Art Fair On The Square!

Come gawk at the trinkets with me!

If I could afford to buy just one piece at the Art Fair On The Square, I'd want to take home one of these amazing little cigar boxes.

The guy who makes spooky-looking people cast in resin was back again this year.

This all-white cast was even spookier for not being painted to look real.

Sounds Dirty But Isn't

Or maybe it is. Depends on what people do with it, I guess.

Contentment II

Bonkers finishes up an afternoon nap.

Purty Car

This gorgeous Mustang was hanging out on the street in front of the Inn on the Square. Consensus among the folks who stopped to drool over it while I was snapping photos was that it was a '67. I nodded like I knew.

Epitaph on a post office drop box

... just outside the Walgreen's on cap square.

[Later] A story in the Chicago Trib explains that
"Solve" was the nom de plume of graffiti artist Brendan Scanlon, murdered in Chicago in June.

Wildlife

Although the Chain O' Lakes is, in this man's opinion, overdeveloped, there is still quite a bit of wildlife haunting the edges of the forest.

Top to bottom: These Sandhill cranes were picking through the rushes here every morning as we paddled by; we scared these Canadian geese and their goslings into the water as we made our way down to the dock; a doe made her way through the yard in the mornings looking for food; a heron fishing in the shallows; a wild turkey that scratched in the dirt under the bird feeder outside the cabin.

The Family Angler

My Darling B went fishing every day we were on vacation last week. Try as she might, she found it hard to get any of the fish to bite at her bait.









I, on the other hand, could get hoards of bluegills to fight for the privilege of pecking at my feet.











In the end, though, our family angler got her fish!

Hitching a ride

He rode on my knee from Marl Lake across Pope Lake to Manomin Lake as we paddled home after a day's fishing.

The classic shoreline tippy tree

Every small lake in Wisconsin has one.

Four Views of Flowers

I couldn't decide which to upload so I posted them all.

We were out pretty early in the canoe to look for some fish to catch ...

Where the moss grows ...

Basil.

The sake cups came from a Japanese five-and-dime. The basil marker came from a cheese shop.

On the nest

There was a horrible commotion outside my bedroom window this morning where a robin makes its next in this lilac bush. At least a half-dozen birds were diving in and out through the leaves and making as much noise as they could. I worried that a cat might have gotten into the bush going after the chicks on the nest, so I crept on it this afternoon to check.

She's not easy to see through the leaves, but momma robin is still there.

If any of the windows of your car are "temporarily" covered in plastic, tape, or any combination thereof, you're probably driving a piece of junk.

I guess I'm coming in late with my opinion on this, but it was only yesterday that I found this link to a blog post contending that the Memorial Mile, a quiet protest expressing the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the starkest terms, didn't have the impact that the Madison Veterans For Peace had intended.

Kris, who wrote the post, looked at the Memorial Mile, and especially the shorter section of tombstones representing deaths in 2007 and 2008, and said, "I'm not thinking about the human cost of war, I'm thinking ... Wow, things look like they're going much better."

And I look at the Memorial Mile and think, Well, no, things aren't going much better at all for the soldiers represented by these tombstones. Things couldn't get much worse. Maybe that's my flaw, I don't know, but so long as the Veterans For Peace have to add to the number of tombstones, things aren't getting better.

So close, yet so far ...

Chipmunks have made their home in the planter beside the front stoop of our house from the first summer we lived in Our Humble O'Bode, and very probably long before that.

And they learned almost immediately that the two house cats poised to pounce were being frustrated by the screen door.

Frustrated or not, Boo and Bonkers can't help but glare at the little showoff sitting so tantalizingly close.

A tree full of flowers brightens the darkened face of the condos on Wisconsin Ave.