September moon

Grabbed camera; ran outside. Moon had disappeared, lost in cloud. Kept playing hide and seek, but I finally caught it! Skywatch, Friday! Look at the Skywatch Friday meme http://skyley.blogspot.com/

There's a new guy on the block!

Today's addition to the group of deer I've been able to photograph through my window. I think this is sort of s rutting gesture--it is similar to what rams do. He's an awesome fellow and the other deer defer to him.

Fragrant Tenderness

I found this bag of micellaneous buttons at the Flea Market at the Alanson Riverfest. I love thinking about where they have been and how they got to me. Some have little bits of thread and fabric on them and the grooves of the large button at the top look dirty. They are not part of my own past, but they speak another language. A big part of my memory thread is attached to objects that remind me of times gone past. I am reading (part of my Russian summer) a two volume biography of Nabokov by Brian Boyd. It is long and crammed with detail and very, very interesting. Here is a taste of VN.

“The horse-drawn tram has vanished, and so will the trolley, and some eccentric Berlin writer in the twenties of the twenty-first century, wishing to portray our time, will go to a museum of technological history and locate a hundred-year old streetcar, yellow, uncouth, with old-fashioned curved seats, and in a museum of old costumes dig up a black, shiny-buttoned conductor's uniform. Then he will go home and compile a description of Berlin streets of bygone days. Everything, every trifle, will be valuable and meaningful: the conductor's purse, the advertisement over the window, that peculiar jolting motion which our great-grandchildren will perhaps imagine—everything will be ennobled and justified by its age.
I think that here lies the sense of literary creation: to portray ordinary objects as they will be reflected in the kindly mirrors of future times; to find in the objects around us the fragrant tenderness that only posterity will discern and appreciate in the far-off times when every trifle of our plain everyday life will become exquisite and functional in its own right: the times when a man who might put on the most ordinary jacket of today will be dressed up for an elegant masquerade.”

Vladimir Nabokov, translation from A Guide to Berlin as quoted in Brian Boyd, Vladimir Nabokov: the Russian Years, pp 250-251.

Morning Llight

Oh, I cannot stop this! Here are the kids and one of the mothers. The kids bump each other playfully, like any young animals. The larger one has very big ears!

A spear of grass

The four whitetail deer have been here every day this week, most usually in the morning and evening. Thus they are sidelit from one side or the other, making for beautiful effects. There are two mothers and two fawns. What I have noticed about the chance to watch deer this way is their alertness, their fine-boned delicacy and their grace. It makes me wish that hunting season would never come. . .

This is what I meant about grace

She's like a ballerina: all neck and limbs.

Yesterday Morning

They have been here every morning this week, when I was getting ready to go to Senior Citizen exercise swim. But this morning they are not there. It's an overcast day, not the sort of day you would want to swim outdoors, but the boring motel pool isn't a European vacation delight, either. I've been nominated to suggest they clean and refill the pool--let's see if I manage it. I wrote a long post last night: "We are sorry, but your message wasn't sent. Arghhhh
Don't you think the deer has dainty legs? Even her tongue is dainty.

Benjamin's Apotheosis

Benjamin's Apotheosis
Originally uploaded by jhhymas

I should have gone to bed, but just found this iPhone app after someone saw another app treatment of Benjamin on Flickr and made it a favorite. This one was first treated in the app addLib and then in the aptly named Percolator. I almost cannot stand to go to bed now!

Monarchs on the move

For the past week, I have seen two or three monarch butterflies every day. They are definitely on the move! If you want to follow their adventures, read the book Chasing Monarchs; Migrating with the Butterflies of Passage by Robert Michael Pyle! And if you want them to come to your yard, plant phlox like my daughter did!