature's name. Not Russell or Joe, of course. It was a very large skink. Even the name is somewhat ugly. How does God come up with such things, and the world is absolutely full of creatures, beautiful and ugly, placid and aggressive, etc. It was a skink. Just remembering the name was a cause for joy and delight at the time. Well, I looked on the internet when we got home and found a photo of a skink that almost exactly matched the creature I saw, though the one in the photo was seemingly more colorful.
I had seen skinks beore, but never one that large. Truth be told, I think I like snakes better. Non poisonous ones of course, but better. As a matter of fact, we have a rat snake living around the back of our house. It is smaller than the one Simon chased that day, but very long. We call her Sophie. Yesterday I went out on the porch, or whatever it is that extends from the house and has a roof over it now with four new windows in the roof that do not leak during torrential rains the way the old windows did. In any case, I was just going to my bathroom window to see if I could figure out how the ants were getting into my bathroom. I looked down and there Sophie was stretched out in her ample length, head pointed toward the house. Since that portion of the deck is storage area, when "she" saw me watching "her," she rapidly slithered under a large grill stored there, and disappeared for the day. At least, none of us saw her again. We call her "she" because under the boardwalk (like the song) there may have been a nest, since Mary has seen two very small rat snakes there with the same markings. Since we haven't seen any of the little ones lately, she may have eaten them, perhaps. I think snakes may do that, but I have no direct evidence.
This wasn't the first time we saw her. Mary and her friend Carol Ann were eating on the deck (that's the word I couldn't remember), Sophie appeared across from them, causing a small consternation, because Frollie found her and barked but stayed away. Simon would have gone in for the kill. Not sure about Schuster. Yes, he's a dachshund, but no, he isn't that brave unless someone bigger leads the assault. In any case Sophie moved peacefully off the edge of the deck and disappeared under it. Since she doesn't any tailtell bulges, and is long and thin, she may not have eaten too well lately, but, so far, she seems to have stayed in the same area, and there are, or at least were, mice under the air conditioner unit on the other side of the deck. Well, Carol Ann took three pictures of Sophie, one of which she sent to Mary, so if Mary can figure out how to send it to me, Sophie may appear her sooner or later.
Finally for this entry, the ants were coming out of the floor vent. Good grief, God only knows what they are trying to find to eat in the bathroom. Hmm, don't even think it; I always flush.