Aren’t those the best kind? I got a few of them this morning starting just after I talked myself into going out the front door and facing reality.

I was actually dreading opening it after having neglected the front of the house as much as possible to give the robin room to rear her babies in the nest she made by the front door. Now that they’re gone, I both dread and look forward to tackling the weeding and general tidying up out there.

It definitely needs it!

So it was a pleasant surprise to find this gorgeous big butterfly just hanging out in the flowers, totally comfortable with me stepping out and watching it do its thing for about ten minutes. In that time I forgot all about the work that needs done and took a million photos, most of them so good I watermarked them in case I want to use them in the future on something marketable.

You never know!

I was also pleasantly surprised to find a lot of the wildflower flowers I planted last year have reseeded themselves and their babies are coming up this year. Now my irises don’t look so lonely in there, hidden among all the quack grass and clover I need to pull.

I was hoping the butterfly would head over there so I could get some more shots but it disappeared so I moved on. As I moved around the side of the house, one of the baby robins came really close by to say good morning and hung out for the entire time I was out there, just a few feet away from me.

We chatted and it seems totally at ease with me, maybe too much so! It’s very adorable, though, and I’m sure if I had mealworms it would come eat from my hand but I don’t really have time to tame the wild life.

I have gardening to do!

Well, actually, I have laundry to do since it’s now too hot out to do any more yard work. I did notice that another pair of swallows have taken up in the other nesting box we put out over by the lilacs, so that was another pleasant surprise before lunch.

Well and I guess I should count the pleasant surprise of yet another day with normal airplane traffic, normal contrails, no thick, pronounced, mile long criss crosses in the sky followed by a dull haze for the rest of the day.

Nope, no more tic tac toe being played across the valley by who knows who? I can only hazard a guess.

Funny that was all going on for weeks leading up to the flooding in Yellowstone but has now coincidentally stopped altogether… 🤔

But that just seems too weird to even mention! 🤨

Still, it did happen. I took pictures of it and posted about it here and then… 🤔

Hmm. 😄