Sue Takes Pictures

Mosey was the top speed Sue and I hit on our walk around the neighborhood today, as the weather continued hot and muggy.  Turns out mosey is a fine speed for admiring things.  On Georgetown, for instance, we stopped to admire a monarch butterfly feeding on the milkweed in someone’s garden.  It was picture perfect, so Sue stopped to take the monarch’s picture.

     She was frustrated, though, that a fat bumble bee kept popping into the frame.  “Take both of their pictures,” I suggested, but she’d moved to another monarch on another plant by then.  Into the frame buzzed a bumble bee.  We stood back for another look.  Several of the milkweeds had monarchs, and they pretty much all had bees.

     “Bees have to eat, too,” she said, and took a shot of both pollinators.

     My sister Carol plants milkweed for the monarchs, too.  She called one day to announce success.  “It’s taken ten years,” she announced, but we finally have monarch caterpillars.”

     Friends Mary and Isaac have had monarch caterpillars every year since planting their milkweed.  They’ve even had cocoons and, in the end, butterflies.  “We had ten plump, juicy caterpillars this year,” Mary reports, “but they’ve all disappeared.  Isaac thinks snakes ate them.”  Mary’s house abuts the woods, so it’s possible, but I’d prefer to imagine well-fed robins.

     Sue stopped for more photographs on Prairie, at a tree her plant-identification app told us was a silk tree.  The blossoms were pink and the same sort of soft focus as the blooms on a smoke tree.  Exotic.  Clearly the product of a Japanese-trained watercolorist.  And the leaves looked like feathers.

     Also on Prairie was something else Sue and I had never seen before.  It was about three boards tall and sat right on the ground, leaning up against the trunk of a tree.  It had three sets of L-brackets on it, the sort that might support shelves.  But instead of shelves, the brackets held three assortments of small-diameter sticks about a foot long.

     So what was it?  It proclaimed itself a Little Dog Library.  Like the Little Free Libraries that dot the neighborhood, offering books to human passersby, the Little Dog Library offered curated collections of sticks for canine comers.  The library was neatly lettered and cheerfully appointed with pink paw prints.  Sue took a picture.

     My favorite garden in the neighborhood is on a convex curve on Georgetown.  It’s large and kidney shaped and lovely in all seasons.  A week or so ago, a new flower bed appeared next to it on the neighbors’ lawn.  The new bed is the same size and shape, and oriented so it’s the mirror image of the first garden. 

     The makers of the second garden haven’t planted anything in it, yet.  Clearly, they’ve collaborated with the neighbors about the shape and placement of the new bed.  Here’s hoping they get input on the plantings from the neighbors, too.  Those folks clearly know what they’re doing.  When the new bed is planted and blooming, that curve of the boulevard will look like scrollwork, and everyone who passes will enjoy it.

     One of our gardener-type neighbors taught me something this week, too.  We have some periwinkle growing in our front garden.  It’s terrific as groundcover but has a tendency to overachieve.  Every time it gets tidied up, it celebrates by sending out shoots that arc into space all higgledy-piggledy until I get after them with the clippers again. 

     Kathy gave me the following scoop:  you don’t need clippers to deal with wayward periwinkle.  You can just lean over, grab a shoot, and snap it off.  Oh, happy day.  I put this new information to immediate use yesterday afternoon, snapping off shoots like a crazy person.  “I’m having so much fun!” I told her,   sweat dripping into my eyes.  And, even better, tidying by snapping is way faster than tidying by clipping.  “Thank you, Kathy!  Thank you!”

     Sue and I made a canine neighbor happy this morning, too.  A terrier mix lives at a house on Bluett, kept safely in the yard by a fence that has, in places, large square openings.  It’s not much of a fence, and one of these days, the dog may well discover that it can jump right over the top.  As Sue and I walked by the house, we noticed a small, spiky blue ball in the street at the bottom of the driveway.  We picked it up and checked:  yes, it fit neatly through the square openings.  So we put it back in the yard to find the next time the dog’s outside.

     Hallelujah!  It’s raining.  That should cool things off.  

11 July 2025