Last Saturday we went on an Audubon Naturalist Society trip called Searching for Rare Butterflies on the Eastern Shore (of Maryland). We were looking for four butterflies, the Great Purple Hairstreak, the Chermock's Mulberry Wing, the "Northern" Southern Hairstreak, and the Rare Skipper. We only saw one of the rare butterflies, although we lots ( Read more... )

A photographer from The Washington Times, Rod Lamkey, Jr., took some shots of our first demonstration and participation dancing session at Saturday's National Tartan Day celebration. Several photos of our group, mostly participation dancing, appear in the multimedia slide show (Warning: Bagpipes!). It's always nice to get some publicity for the

I've never been a big fan of orchids. In fact, I've had a mild aversion to orchids ever since seeing a high school drama production of Wanda Hickey's Golden Memories, based on a short story in a collection of short stories of the (nearly) same name by Jean Shepherd. The story of a prom-night disaster featured a singularly unflattering description ( Read more... )

One of my favorite parts of Longwood Gardens is the outdoor waterlily display, in an interior courtyard surrounded by the wings of the Conservatory. I've never been anywhere else with such a stunningly gorgeous collection of these fascinating, flowering aquatic plants. The flowers seem to almost glow in the sunlight, and some of the waterplatters ( Read more... )

Last weekend we went on a long-awaited trip to Longwood Gardens with tamnonlinear and chibent, plus a friend from dancing. Unfortunately, kefiraahava couldn't make it this time, so we missed having her along. I hope she can come on the next trip.

This is the first of probably three batches of pictures. These were all taken outdoors.

( Longwood Gardens - Outdoors )

Yes, I'm slow. These are the last of my pictures from Memorial Day weekend ( Read more... )

I fear that my journal shall never catch up to my life. Life happens too fast. Here it is, almost the weekend, and I'm still writing about Memorial Day weekend, never mind last weekend (we went to a dance at Sherando Lake and visited a friend who recently had surgery). There are pictures so I'm still going to write about it instead of just ( Read more... )

For Memorial Day weekend we went back to Skyland with some friends. As usual, there are pictures. There were technical difficulties -- my camera battery did not want to hold a charge. This meant that the video display stopped displaying. Unfortunately, the + in the center of the viewfinder is not the same as the center of the video display ( ( Read more... )

We don't go looking for new cats. They seem to find us. As has often happened, shortly after we lost Minikin, we learned of a cat who needed a home ( Read more... )

One of the reasons I never finished writing about the trip to Scotland (but I still may, one of these days), was that something really depressing happened towards the end of our trip. Our cat Minikin became sick while we were away, and had to be put to sleep before we returned. We lost her on August 3, 2006. We returned from our trip on August 4 ( Read more... )