One hot cat. It's hot here in NY.

Today's garden pics

Flowers on the mint! Never seen that before.

Some nice colors on the overly wet geraniums.

Berries on the unknown bush next to the privet. (The privet has some
smaller berries that I guess will turn black at some point. It has
stopped smelling, alas. What a great smell when it is fragrant.)

I have lots of progress in the butterfly assortment in the planter at
the top of my landing. This flower has some imminent buds. I believe
it is part of the slim leafed plant to the right. Looking forward to
flowers on any of these. (I think they are safe from the woodchucks,
rabbits and deer being on a second story landing!)

No good pics yet but my neighbor has a Rose of Sharon that has been blooming for a few days. I thought they were later but have seen some blooming in Nyack lately as well.

A hummingbird was seen by the monarda yesterday. I was upstairs in
the kitchen and couldn't take a pic, and it wouldn't have come out
well anyway.

Other birds seen helping themselves to the raspberries which is fine.
I don't mind. If I get any I'll be happy and there are plenty more to
come.

Activity around the bird house finally. I'd seen a bird or two
picking off the raspberries but today saw the song sparrows for the
first time in a long time. I thought they may have abandoned the
birdhouse/nest. I have no idea if they have any babies.

Saw a yellow bellied woodpecker picking bugs out of the post the bird
house is supported by at the same time.

Also saw three birds with white markings on their backs fly up as I
drove out. Would have been nice to get pictures of them. Not sure
what they were.

I now have ants in the bathroom. Large black ants. I had small ones
up til now in both the bathroom and the kitchen but they seem to have
disappeared. (I am almost ready to put food out in the kitchen
again.) I am escorting them outside. Do they make their way back in?
They area crawling over baking soda so hopefully that will discourage
them.

Lots of unknown plants but I'll only post one now. A blue flower is
coming out of the tip of this one. Wonder what it is. (Is this comfrey?) These plants
were taken out of the pots where other plants are dominating. I'm
calling them strays.

What is happening to my lilly? Too much water?

And, thank goodness, a good shot of the monarda. My camera has been
refusing to focus on close-ups for the past two days. Not sure why or
if it is permanent. Great detail in the bud at this stage before it
starts to open up. Glorious!

Let's see the humidity. Anyone?

Finally hot and humid today. As I pad around the house I wonder,
someone must have made a picture of how humidity moves in a house.
One side of you feels sticky and clammy, the other doesn't but will
soon. Humidity must move around like mist except that you can't see
it, except when you see mist. I'd love to see a good computer graphic
of humidity moving around a room. It must move like mist, like
clouds. Let's see the graphic. Anyone?

goose on the roof pic from 4/4

Here's a pic of a goose that ended up on a roof of a nearby shed back
in April. It honked for awhile and then flew to another roof. I don't
know what its problem was. I think it had a happy ending, I don't
know. Maybe it wasn't a problem at all. Maybe it just felt like going
there... Still it was strange to see it fly through the woods. And it
sounded unhappy.

Has anyone had the problem where their credit card statement from
Capital One Bank address doesn't show in the return envelope they
provide? It has happened to me for 4 months now. Why don't they fix
it? Is this a plot by Capital One to make us send our statements in
late, because if we have to write the address on the envelope
ourselves we might make a small mistake which delays their receipt
of our payment which they then use as an excuse to charge us more
money? It has gone on for 4 months now.

I've written the president of the company. Let's see what happens.

name that animal sound

I heard a huffing sound in the woods tonight. I recorded it and
uploaded it to my Yahoo Briefcase here
http://briefcase.yahoo.com/lipwak in the "sounds from around the house" folder. The file is called: 070906.aif

Ok. So at first I thought is was a deer. Now, after someone suggested I look into bear sounds, I think it was a bear! Black bear. I looked up bear sounds on the web and the first site I ran across had two that I've heard before! Here is the "blowing" http://www.bear.org/Black/Sounds/chomp.wav They also chomp which I didn't hear.

The other sound I've heard and thought were deer is heard in the "bear family conversing" http://www.bear.org/Black/Sounds/bconversds.wav I've heard that many times so bear are more common than I think, unless deer make that sound too...

Check out this site http://www.bear.org/Kids/Sounds.html

Now I want to look for some deer sounds. (Fingers crossed I'm hearing deer more than bear!)

I tried looking on the web for animal forums where I could post this
question but couldn't find any. Can you tell what it is?

Thanks!

The rabbit again. Yesterday. Interpolated. With flash.

My head, reflected in the turned off tv. Kinda cool. I tried some
other shots like this, getting the sun back-lighting my hair in the
morning but they didn't come out as well as I'd like. Maybe someday.

My head with flash. Not bad.