Mild, With Passing Clouds [Tuesday]

Preparing a hearty 'farmer's breakfast' and tending to some desultory chores took up the

 hours of Tuesday forenoon.

I rode in the red truck with J. on errands in town, staying in the cab with a book for company as he made several stops.

I remembered late in the afternoon that I should check the rows of green beans in the upper garden, and found there were enough ready for picking.

Grey clouds billowed overhead with the look of rain, but only a few random drops struck my face.

The kittens and Willis kept me company, barreling through the bean plants, batting at the leaves of kale, popping out [Boo!] at each other from behind the cabbages.

I dumped the bowl of green beans on the counter by the kitchen sink and went back out into the mild, restless air.

You can see the bean rows just beyond the garden fence in the photo above. You can also spot the horse watering trough nearby.  The kittens were so involved in their chase that Nellie leaped up, perhaps thinking the trough was a table.  Splash--in and quickly out-- shaking water from tail and legs as he continued after his brother.

Rosa 'Wise Portia' is boasting a brace or two of fresh bloom, unmolested by Japanese Beetles

who ravaged the flowers of summertime.

The never seen owner of the next little farm rents the land for cattle pasture and the barn to a local tobacco grower.  Tractors and pickups trundle along the road pulling wagons piled high with tobacco to be hung on 'sticks' to dry.

Bobby McGee and Nellie [nearly dry now] pounce on a grasshopper while Willis looks on with the disdain of maturity.

I don't attempt to rescue the grasshoppers, although I don't like my cats to eat them.

[All those crackly legs and crunchy bits--aaarghh!]

Usually the insects manage to bounce away.

Little Edward has joined his brothers in the bug chase.

The hydrangea bushes were so badly burned by the mid-April frost that I cut them back sharply.

Their summer bloom was blasted by heat and drought and they now are putting out flower heads--slightly mis-shapen and with these strange streaks of red.

Trumpet vine pods.

The pink hibiscus at the side of the garage has likewise sported late bloom.

This stem of buds seems frozen in time.

Remnants of rotten string along the back wall of the garage indicate that the first morning glories were deliberately planted there years ago.

They have since scrambled out of bounds.  No matter how many vines I yank up, there is never a shortage of climbers. Here they clamber around a metal fence post left at the corner of the lean-to shed.

A garden spider [argiope aurantia] has left her sac of eggs woven into the morning glory vine with a web of sticky thread.

The coleus in the planter at the end of the carport is in its final glory,

a blaze of color on a gloomy afternoon.

The title for this post is a phrase which caught my eye as part of a header in the weather section on

Google News page.