French vanilla latte?

In December 2022, I visited Clearwater, Florida. I found some unusual shells and a large flock of terns flew all around me just out of reach. Here are some photos:

Sometimes I like to imagine that I am an inch tall walking among a forest of wildflowers. Other times, I imagine what it would be like if the flowers were as tall as trees. This is one way to turn a short walk around the neighborhood into an adventure. Watch out for bees.

​Here are some things I saw in 2021:

These are some things I saw on walks around the Tampa Bay area in the winter of 2020-2021.

The time finally came for me to return to Florida in October 2020, but first I had to visit my friend in New Hampshire. He took me up Uncanoonuc Mountain for a view of Manchester, but this is all we could see:

From there, I drove to Chambersburg Pennsylvania, only to wake up the next morning to fog so thick I was afraid to get on the highway. It had followed me! While fog is common in the part of Rhode Island I was in, it is not common in New Hampshire, and the chances of encountering it twice on the same trip at points so distant from each other are tiny. It could not be a coincidence! The fog must be alive! Was I to be its dinner?

I ate at McDonald’s and saw ducks in the brook out back. At ten it was still no less foggy, but I had to go. Just one mile out of town were blue skies.

I stopped in North Carolina without incident. The next day, I took a photo of this butterfly at a rest stop in Georgia:

Being absolutely sick of driving, I stopped in northern Florida for the night. The next day, I found that the fog had caught up with me again!!! It got worse and worse as I drove west on 10 until I reached the 75 junction. Then it gradually got better and better as I drove south.

Finally, I got to my parents’ house. No more fog. A couple days later, I took a walk around the neighborhood and saw a lot of flowers:

Part of a tree had fallen down revealing its insides. It looked as though it had started to…send roots into itself?????

I also saw two skinks and many types of birds. Many more flowers were not photographed. The sun was bright and the breeze was blowing. The fog had been banished!

 
Points To Ponder:
“The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant.” – The Eleventh Doctor, Vincent and The Doctor, Doctor Who

Sometime in 2020 I held a brushfire. My friend came over for marshmallows, hot dogs, and beer. Once the sun was good and down a couple of deer ran across the yard right near us. It was a good time during what was a rough year.

Weeks later I had a fire by myself during daylight. When it was put out, I found blue smoke:

Points To Ponder:

“Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, and aliment, without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.” – James Madison

Last summer, my nephews came to visit me in Rhode Island and they played soccer on the porch in pouring rain and lightning. They were completely unmanageable. A bit later there was small hail. This was the second time I had seen hail. The first was in New Hampshire in the late eighties. Interesting.

Later that same day, we saw a rainbow:

Still later that same day, we saw a whole family of turkeys walk right across the yard. A row of little turkeys followed the adult. After that, we were playing hide-and-seek and I got stung by a wasp. A giant wasp nest was in the hedge near where I had previously found a bird nest. It was a wild day in the middle of a wild year.

Weeks later, I visited my nephews in New Hampshire and took a photo of this creek surrounded by flowers:

Points To Ponder:

“Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.” – Jesus, Matthew 19:14, NLT

This past summer, I trimmed the hedge around the yard and exposed a bird nest:

The birds never came back ☹

2020 has been a very strange year. I let the water run dry on my boiling green beans three times! They smelled like burnt tobacco. A lot of my projects were put on hold and I travelled hardly at all. However, I did take a few walks around the neighborhood:

We apparently have some artistic neighbors. A few miles down the road somebody has filled their yard with giant metal insects and spiders. On the way there is a boulder recently painted with an ocean scene and a holly bush.

These are some other things I saw on walks around the neighborhood in RI:

Points To Ponder:

“The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship.” – Psalms 19:1

“Whatever you eat or drink or whatever you do, you must do all for the glory of God.” – 1st Corinthians 10:31

“I have witnessed real faith and genuine sincerity in the holy places of many different religions, and in every case my heart responded to them. I will be entering many more churches and holy places and see a good deal more, I’m sure; but to me the best church of all is the sky’s starry dome above. The whole of nature is my temple, and so are my room and my small heart, as long as it is alive and beating.” – Svetlana Alliluyeva

“I’ve read enough books in their entirety to know that if I persevere and keep reading, things will make sense, and I might even be changed in the process of making sense of them…God, the Master Author, writes every chapter of our lives with the aim of character development. He patiently works in us through the mundane and the problematic. He adds odd passages and tedious side plots. He weaves our lives with those of other characters through unexpected and even bizarre ways. Yet, when we turn the last page, it will be the beginning. There will be no more wistfulness. There will be no more wondering.” – Klara Holscher

I have been so busy writing books and taking care of my grandfather that I didn’t visit many parks or write many blog posts last year. Here are a few things I did do:

I discovered YouTube channels ​DrBecky and ​Cody’sLab:

Doctor Rebecca Smethurst is an astrophysicist who covers the latest news in cosmology, gets really excited about black holes, and sings.

Cody takes care of bees, chickens, extracts valuable metals from catalytic converters, plays with mercury, turns everything into charcoal, and is currently building a habitat to simulate Martian living.

In the meantime, I posted another article to ​LovesTampaBay.com, this one written by my mother about her visit to ​Sawgrass Lake Park.

I also saw a GIGANTIC beetle in the summer. It resembled a Japanese beetle, but was bigger than a June bug. Unfortunately, I got no pictures.

What I did get a picture of was the night sky when it was every color of the alphabet and then some. It is hard to see in the photo, but they are there.

Another day I went to check the temperature and found I was not the only one:

I made chili using leftover Lima beans:

Here are some other pictures:

​I didn’t get out much in 2019, but that doesn’t mean nothing happened. My grandfather’s rhubarb plant put up flowers this year. First, it put up a very tall stem. Then buds formed. Then they flowered and before long became disk-shaped seeds.

​There are also three types of lilacs on the property and a fourth type just over the hedge on the neighbor’s property. To my eyes, they had quite different shades, but the camera doesn’t pick this up well.

​I didn’t get out much in 2019, but here are some flowers I saw around town:

Well, I didn't go as many places as I wanted, but it was still an interesting year. My grandfather had me trim the hedge, which is how I found all kinds of new insect friends. At different times, I saw a caterpillar, a dragonfly, and a praying mantis. In the flower garden was another dragonfly.

I also found evidence of other potential friends.

There are so many wonders around us that are hidden unless we cut things open. Trimming the hedge is how I discovered that yellow wood really does exist.

One day I saw patches of frost in the grass - even though it was late July. The ground below was black. What is that stuff? Mold? It was gone days later.

Another day I discovered a patch of wild mint on the edge of the yard. At first, it smelled and tasted exactly like basil before it matured and became mintier. I put it on my noodles.

The neighbor's yard developed several gigantic growths of fungi in a matter of only four days! I photographed the first to come up from the south and north and then again at the end of the four days when it had matured.

Then I saw a bunch of other stuff:

Even when I stay inside I see interesting things. This intruder was resting on the screen of the guest room window:

This one was in a gas station:

Very nice.

Just stop.

Spring keeps popping through the ground everywhere!

Spring has sprung!

I can't read the thermometer, but I have a hunch it's cold out there.