To infinity...

That rural New Jersey field, revisited (literally).  I went back on Saturday 10/29 and saw numerous honeybees who didn't need to go far for a meal. These flowers were maybe 40 yards from their hive in the middle of the field. This bee had just finished here and was lifting off on a short journey to another cosmos.

Reflecting on a squirrel

Why?  Because most of the year, this photo isn't possible.  Except for a brief period in early fall (and presumably about the time of the spring equinox), the late-afternoon sun is at a different place on the western horizon. It is rare when it can simultaneously back-light a feeding squirrel and reflect off our back door glass to illuminate it from the front. And of course, the squirrel has to be there within that brief window where the sun is in the right place.  But if we put seeds out there, well, a squirrel is likely to be there, too.

Hedge bindweed by any other name

 What's the difference between a morning glory...

... and hedge bindweed?

Just the name, that's all.  

Seeing the sights in Quakertown

There have been some cool fall nights recently, but not cold enough to impair the flowers in a field near Quakertown, NJ.  When I saw them just off the road, I pulled over and unzipped the camera case.  

Cornflower (Centraurea Cyanus)

Pink cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus?)

Let's take a closer look at the insect helping itself to the soft, sweet center. 

Halictus ligatus, perhaps?  (aka Ligated furrow bee, or simply "sweat bee".)

Here's a wider view, including some of what look to me like bee hives, surrounded by plenty of flowers to pollinate.  Might have to stop by there next time and see if they have any honey to sell.

 

My Days

So this agglomeration of writing began a few weeks after the beginning of the Covid pandemic.  It was "Pandemic Quarantine Diary", soon to become the catchier "Before I Forget...".

The obvious names for ***.blogspot.com were already taken, so I had to come up with something else.  I'd just watched the movie Butterfield 8, and tried summerfield8.blogspot.com, using the name of the imaginary town from the 1940's radio sitcom, "The Great Gildersleeve."  But someone else had already claimed that obscure name in August 2006 for a fantasy football league.  

Well, now what?  I shuffled the possibilities and, a moment later, I found summerfield18 was available.

After setting it up, I posted pictures from the pandemic:  a line of people outside a Walmart, multiple stickers in stores warning customers to practice social distancing.  Also, describing the things I did to get through a day off from work, considering that Tabby's Place was closed to visitors and volunteers.  None of it was intended for the public, a reversal of the usual reason for creating a blog.  It didn't matter whether anyone else saw it, I just wanted to document a period in time.

Then, I learned how to set up an existing domain name with the blogspot site, and the visitor count gradually increased.  I figured it was only made up of search engine bots passing through, but I began to feel uncomfortable, hesitant to write what I wanted to say on a medium where the general public might find it.

It turned out to be simple to create blog after blog after blog in one Google account, so soon I set up a second space for the things I wanted to put on the books, but only privately.  That's the one you're reading now.

I even started a third blog for the most personal things in my life that I desired to put in writing, but that didn't last long.  Using Google blogspot for journaling is to have someone invisibly over your shoulder, with no secrets between you and them.  I erased the few posts I'd made, but kept the Strictly Personal space on the off chance there's a use for it in the future.  Google presumably kept the blogposts for future reference.  

About the same time, Covid eased back and Tabby's Place opened for volunteers once more.  I didn't feel like writing much, so the posts in Blog #1 and #2 were mostly in the form of photographs.  Also, I removed the forwarding to the original domain name, and traffic stats went back to single digits.  

Keeping all that straight?  #1:  "Before I Forget..." at summerfield18.blogspot.com, which served its purpose for documenting everyday life during a raging pandemic, and has evolved into a place for posting my non-cat pictures.  

#2: "The 2nd Set of Books" at the2ndset.blogspot.com for writing down thoughts that go about as deep as I'm capable of at my age

#3: "Strictly Personal" (inactive) at itsstrictlypersonal.blogspot.com

Now, during the year and a half, close to two years of the worst of the pandemic, I was taking antidepressants after a gap of a few years. It helped keep the emotional lows from going too low, but it also put a ceiling on the opposite end.  I could function and perform at my day job and my volunteer work, that wasn't the problem. I just wasn't doing the extra thinking and the additional planning that normally kept my mind active.  

I'd sit in the rocker-recliner after supper, nap for 15 to 30 minutes, and when I woke up, it'd be Netflix and chill, in the original chaste sense of the term.  If not Netflix, then Amazon Prime Video, or especially YouTube audio files.  I'd listen intently to newscasts and audio ephemera from World War II while letting my eyes and hand play level after level of Fishdom 2.  Put another way, my ambitions for personal time were self-limited.

But as 2022 moved along, I felt like I could get along without sertraline, and I was right.  No depression, more ambition.  (Although I should add that there has been more carb loading than a man of my age needs, and a concurrent weight gain.)

Another thing -- as a volunteer photographer at Tabby's Place, I'd learned about photography and photo editing, and I thought about putting them down in blog format.  

The name "Photography on the Cheap" will give you an idea of the angle I wanted to pursue. Photography can cost you a lot, but the thinking was that I could set down some things as a voice of experience, and demonstrate how I was operating without spending much.

I took a bunch of notes, and they'll be available if/when I want to edit them down to a useful form. The 25 words or less version: pre-owned gear for creating the images, and freeware for editing.  

To wrap things up for the evening, I decided to set up one more blogspot blog only for pictures that were taken at Tabby's Place. Nothing elaborate, just a photo and a link to something on the TP site, either the cat's official description or a blog post featuring that cat.  

The name afewgoodcats.blogspot.com is not being used, but it's not available either, and I don't know why.  Did I apply for it years ago and then abandon it?  I don't recall doing that.  Who else would want to claim it and then not use it?

So instead, taking a lesson from the extended commercials for "As Seen On TV" products that put "try" or "get" before the name of the product, I created seeafewgoodcats.blogspot.com and connected it to the dormant domain afewgoodcats.com.  No publicity, just a soft rollout.  

Maybe after I'm retired, I'll shift to a higher gear. By that time, blogs will have gone the way of the "home page" and only senior citizens will have them, like Facebook.  Everyone younger will be somewhere else.  Some of a certain age will be on Instagram, and some younger persons will be leveraging TikTok, provided it isn't banned as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party.  We just don't know, do we? 

Moggie Monday with Good Queen Swirly

For that matter, it could also have been used for a Tummy Tuesday, as GQS's golden tummy is on display.

She likes to nap on the couch in the family room, but I don't remember ever seeing her in this position.  The belly-up look is favored by her brother Kit.

Sunday Yellow

We're a month into autumn, but that doesn't stop the bright yellow wood sorrel in our neighborhood.

One for now, one for later (plus one)

Canada Thistle, taken 17 September 2022 at Tabby's Place, Ringoes, New Jersey.

The insect may be Ceratina, or small carpenter bee.

"Canada Thistle is one of our worst weeds."  Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station

Flower-Of-An-Hour

 Bladder Hibiscus

Bright Red October

 

Sunflower on a rainy day

A rural area of suburban Lehigh County. Only a few hundred yards away are modern housing developments. An old, narrow bridge crosses Swabia Creek, and on the bank of the creek are some of these flowers.  Yellow like the bidens polylepis from a week ago, and both were growing near water, but that one had only 8 petals and was a different shade of yellow.  Maybe some variety of helianthus or heliopsis.  This one looks the closest to it.