Grateful, that is my word. Today I am grateful for such a magnificently beautiful day with a garden filled with flowers and all of the bees and butterflies and mystery visitors to make it all happen. I am also grateful that my kids are healthy and happy and that today my daughter is beginning to cluck around her home that will house her, her soon to be husband and that Schnickle boy, when it is their turn. Rod is over there helping her to cluck, being the good dad that he is, while I listen to great music and create a colorway in honor of my butterfly bushes. Beeeeee-utiful in this baby alpaca/silk that I asked my source to have milled for me. (can you say FAB-ulous?)
I mentioned on Facebook, the other day that the Proboscis Bees are back. That is what I call them but they are the oddest pollinators that I have ever seen and they come back each year to sip our of the tiny cups of the Butterfly Bushes and tall Verbena. They look like bees but they are something else completely and I have yet to see a clear picture of one of them on the web and I will add to the blur, too. They are about 2 inches long, have wings that whir like hummingbirds, furry bodies like moths or bees and they hover at an angle. You can see one in the midst of the flowers, smack dab in the middle.
Below that bush are some weird and wonderful caterpillars going to town on this plant. It's all good and part of the show around here.
If they were hornworms, they would have been excused from their work but with all of the interesting moths that have been hanging around here lately, I think that they are just wonderful to look at.
The garden has gone bananas since Rod got the watering system working (still a couple of iffy spots) and these lilies are about 7 feet tall. Rod got them to stand up with a Persuadiator or two and that has kept them from doing the big nose dive. I just think that they have been fabulous.
So here is a bit more of my high summer color for you. Black-eyed Susan's and Coneflowers in an homage to the prairie. Love them and the pollinators who visit.
On another note, Rod and I have flung ourselves, fully into our combined class reunion, scheduled for next October. When I think of how it was, over 20 years ago, when people had to find parents and try to track down people BEFORE the internet, well, it took armies of volunteers. Now it just takes time and tenacity. We graduated a year apart from Oakland High in Oakland, California and our high school, at that time, was the most racially integrated school in our city. It just WAS, not because anyone had to get on a bus, it just was. I think that those of us who were together in the old school (torn down and rebuilt, sadly) learned about each others cultures and slang, arts and heritage. I loved it there. I was a senior when Dr King was killed and I remember that my mother freaked out when I told her that I had to walk back up to school for my term play rehearsal. She practically barred the door but this was one of the few times that I defied her, because I knew that while we were grieving, my friends and schoolmates were not going to go nuts. I am SO looking forward to our reunion next year. I want to see the people that I was not only a little girl with but talked smack with. We went our separate ways for a long time and although I would have stayed in the city, the schools were starting to become something other than what I was privileged to attend, by the time my kids were of age and so we moved to the suburbs, only to be labeled hood rats because of where we were born. WHAT? Not MY Oakland. Now I live further away, up in the foothills of the Sierra but I want to see what life has brought to my friends from school days. We have a LOT to catch up on...
Lisa, I went to my 40th (gasp) last July, in Stony Brook, NY. I had received invites to previous ones over the years but wasn't that interested. But when the invitation came for #40, I, and many, many classmates came from all over the country. It was awesome to see these beloved friends and hear all about the paths their lives had taken them on. So much was going on in 1969. My family moved to Pascagoula, Mississippi for my dad's work a week after school got out. That was awful to a NY girl, but it surely shaped me into the world traveler that I am today. I started hitch hiking around the country, ended up in Boston, then Germany then finally back in Boston. My fellow classmates had many similar experiences. We all were so happy to see each other, and after many of us surviving cancer and other ailments, it was wonderful to just be together. If you have anywhere near the happy experience that we had, you're in for a great time! Enjoy!
Posted by: Mary | July 30, 2010 at 04:48 AM
Oh Mary, you are just a KID. All three of these classes missed their 40th, I guess, because life just got in the way. Somehow, because we have more than a year to plan this, the anticipation and reconnection that is happening via the web will help us to cement the friendships again. When people were moaning about living so long, I thought that they were nuts, until I saw the memorial walls for our classes. Now I am more grateful, every day for health and happiness!
Posted by: Lisa Souza | July 30, 2010 at 07:09 AM
I think you have a Clearwing Sphinx Moth -- we get them here in PA too, but our variety doesn't have the bee stripes. Check it out here: http://www.hgtv.com/landscaping/clearwing-sphinx-moth/index.html
They are cool! Those hornworm caterpillars may be the same species.
Posted by: Karen | July 30, 2010 at 01:48 PM