Today I finished a 10-page document — or was it 11? — that I’ve been working on this week. There’s nothing quite like the joy of the final Final-Save clicks. And then you have to send it off. Fair well, my little document friend. I hope you do well, and that is why I saved you as a PDF, so that your formatting will stay consistent across 10 pages. Or was it 11?
And then, of course, you have to upload the thing. At which time you must complete your jump through the rest of our modern day hoops. Computers can be amazing. What we’ve tasked them to do can sometimes seem silly. Near-instantaneous communication and large batch data transfer is still impressive. The amount of Captcha buttons and Verify You Read This boxes you have to click, not so much. The price we pay, one supposes.
Or perhaps it’s like the very small meme. A person from pick-a-century would not be impressed by your cell phone. They would marvel at your spice cabinet.
The accuracy of that meme insured it would stay small. People that take everything in that cabinet for granted might not be the best people to depend on for establishing the zeitgeist.
Anyway, that project is done. And now I will repay myself with more free time. Which I will start to calculate on Tuesday. But first, the weekend. And, then on Monday, some work. But after that, look out, To Do List.
I return to the yard, because the weather was nice and the sunlight demanded it. And, in the backyard, we see another promising signal.
Ponder with me, for a moment, the lateral bud scales here.
Buds are the embryonic branches or, in this case, I think, flowers in a dormant state. They’re just waiting for a few more degrees of mercury. But aren’t we all?
I’ll have to remember to sit under this branch when they start offering some real shade. It might be a nice place to spend part of an afternoon reading.
As I walked back around to the front door I saw this out of the corner of my eye. It was one of those instances where it took a half of a beat for it to register. I backed up, stood still and let my eyes lose focus until my brain caught back up. The flash of color, the difference between the grass and the golden hour, that’s what caught my eye, surely. And it couldn’t be growth on this shrub already, surely. It was not.
Merely the remnants of last fall’s pruning. We all take a bit of that with us, I think.
Finally, I am getting used to seeing things in their naked and trimmed condition. The landscaping was overdue, and so this felt not only radical, but radical for a long time. Now, it is no longer startling, but it took a good long while to adjust.
Which means, I hope, that I’ll be able to see the green march of the seasons coming along just any day now.
He said, knowing that’s not yet the case, but rather trying to will it into being nonetheless.
Back under water, then. Best fish in the sea!
I know, I can’t believe I got a shot of her with bubbles in it, either.
A version of this one is eventually going on the front page of the website. (The SCUBA theme will return there next week!)
And I invite you to enjoy a few lovely sponge photos.
If that one wasn’t cool enough, I know you’ll be impressed by this larger specimen.
And when we come back to the diving section on Monday, we’ll have another great series of video clips to enjoy. But, first, enjoy that weekend!
