Still Life with Camera

On Monday, my mother turned 84. She lives in a tiny rural Iowa town which is really lucky to have a grocery store where she can buy basic goods. And they'll order things for her if they don't have them. Plus their prices are very reasonable. This is really a luxury - the store's existence has blinked on and off over the past 20 years. Having it is really much better than not, to state the obvious. All of this is an introduction to saying we drove 30 miles on Monday to a larger town to get some things the local grocery store doesn't carry. And unfortunately, couldn't get what we needed there either. The choice was either to drive 50 miles in the other direction or to special order it. And in this manner we spent the whole day.  I'm not complaining - I enjoy my mom's company - I'm just saying there are always trade-offs.  Miles of strip malls do bring convenience along with blight.

Within a month, my garden has overgrown it's tiny 4X8 boxes. I've trimmed back the undeterminate tomatoes twice and just pulled out a bunch of cucumber plants that were taking over everything. Obviously, I need at least twice as much garden space...Maybe next year. But we've already eaten Amish snap peas, green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and green and yellow beans, to say nothing of the wondeful mint, basil, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. I also have a bumper crop of japanese beetles eating everything in sight. I bought some systemic stuff then found out it's not for use with planters and of course it can't be used with the vegetables. I found some stuff which is safe for vegetables, however, it kills bees and everything in the garden is abloom. No way I'm going to kill off our little pollinating friends. Doesn't the fence section look like a honeycomb? I caught this guy in flight, although I need to do some post-processing so his wings are more vis