Normal, Regular Sunday

I really have nothing to blog about today, but I have a bunch of nice pictures to post so I guess I'll just ramble on about nothing. 

The first picture is the male of the cardinal pair that hangs out around here.  I can always tell without looking when they're out there because they're noisy.  Constant chip, chip, chip.  Luckily they like the sunflower seeds most so they have a tendency to stick to the red feeder that he's on, which has only sunflower seeds.  This year's batch of new sparrows and finches are eating me out of house and birdseed.  Several times a day they all descend in a ravenous horde and have a feeding frenzy and squabble for the six places on the feeder.  Mostly it's the sparrows squabbling.  The finches tend to use the feeder out on the tree, although occasionally they'll join the squabble.  

Also joining the feeding frenzy on the ground under the feeders is the squirrel.  This morning I caught him twice on the red feeder, trying to get the sunflower seeds out, and he didn't really run when I went out there, just moved to the satellite dish and waited to see what I would do. As soon as I went into the house he was back on the feeder.   So I filled a squirt bottle with water and got after him.  He fussed about that but he ran away.  I had my camera battery out and charging or I would have taken a picture of him on the feeder.  If that feeder's on the ground one of these days when I get home, I'll know what happened.     

The little pine continues to grow strongly as you can see, but it's a little yellow-ish in areas.  I'm vacillating back and forth about whether to leave it outside or bring it in, because of the yellowing.  Maybe little pine trees don't like the heat we've been having. It can get really hot on that patio, and it's been windy as hell.  But besides the yellowing, it's growing so well that I'm afraid to jinx it by bringing it in the house.  I gave it some plant food this week, so I'll see if that helps.  When we start having 100 degree temps, I probably will bring it inside, unless it perks up and looks a lot better than it does now.

I dead-headed all my roses and am waiting for them to blossom some more.  These peachy colored roses are from my back yard.  I have several around the yard of this variety and color and the edges of the blossom kind of curl under, giving them a fluffy look.  They're pretty.  They don't have as big a bloom as some of my other roses, but I like them.   

The roses and the azaleas are about the only things that bloomed/are blooming this year.  Well, the quince did until the ice killed the blooms.  The hawthorne didn't bloom, and neither did the amaryllis, nor the crepe myrtle, nor the bottle brush.  Still, I'm glad everything's green and growing, even if it didn't bloom.

The other day I had a little Carolina wren checking out my hanging basket with the wandering jew in it.  I wonder if he's considering it for a nesting site.  The wandering jew and the airplane plant both seem to be thriving out there in the hanging baskets, and the aloe are starting to recover from the massive sunburn they got when I first put them outside this year.  It looks like everything is going to do just fine. 

My cold cleared up nicely.  I only coughed at night for about 4 nights and then quit coughing period.  The cold was pretty much completely gone just over a week after I came down with it.  That tells me I'm much healthier than last year when all my colds dragged on a good month at least.  On top of that, I'm in my last month of taking INH.   25 days and counting. 

I'm running for President of my national association again this year.  It's funny.  I ran last year and thought I had a pretty good chance of winning, but I lost.  Kind of felt like just one more bad luck moment in 2013.  This last Friday I just found out who I'm running against this year.  I actually don't think I stand much chance of winning this year, against this person, but what the heck.  If you don't try, you have no chance of winning.  Plus I enjoy the association and all my friends in it, so I'll just enjoy the running and be happy either way. 

I did my exercises today using a knee brace on the knee I blew out doing Zumba.  It worked fine.  I bought the brace yesterday because the knee is not healing.  It's still fairly swollen.  And I need to be able to exercise.  Plus if I'm going to be able to do those hikes I like to do at all this summer, it'll be with a knee brace.  Those hikes are steep, which equals really hard on the knees.  So I want to get used to using one.   

So that's about it for my rambling today.  Later.