Robby and Goose painted our barn (all that remains is some white trim) and they’re painting Robby’s barn too. The color? Tomato Red. Got a house that needs painting? They (including Matt)  are  all home Columbus Day weekend.

In between brush strokes they stacked our two cords of firewood.

Joe’s shrimp dish.

We returned to Cuba Libre last night and the food was just as good as our last visit. Our pretty red-headed waitress recited the specials, which all sounded to-die-for, and when she got to a description of the eggplant appetizer we stopped her in mid-sentence to order it. When the dish arrived, it was unrecognizable. Sure, there might have been small eggplant cubes mixed in, but what was most prominent were many itty bitty octopi. Matt said, “Over my dead body,” which was what I was thinking before I accidentally forked what I’d thought was a garnish but turned out to be a head without the tentacles. Diane and Joe, however, attacked those creatures with gusto.

If you wade through the link above you’ll also see photos of Matt’s dorm taken last year. It’s appropriately named The Edge. It looks edgy and it sits on the border between the campus and the neighborhood where you best not be walking around at night talking on your cellphone to La Chica.

This morning at 7 AM, Matt, Joe, Diane and I piled into BirdBrain’s van (Better seats for Diane’s back) and drove the five and half hours to Philly, stopping only once for gas and breakfast sandwiches at DD’s. In contrast to last year, moving Matt and his pile of belongings into his dorm room was…can I say, fun? Not only were there no lines at the elevators, but it was a cool day and we had Joe’s help.

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Joe, Jordan and Matt.

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Dorm room window view. Remember all of last year’s contributions?

Tonight’s moon.

My Idylwilde flower photo of the week.

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Pesky Godson is leaving tomorrow for Iran

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Hil brought and cooked breakfast for us this morning. She expected the  modest Miller family plus Susan, but instead she served nine.

The usual.

The usual.

Diane’s labored for three years to entice humming birds to her feeders, and this summer she’s finally been rewarded. The photos are grainy at an iso of 1600.  If I don’t shoot fast the feeder looks good, but the bird is a blur.  And, like Adam and Tricia’s, the damn thing flits away when they detect human movement.

Diane’s labored for three years to entice humming birds to her feeders, and this summer she’s finally been rewarded. The photos are grainy at an iso of 1600.  If I don’t shoot fast the feeder looks good, but the bird is a blur.  And, like Adam and Tricia’s, the damn thing flits away when they detect human movement.

Hi Mike,

As you know, earlier this August, Beth and I went with 3 hiking buddies of mine to Glacier Nat’l Park. Beth acted as a re-supplier for our backpack trip, and made our loads lighter by meeting us midway at a road camp to supply us with more food and clothes. We all had a great time despite the extensive pall of smoke from a forest fire just west of Kalispell. Later, from our highest trail, near Browns Pass, we could see the smoke off in the far distance to the south, and could even smell it from 50 miles away.

Our hike started in Waterton, Alberta, where we took a ferry into the USA. While we started hiking, Beth took the ferry back to Waterton Park, and drove around to meet us 3 days later at Lower Bowman Lake. While the 4 of us fogies backpacked, she went on day hikes and listened to ranger talks. She camped with us one night at Bowman Lake before we headed up for a 3-day circuit of Quartz Lakes.

The streams we passed were mostly dry, but at high elevations there were still valleys full of alpine grasses and flowers and crystalline waterfalls. We saw lots of wildflowers that I’ve never seen in Colorado. Due to the lateness of the season and the dry summer, I found only one Beargrass flower and one Columbine, but there were Fireweed, Western Anemone, and spectacular St Johnswort and Lewis Monkeyflowers. We also hiked through countless thimble berries in the woods, and grazed on them along the way. Our nicest camp was in a wonderful cirque full of alpine meadows and trickling falls. It’s called Hole-in-the-Wall after a huge cleft in the cliffs above the cirque.

We saw no Grizzlies, but saw their signs, and heard stories from other hikers about their spottings of bears.

I made a short album of our pictures.

You can click individual thumbnails to enlarge them or see a slide show by clicking the arrow button at the top far right.

–rakkity

PS: next for the blog — our ascent of 13,500-ft Navajo Peak

A short history of my aquarium.

Saturday morning, on our return to Adam’s after gathering exotic wood from the Agassiz Theater in Harvard Square, and then breakfast at La Pro with Dan and Mark, we spied a skittish hummingbird dipping into the new feeder outside his back window. I ran to my truck to retrieve my camera, and then back to the room with the view, but the bird spotted my movements and flitted away. He’d come back, but disappear as soon as I raised my lens.

The fruits of my labor.

Adam said, “You need a blind.”

Yeah, well, not today, I don’t. I gathered my last cup of decaf and headed  home. The very next day I opened an email from Adam and lookee here: