Neighborhood hawk
I’m really disappointed I couldn’t get my real camera in time. When I got back from walking Ana this morning, she disturbed this hawk and it flew across the backyard up to this power line. I took a few pics with my cell phone but by the time I had my real camera with telephoto lens, it was long gone.
Not much to show for flowers this summer. Too much rain and not enough sunshine. We kind of messed up and didn’t put our cosmos and marigold seedlings in bigger containers soon enough. We lost almost all of them. We will learn from this and hopefully do better next year. The blazing stars were pretty sad, partly due to the rabbits and squirrels. The squirrels have eaten the buds on all of our dahlias. They should have had several flowers by now but there just hasn’t been enough sunlight for them.
Saw this magnificent monarch butterfly, most likely part of the annual migration.
Kayaking, Labor Day weekend
How was your Labor Day weekend (for those in the USA)? This might be the last time out with the kayak since summer is winding down. I was excited to try out my new GPS watch. You can see a screenshot from my phone. It was 8.8 miles. Max speed was 5 mph. We had about 30 minutes stationary. When I load the tracks on my PC, you can see several times where we circle back on the river. That’s because most of my family and friends like to float and drink. So when they say, let’s go kayaking, it’s not what most people think. Anyway, it’s super fun. It was supposed to rain but it didn’t.
I also had a chance to try out my Ultimate Ears Wonderboom Bluetooth speaker. It’s supposed to be waterproof. It fell into the river a few times but I quickly grabbed it each time. So I’ll say it’s waterproof enough for my needs. It sounds good too. My only complaint is that the music app on my phone doesn’t normalize the volume so you end up messing with the volume all of the time.
My next test with my GPS watch will be in Wyoming.
I get goosebumps every time I listen to this.
RIP Aretha.