Happy Birthday Mom!

Mom turned 81 today. We went down to see her in the morning while it was still relatively cool. It rained during the night and again this morning so I was worried that the flowers I planned to cut for her would be ruined. I was surprised; the gladiolas’ still looked good.


There were plenty of zinnias; several that the bugs hadn’t started to feast on yet. It was nice to be able to take her flowers that I had grown myself. We also took her a book and some candy and had a nice visit.


We had heavy rains yesterday. More rain last night. Two heavy downpours so far today. We’re lucky we live on high ground (at least during these rains, come winter I’ll be complaining!) As far as I know the rivers still open but I won’t be surprised if they close the Oswego canal again for a day or two.

While John was grilling dinner yesterday I was poking around the garden and found a monarch caterpillar on one of the tropical milkweeds. I got quite excited and got the camera. I made him come and look at it. He humored me but I could tell this wasn’t an exciting event for him. My camera takes fairly good pictures of people but makes everything blurry if you try to get a real close-up. I’ve been playing with cropping some pictures and it helps some but it’s still a little blurry.



I originally thought that these butterflies were meadow fritillaries but now that I finally have a picture for comparison I think it is actually a silvery checkspot. Funny name for an orange butterfly!