Life in the back yard

Another step up

The sign outside the Giant down the road announced that anyone who had been fully vaccinated could enter without a mask, in keeping with CDC guidelines and recommendations.   First time I've seen that.

A brief listing of the day's events:

- Read more of Brave Men

- Watched more of the PBS special on the life of Ernie Pyle

- Read more of The History of the Standard Oil Company.  

  - Wondered why the oil refiners in the Cleveland area simply rolled over and sold out to John D. Rockefeller, instead of banding together and fighting back

- Updated BIOS on my PC, updated drivers on BB's PC

- Watched a few holes of the golf tournament

- Learned more about the kind of cabinets that are installed in a garage, which brands sell quality products, and how to install them

- Had good Quality Time with my "widdle baby durl", who hopped into my lap and lay down.  She left sometime during my nap.

- At one point during the afternoon (a rainy, cold one) I looked out the back window and saw a squirrel, a pair of mallards, and a rabbit on the ground near a neighbor's bird feeders.

- Read a blog post from rabbit-lover Noah Smith about his experience with depression and saw myself in it.  When it's good, you can't remember how bad the bad part was, and when it's bad, you can't imagine things ever getting better.  He's better now, and so am I.  

Enough for everyone

In a back yard patch that used to be a garden, there's now a lot of weeds (you can see that).  There's also a pole that holds a varying number of bird seed feeders, with a corresponding number of birds (depending on the amount of seed each contains).  

Beneath the feeders are two old boxes that used to contain herbs when we grew them on an uncovered deck.  Now they collect seeds that the birds reject, and you'll notice they don't last long enough to sprout in either of those boxes.

Saturday Evening Post

 

Traditional Friday Cat Blogging with Brave Nelson

 

A couple other things

With a few minutes to wait until 5:00 this afternoon, I called up the saved baseball game started a day or two previously.  I'd stopped in the 5th inning with the 1977 Tigers leading 1977 Toronto 3-0.  The game went on, and as usual I was managing the home team while the computer called the shots for Detroit.  

Detroit scored twice more, and going to the bottom of the 9th they led 5-0.  Of course, you can now guess that Toronto came back with six runs to win in a walk-off.  But starting that 9th inning, down five with three outs to go, realizing that the Blue Jays were 54-107 that season for a good reason, yet good things kept happening.  Every pinch-hitter I sent up produced a hit, and the pinch-runner with an EX running rating scored the winning run on an infield grounder, beating the throw home.  It doesn't happen that way very often.  Glad it happened today, though, for more reason than winning a dice game.  

BB and I got some soft-serve after supper, a few miles up the road at Ice Cream World.  It was sunny and in the high 70's, and the forecast for Friday called for rain most of the day, so this was the better day.  Hopefully I haven't asked too much from my stomach.        

EDIT:  If you'd asked me at 3:00 this morning, I would have said that I had.

Seen during this evening's walk

At the corner of Daniel and Quail, two barn swallows sat atop the stop sign on Quail.  As I walked past, one bird flew away, but the other stayed put, even when I pulled the phone out of my pocket, aimed, and took two quick snapshots.