Honeybee on a Coneflower

A honeybee pollinates a white coneflower in front of the Bouchon Restaurant in Yountville, California.

Rapid response

When the roads in the city centre are choked with Festival and Fringe traffic, and some streets closed to cars completely, the ambulance service still needs to get through. Obviously there's no hospital transport provided by this part of it.
Having seem some of the acrobatic, contortionist, flame-throwing and just downright enthusiastic Fringe street acts, I wonder how much of the business was dealing with injured performers.

I hope to resume normal blogging service soon. So many things have combined to create that TBTB (Too Busy To Blog) syndrome.

We're Here!

This manor house is at Powhatan Plantation resort in Williamsburg, Virginia.  This is the third time we've stayed here.  Once when the children were young, once last year, and now this year.  It's a great place.  It has this authentic house build in 1734 with gardens to meander in.  There's also several pools and plenty of places to walk.  
Inside the house is a harpsichord that I've played on every time we've been here.  All the children did too.  They also got a lecture on how a harpsichord works and how it's different from a piano.  The learning never stops; even on vacation! 
This morning we took a tour of the gardens.  It was really cold.  The two older children went with me.  We learned about the history of the plantation and the gardens.  The two most interesting things was the cannonball stuck in the side of the chimney from a Yankee cannonball and the signatures etched into the brick facade of the house.   The guide said that various owners and visitors would sign the house; it was the colonial form of a guestbook. 
More to come as it happens.  Tomorrow we head to Tennessee.  Ciao!  Or I guess I should say "Fare Thee well".

Las Trampas Fern

Las Trampas Fern, originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller.

A backlit fern in the hills of Las Trampas Regional Park. The sun was just setting through the California bay trees and it was illuminating this fern.
Anyone gone hiking lately?

USCG Cutter "Alder"

On my way home today I glanced out over the lake and saw a boat coming through the Susie Islands.... I pulled over and grabbed my camera and attached the telephoto lens. When I looked through the camera and zoomed in on the boat, I could see that it was the United States Coast Guard cutter "Alder", coming from the direction of Thunder Bay. I snapped a few images then went home. Upon some quick research on the internet, I learned that the Alder had gone up to Thunder Bay to break ice for some ships that were still active up there. The Samuel Risley, a Canadian ice breaker that normally handles ice duty in the Thunder Bay harbor, was already busy in Sault St. Marie. How nice of the Alder crew to head up from Duluth and help out in Thunder Bay! When I saw the boat passing through the Susie Islands it was on its way back to Duluth to break ice for the last couple of ships of the season.

Annie Dillard

Excuse the crazy placement of this photo on the page.  The only thing I could manage to do was rotate it so you wouldn't have to stand on your head to see it!  I'm a slow learner.
Anyway, my bookgroup is reading The Maytrees by Annie Dillard for October.  I've tried three different times to begin this book.  I'll get a few pages into it, get mad, and throw it down.  "This book is stupid!" I said, the last time I tried reading it. 
I know there are lots of Dillard fans out there.  I've tried to be one too.  I read about half of Pilgrim's Creek and started An American Childhood.  But I admit defeat.  She's not for me.  
For one thing, her non-fiction is excruciatingly detailed; too much information about things I don't consider very important.  And her fiction!   She breaks all the rules of writing.   Not that I'm adverse to rule breaking; I'm a rebel myself in that way.  But I want spoken words to have quotation marks around the actual phrases.  I want a book to flow smoothly along and not jar me sideways every other sentence.  I don't want to have to keep re-reading a sentence until it makes sense. Sometimes it does; often it doesn't.  I get mad when I can't follow the story for having to re-read so much.
So there.  I'm not going to read Annie Dillard, and I'm not ashamed to say so.

How good is Yangshuo?