This and That: A Blog

  Sunday Stamps brings us the letter R this week.  Nothing unusual about these first two R animals.  I just think they are particularly pretty stamps.    R ooster designed and engraved by Albert Decaris.  The Gallic r ooster is a long-standing symbol of France, representing pride, vigilance, national identity, and the dawn of a new day.  From the mid-1960s onwards the stamps were printed with phosphorescent bars for automatic sorting, and these show up under UV light.    France 1962  R hinoceros, Black R hino French Equatorial Africa 1947 R ufous Crowned R oller  Ghana c. 1967 R accoon Dog, of which there were seven species, but only two now exist, including this, the Japanese R accoon Dog.   Japan 2016 S  stamps are up next week.

  Skywatch Friday A new Goodwill opened earlier this month in town.  Not near me, and I find it's in an inconvenient place, but was buying the weed-eater nearby, so went. The only thing worth parking for was the view (and a shadow for Shadow Shot Sunday!). There are the Table Rocks, and the airport control tower.  The merchandise was a big disappointment.  I thought the other stores had been holding back the "good stuff" for this one, but it was just more of the same.  Modern and plastic.  Vinyl "paintings" someone paid $100 for at some overpriced home goods store. Basically the same household items I see at yard sales all the time.  They buy it, keep it a season, toss it out and buy the latest trend stuff. My closest Goodwill is moving this summer.  It will be in the same city, but not the area I shop in, so no dropping in every time I stop for groceries.  It's been cool and raining a lot here.  Have a nice weekend. 

Thursday Postcard Hunt has us hunting for Forests this week.  California Redwood Highway in Autumn. The Congress Group , The Giant Forest, Sequoia National Park, California View of Feldsee Lake in the Black Forest region of Germany, c1915. Quinault Rain Forest , Olympic National Park, Washington State, is a temperate rain forest. This is where you'll find banana slugs, typically 8" long!  They are not only banana shaped and yellow, they often have brown spots. Next week is June, and the theme is Shapes.  First up will be Letters.  

  The weather's been strange.  A few days ago it was nearly 90°, then yesterday only had a high of 60° with rain.  The evening before was so windy it blew down my peas (there weren't doing well anyway), and two panels of a sort of half fence separating the back yard from the far back yard.  The section on the left was down too, but I propped it back up to get it off the plants.    The tomatoes were loving the heat. They have grown SO much since May 18th's post !   The iris are gone and daylilies are starting to take their places.  Good, I like them better than iris, and they have a much longer bloom time.  On the left is Black-Eyed Stella, and I forget what the one on the right is.   This bee was getting some last minute nectar from the wild blackberries before the rain started in earnest.  I tried to get rid of the blackberries, and was successful for quite a few years, then they snuck in among the roses and I didn't noti...

Two from Goodwill.  I found a limited edition print by Grace Bentley-Scheck .  The technique she used is called collagraph , a print made by adhering textured materials to a plate (rigid surface), and when inked and pressed creates a print with different textures and surface levels.  Another Angle , by G. Bentley-Scheck, 7/74.  It is print 8/100.  The lower the number the closer to the artist's vision, so 8 out of 100 is a good spot.  The artist died last September, not noted in the link information.  $2.24 After reading about collagraphs and that the artist used that technique a lot, I felt (oh, don't worry, I was gentle and it's sealed in a gallery plastic wrapping on cardboard!) it and so much of it is raised.  If the price is right I like to pick up signed and numbered prints in case they are "by someone" worth selling. This is, but for now I'll enjoy it.   I also picked up this  1940s cross-stitch in frame made in the 30s or 40...

  Spintop Mango Blanketflower I bought two of these at the FFA sale last year.  I missed the sale this year, they had it earlier than usual and I didn't check their site until too late.  One lovely lettuce that snails didn't get.  Lots of Hood June-bearing strawberries.  Small but very sweet. I don't know where this foxglove came from, I've never planted any.  The photo on the right shows the hole nectar robbing bees left.  Bees to large to get to the nectar will chew holes.  Other bees are learning  that the holes make it easy to reach the nectar and using them, which skips pollination.  Some populations of foxglove and columbine have reduced numbers of seeds.  I love black cumin.  It's not a cumin at all, it's related to love-in-a-mist.  That's pretty easy to tell!   This is love-in-the-mist.  As fat as this bumblebee is, it has no trouble getting into the Dazzler penstemon blooms.