Some Pictures

This is Imari Lace, one of our herd of Scotch Highland cattle that we have behind our house. Imari is probably the sweetest of them all, since she's the one that most often will come up to the fence when you yell, "Apples!", granted the rest of the herd is close enough. While the other cows are somewhat aloof, Imari seems to be the most personable. And the nice thing is that she'll never end up as hamburger, because she's owned by Ashley, not her father.

I felt that our 12 foot tall sunflowers deserved more than the brief notice I gave them last time, so here are some more pictures I took of them.

If you look closely on the one below, you can see a small, ruby-throated humming bird perched on our badminton net. I tried to get a picture of one sipping from a flower, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera.

I have a couple like these

, of the bumble bees on the flower. These are the ones I took when I missed the humming bird. The bees are everywhere this year. I was over in the field, where all the wildflowers are (purple knotweed, purple aster, Queen Anne's Lace, goldenrod) and there was a honey bee for almost every flower I passed.
And here you can see our giant sunflowers in all their glory. Considering that I barely reach over the badminton net, you can see how tall these beauties are. If only they were perennials!
August is going by too fast. As always, there's a multitude of things I would like to do and

didn't get around to.

There's also some things that I didn't want to do, and also didn't get around to. Such as

summer reading. I have more than half of my last book left, and five days left of summer.

Better get reading.

August

I haven't written in an obscenely long time, and for this I apologize. Again. How many times have I neglected this blog for weeks on end? Actually, don't count that. I don't want to know.

This weekend we got back from Bethany Beach, Delaware. We stayed in the doll-infested beach house that our extended family rents from a friend-of-a-friend. The house, though oddly decorated and a pediophobe's nightmare, is nice because it is familiar, and air-conditioned.

You know, maybe if I start naming the dolls, then my fear will eventually dissipate as the names generate personalities, which make them seem less creepy and souless.

On the other hand, it may just make my semi-phobia worse, because the only names I can think of are weirdly ominous names, like Chuckie, or Lucy, or It.

I bought four books this week, and read them within the week. They are Tithe by Holly Black (really good, though a little weird), Squire by Tamora Pierce, The Den of Shadows Quartet (four books in one) by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin. They were all amazing books. I just wish that they had lasted longer. Now I need the sequels desperately, and I have 1 and 1/2 books of summer reading left.

Which reminds me. Shouldn't I be doing that now, before I have to go back to school next week?

Nah.

We drove home on Friday, a nine-hour endeavor. The drive, without any stops is closer to 6 hours, but 6 hours is a long time to sit in the car without bathroom breaks, and besides, it's an obligatory ritual to stop at my Aunt Joanie's apartment in Pennsylvania for a lunch/dinner combination. It's not that I don't like Aunt Joanie -- she's perfectly lovely, and an amazing cook -- it's more the fact that I never see her and know barely anything about her. Thus, few conversation topics. So I tend to leave the conversing to my parents -- or my mom -- and sit in the corner with my sister and try to get in on the neighbor's WiFi. Sadly, this visit, the neighbors wised up and got a security enabled network. So, no WiFi. My internet deprivation must continue a little longer.

Cathy, my cousin, showed us her recently redecorated apartment. She did an amazing job on the painting, and her next project is the retro white cabinets in the kitchen, which kind of counteract her black table and peach-orange walls.

She has an orange cat named Wankster (I truly have no idea how to spell that, but it is how you pronounce it) and her roommate has a dog, Marley, a lhasa apsa. Playing with the insanely cute animals alleiviated the boredom and some of the awkwardness of the rest of the visit to my great-aunt's.

Back to school shopping is a nightmare. My sister whined the entire time, and I couldn't find the correct notebooks. The school section at Target was a picked over, disorganized mess. It got really frustrating. I did, however, get a haircut today, which made my former haircut shorter, and it's now parted on the side. I didn't realize it would do this, but now I look an awful lot like one of my friend's friends, who also has short brown hair and glasses. It's kind of funny.

Oh, and our sunflowers are now 12 feet tall and blooming outside of our dining room. They are magnificent. The one in the photo is a considerably shorter one on our back porch, growing in a pot full of petunias. I love sunflowers in August. And any other time, really.

Has anyone looked at my random profile question recently? I find it quite funny.