End-of-summer wildflowers

Just off one of the back roads in Central New Jersey, there was a field full of these yellow flowers.  A few of the flowers were in a natural arrangement with the white ones.  Google Lens seems to think the yellow is some form of Bidens polylepis, but gave no guidance as to the white flowers accompanying it.

Pretty in purple

This is from September 2023, the last time I took a bunch of images of a patch of purple asters near home.  In 2024, I took a few, and this year, the township buzzcut the entire area along the road, so I'm not hopeful I'll have the opportunity again.  

Another volunteer

There are several of these flowers in our small unlandscaped area out back.  Google Lens AI says, "The image displays an Ivyleaf Morning Glory, scientifically known as Ipomoea hederacea. This flowering plant belongs to the bindweed family and is characterized by its distinctive ivy-shaped leaves and funnel-shaped flowers, typically appearing in shades of blue, purple, or white."

But is it welcome wherever it grows?  "Ipomoea hederacea ... is considered an invasive plant, particularly due to its ability to spread rapidly, compete with native species, and form extensive runners along the soil that can quickly establish new plants. It is listed on the Invasive Plant Atlas of the United States as a problematic morning-glory species that can cause significant ecological issues, and its vigorous growth can suffocate other plants."

Not again!

This was also on Xitter today.  I heard many years ago that you could tell a lot about someone if they hear the William Tell Overture, and the first thing they think of is the Lone Ranger.  And here, if someone like me sees a serious history tweet, while reading it I think of Abbott and Costello's "Who's On First?". 

"Hu received a call from FDR..."  "That's what I'm trying to find out!"  

"FDR asked the State Department to request Hu's autograph."  "Whose autograph?"  "That's right."  

As you see in the last clip, the author tells us who was FDR's last visitor.  Naturally.

Just between us

Today on Xitter.

Out in the back yard

"The image displays Velvetleaf (Abutilon theophrasti), also known by common names like Indian Mallow, Butterprint, or Buttonweed."  But also:  "Since being introduced to North America in the 18th century, velvetleaf has become an invasive species in agricultural regions of the eastern and midwestern United States."

Also on the unlandscaped part of our yard, there were a pair of cabbage whites and a brown skipper on pink sedum.

Backing talkwards

All you need to know about me:  I read the location of the above photo and immediately thought of it in the form of a Spoonerism.  (It could be a cinema sequel starring a flatulent Clint Eastwood.)    

Does anyone else with an emotional age decades less than their actual age snicker when passing a deli carrying Boar's Head meat?  

I don't know (or much care) whether Brangelina's daughter was baptized, but the thought of a man of the cloth bungling the name of Shiloh Pitt is good for a smile.

While I'm at it:  This flowering bush is growing right in front of the house.  Perhaps it was the recent passing of Tom Lehrer that makes me want to add just one more line to his song "Silent E."  

Late night visitor

On the wall of my bathroom, a drain fly, also commonly known as a moth fly.  Not a good sign.

Something's leaking somewhere in the plumbing and giving these something to live on. Oh boy.

 

Along the Roadside

 

On the way home today, I took a route along a side road where Queen Anne's Lace, chicory, and hawkweed are plentiful.  But there were also large pinkish-purplish flowers, so I stopped for a closer look.     

    

 

While strolling in the park

   Spotted Jewelweed, considered a class-C noxious weed in Washington State.  The park where I was today had great swaths of it.  (Fortunately, I wasn't in Washington State.)  

Life in our back yard, plus something unrelated

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And now for something completely different:

Exactly like the Woody Allen joke:  the food is lousy, and such small portions.  

By any other name

I know, I know, it's hedge bindweed and it's an unwelcome invader.  It's almost impossible to get rid of when it gets its roots in, and it chokes out desirable greenery.  But I say it's Morning Glory, and I say it's pretty.

Cervenka Farm, New Jersey

 

Fatal accident

Yesterday morning, at about 11:15 I began driving to Tabby's Place.  Four miles later, I saw a line of cars and their red tail lights on the part of Route 309 that connects to I-78.  Fortunately, the long line hadn't reached the Cedar Crest exit, and neither had I.  

Shortly before, a 20-year-old guy on a motorcycle had been boxed in the middle lane behind a semi slowly climbing a hill.  The motorcyclist tried zipping into the fast lane to get around it, but clipped the semi and rebounded into an Escalade that was already there.  All this at high speed.  

One news report said the accident had been reported at about 9:45, and a different source said the young man was pronounced dead at the scene at 11:15.  

When I took the Cedar Crest exit, I stopped in the parking lot of a medical building and checked local news sources plus a map/traffic app.  After collecting those facts, I understood that the road would be closed for some time (in the end, it was two hours), and turned around and went back home.  

Kind of stands out, doesn't it?

If we are to believe Google Lens, this is a solitary Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus), "a large conifer native to eastern North America."

Also seen in the park:  Swamp Rose Mallow, White Vervain, Prunella vulgaris (aka Common Self-Heal), and a lot of purple loosestrife.  They're the reason for the wiggles in the path on the lower right below.

Thoughts While Scrolling

Barclays US?  Or Barclay Sus?  

What do you think?  Is it AI or not?  Looks like he has a normal amount of fingers, but rescuing children in uniform and the "Dodgers quarterback" description make me wonder...

Straight and tall

Well, straight anyway.  Conocybe Apala (Milky Cone Cap), taken tonight in our back yard. 

 

It used to be landscaped

Now it's loaded with volunteer greenery and insects that accompany it.  I like this way better.

Honeybee on oregano flower, 26 July 2025

Been thinking about this already

Lately, the President of the United States has let it be known that the sugar-sweetened Coca-Cola from Mexico is superior to the HFCS-sweetened Coke currently made in USA.  My opinion is the same as his.

After the storm

It wouldn't have seemed possible during the thunderstorm that hit the area at about 5:00 this afternoon, but by 7:00 things were calmer, drier and especially, cooler.  It was just a little too late for this tree the next street over.  

Conditions were much better this evening for walking around the neighborhood, and I got in about a mile and a quarter.  Map My Walk credited me with 2,569 steps, which is about a third of what some medical concern claims is the proper daily amount. 

I saw this about a few hundred steps from home, in addition to a great many other rabbits along the way, which made it worth the trip.

Tonight's recap

Good Queen Swirly (9:44 a.m.)

But why?  (7:30 p.m.)

Two of the many seen along the way.  (7:35 p.m.)

Back in my own yard.  The Indian Blanket flower that began as a volunteer

 in late June 2020 is still thriving, more than five years later.  (7:47 p.m.)

Google Lens says, "The image displays a cluster of Verbena flowers, 

also known as Vervain."  (7:48 p.m.)

Welcome to the new arrival

I found some old nasturtium seeds in the garage and planted them in a planter this spring.  Just three seeds sprouted, and until a day or two ago, no flowers had been produced.  

 

Nice

Rabbit Holes

For the first time in months, I uploaded a photo of mine to Pinterest.  While on the site, I saw someone else's upload, and it had to do with a Chevrolet dealer in Allentown.  An hour later...

When I moved to the area in 1987, there was an appliance dealer whose building had obviously been an auto showroom in years past.  The Pinterest pin provided more detail, and what with one thing and another, I learned that the used car lot on the southwest corner is still a used car lot today, only under another dealer name.  The showroom/appliance store on the southeast corner was torn down in 2006 and a bank erected on the site.  The Esso station on the northwest corner became an Exxon, then a Hess, and today is a Speedway gas/convenience store.  The diner on the northeast corner is still a diner, although last time I drove by, it appeared to have gone out of business.

Then there was the 1971 purchase of a former A&P store a little south of the corners described above.  The A&P had been there for something like 25 years, but it was a small neighborhood grocery store, not a large supermarket, so it didn't fit in the company's plans.  A newspaper ad from the following year, found on WikiMedia, showed the rebranded building.  Then a look at Google street view from May 2008 showed the same building, which now housed a restaurant, but still had the Centennial peak on its roof.  However, in a 2011 photo of the building, it had been remodeled and the peak removed.  As of today, the same restaurant was open in the building, as it had been in 2008, but the outside had been landscaped and looked much nicer than before.  

That's where I stopped with the former Allentown A&P and looked at the Pleasant Family Shopping graphics that showed a newspaper ad for a grand opening of a Centennial A&P in Sandusky, Ohio.  I didn't dig as hard here, settling for learning that the building that opened in 1960 had been replaced by a huge Kroger Marketplace.  Enough for tonight.  That was interesting.

Because I Can

  

PG can't walk very far anymore, so if I want to take a walk around the neighborhood, it has to be done alone.  If I see something interesting, I take a picture to show her afterward.  This is what I'd call interesting.  Farther away in the yard were two more cottontails, but they would have been tiny specks compared with these three.  

Google calls this Wild Bergamot, aka Bee Balm.  There was a good-sized patch of it near the creek that runs through the local park.  

The oregano in our back yard has grown to a few feet tall, and its flowers are attracting numerous honeybees.  (Oregano honey?  Hmm.)  No picture yet, due to the quality of the light.  When it's nice, bright, and indirect, as in the bee balm snapshot above, I'll haul out the phone.  

Some Fun Now

I was watching an episode of Victory At Sea when this screen came up.  Automatically, I tried to figure out when this footage was taken.  

At far left, I can read "Chester Morris", but not the name of the film or the theatre.  A little to the right, there's "Special Agent" at the Central, I believe, and above that I have no doubt that "Bengal Tiger" is at the Strand.  

Some minutes later, I have learned that all three films were released in mid-1936, and that the Morris film is named "Counterfeit."  What's more, the three stars of "Bengal Tiger" are Barton MacLane, June Travis, and Warren Hull.  The New York Times of July 29, 1936 notes that the film is scheduled to open on this day.

But information available says that "Counterfeit" was released May 25, 1936, two months earlier, and that bit about "Second Smash Week" doesn't add up.  Not a big deal, though.

Now all I want to do is screenshot it, and that's where it got weird.  WIN/SHIFT/S caused the YouTube screen to go black, first in Chrome, then in Edge and Firefox.  Anything I'm doing wrong to cause it?  Search says try double-clicking and then choosing save from the menu that comes up.  Nope -- the save function is there, but it's grayed out.  Then to Reddit, where they said hardware acceleration should be turned off, but that didn't change the result either.  

By this time, I would have used my phone to get it over with, but I'd left it downstairs.  A few more minutes, and I think I've found the answer:  It's a feature, applied to copy-protect copyrighted material.  OK then, I'll just bookmark it and come back tomorrow with my phone.

Which I did...

So anyway, the Globe is now the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.  The Central became the Columbia, the Gotham, the Holiday, and more before being demolished in 1998.  Likewise, the Strand was razed in 1987.  

Once more, adding to the sum total of human knowledge.

A long day

Swirly's been under the weather, up one day, down the next, and after the past weekend Pat and I wanted to take her right away this morning to our usual vet. Trouble was, they said they were completely booked for the day.

We went to one of the 24-hour vets they recommended, and within minutes of getting there, Swirly was checked over and triaged, and we all sat down to wait our turn. Then a person arrived whose dog was having seizures. Then a couple walked in with an old dog with difficulty breathing.

It took longer than anyone would have wanted, but staff members kept us informed throughout, so we never felt like saying "Remember us?" Eventually we and Swirly were taken back to an exam room, and after they took a closer look, they found one bladder stone stuck to her fur, and more still inside. Vital signs good, no damage to kidneys, but a UTI in progress.

She's staying overnight with an operation scheduled for tomorrow, and we should be able to pick her up before the end of the day. Jack and Jennie loaned us one of their dog enclosures on short notice, which will really help with our Good Queen's recovery. 

Kids these days

On Xitter, one discussion involved how Sandy Koufax would pitch in 2025, based on his Cy Young and NL MVP season of 1963.  One man opined that Koufax had dominated all right, but not against the kind of hitters who dominate today.  "Janitors," he called the old-timers.

Another poster weighed in with a list of so-called janitors, shown below.

To which list I thought, um...  the names are those of players who had been, or were rising stars, along with those whose prime was in 1963.  But I held my tongue.  

Probably the best action in that venue was no action.  But here, where Asian skimmers and scrapers are the most frequent visitors, I can speak more freely.  The poster knew the players, but plainly did not check their statistics.  No complaint with Mays, Aaron, Clemente and McCovey, but Ernie Banks batted .227, Frank Robinson had a down year (.259/.379/.442), and Brock, Schofield, Mazeroski, and 19-year-old rookie Staub all finished below the league average of .245/.306/.364, while 42-year-old Musial, in his final season, posted a .255 average.  Orlando Cepeda, Bill White, and Johnny Callison would have fit better on the list. And Pete Rose?  Rookie of the Year, but a couple of years away from perennial .300-hitter status.

1st of the year

At mid-day yesterday, I saw one chicory flower growing along Grange Road.  The first of many...

Thoughts while strolling

A mile and a quarter at a slightly faster pace than I set when walking around this neighborhood.  I saw two deer, many swallows swooping over the surface of the pond, and one large downed tree.  

High muddy water in the pond and the creek that feeds into it.