Getting off the ball

From a video seen on Xitter.  Rory McIlroy helps remove an insect from his golf ball during last week's PGA Tour playoff.  That's two in two weeks.  

On the ball

In 2022, the sports photo of the year award went to this image of Naomi Osaka as she moved a butterfly to safety.  

This past Sunday, another butterfly achieved 15 seconds of fame during the St Jude golf tournament in Memphis.  Sam Burns's birdie putt rolled by the hole and, just as the ball stopped, a rider hopped on.  CBS didn't replay it, so I recorded it off the screen the old-fashioned way.  

A distant encounter

Taken at the edge of a nearby park where I've seen deer before.  The digital-zoom grain in the image shows I wasn't very close to them, but seconds later, they disappeared into the trees.

Field report

 From my walking app:  "1.22 mi walk / Thursday, August 6 at 9:51 a.m.

"Getting out in the morning instead of evening due to coming heat and humidity.  Three rabbits, two goldfinches, several barn swallows, and a few chicory flowers along the road in the nearby park. Possibly a killdeer cry from a stony area in the park.

"A house along the way has a for-sale sign in its front yard.  The yard also has little yellow flowers all over it.  I'm a fan of wildflowers, so I like the way it looks.  It's unique in the development.  I do wonder, considering the elevated price tag, how a potential buyer might view a house with a front yard full of what they consider to be weeds.  Considered taking a picture, but decided that standing in front of someone's house taking pictures might be seen as suspicious, even if it is for sale.

"A couple of houses down, a butterfly bush more than a foot tall has sprouted from a crack along the curb.  Pretty purple flowers, though."

Looking back

I knew it had been awhile, but nothing since mid-July?  And I've been taking pictures all along, I just haven't felt they were stuff I wanted to share right away.  Here's one from this past Sunday afternoon, so see if you don't agree.  It's something I wanted to have a memory of seeing, but not something I thought would be a post I couldn't wait to make.  

I'll go through the other snapshots and put up two or three of them. 

 "I don't fill every minute of every day with purpose and joy, but I do all right." - On retirement, July 2026.

In the back yard this afternoon

A new volunteer

Here's a recent addition to our back yard.  Google Lens says this is Moth Mullein (Verbascum blattaria), an introduced biennial weed.  The Missoula County Department of Ecology and Extension has it on their Noxious Weed Watch List, which doesn't surprise me in the least.