Garden Colour

Day 230: Today, we are having garden colour because what else can you do in between phone calls to CenturyLink to see what the newest "estimated repair time" will be for restoration of internet service? You wander around in the yard taking pictures of flowers, common flowers like Columbine and Bleeding-hearts. And then you dig out some old wooden fence posts, plant some lettuce, pull some weeds, do some needlework, read a little, play with the kitty, feed birds, and engage in the most purple blasphemous words when aforesaid CenturyLink changes the time frame from 9:30 AM to 2:30 PM, from 2:30 PM to 7 PM, from 7 PM to 9:30 AM tomorrow, and when tomorrow has dawned, from 9:30 AM to 3:30 PM. "Our technicians are already working on it." And on Memorial Day weekend, of course they are! And my grandmother is a bicycle. Hello. I'm back. And as Eeyore once remarked, "At least it isn't raining."

Entanglements

Day 21: First of all, let me say that I am here only because I hit the right moment. Our internet service was partially knocked out by the power outages a few days ago, and service has been intermittent when it was working at all. It is supposed to be fully restored by 8 PM tomorrow, but that's the second time the estimated repair has been pushed out to the following day. In any event, I took advantage of the lull and a few breaks in the weather to meander around the yard checking on lichens. The ancient cedar post at the end of the raspberry patch was particularly lush with Cladonias, so entwined and entangled that I can't tell where one species leaves off and another begins. Perhaps some lichens colonize others? Many contain the same algae, so perhaps their societies compete or cooperate? Suffice to say that this particular cedar post provides suitable habitat and supports a population as dense as that in the busiest human cities.