A view from above a few hours ago
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one by one, I’ve been liberating our big cedars from years of overgrown and suffocating vines. Some of the vines are like 4" diameter, and you can swing on them. Here’s a before and after from today. I don’t have pics from the one I did a couple weeks ago, but when I went back today that tree already looked more like a healthy Happy Little Tree.
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Just a warning: one of the plants that can grow into large thick vines like that is: poison ivy!
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Yesterday at dusk (during a severe thunderstorm), the sky was pink. No, really. I’ve never seen that before in Chicago. Well, apparently an actual photographer was able to document just how weird it was:
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And Zeus said, “I’ve decided to reschedule Pride.”
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I’m not sure where I’ve saved the photos, but we had a sunset in Wichita that was so fiery orange it looked like the sky was on fire. I love stuff like this.
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We have a larva! (In a very heavy downpour.) I saw an adult here a week or two ago. The last 2 summers (when I began paying attention), these didn’t show up for another 6 weeks or so
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These fungi grew and withered in the space of 4 days.
Day 1 (more or less actual size):
Day 3:
Day 4:
In spite of there being actual mushrooms in the Super Mario games, the cap on this one reminded me more of a Buzzy Beetle. (It appears lighter in the photo.)
Sidewalk denizen
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Pusch Ridge still on fire:
High winds, more evacuations. Precipitation, but to no avail. Three weeks now.
From further east:
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On a similar note, I think over the past couple of years I had pulled these as weeds. Then I vaguely recalled shaking a can of seeds (“perennial mix”) in that area. I believe this is purple coneflower, i.e. echinacea.
And more of those yellow fungi on the way.
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Man, this thing just does not stop. Into week three now, and apparently the “set” evacuation zone (as in “ready, set, go”) is a mile or less from my parents’ house.
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Fuck. This keeps getting scarier.
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I had hoped that they would manage to save the central ranges (where all the hiking trails we know are), but it looks like that broke down this week, perhaps as fire threatened communities to the north and east. The campground we were at when I took pictures of the fire helicopters has burned now.
I still haven’t found pictures of the damage, but my parents’ friend involved in the firefighting says that the damage is surprisingly “spotty”. They go back and forth on whether the fire is an “okay” fire or not for the wilderness.
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Stack Overflow is drunk again:
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Mercury 7 astronaut Deke Slayton ended up having a health issue, and became Chief Astronaut. He ended up flying on the Apollo-Soyuz mission.
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Not too sure how I feel about this. 
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Titles are derived from most common themes algorithmically detected in posts.
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I’m thinking this could be the same larva:
Spotted an adult here about 2 weeks ago. Closer to Labor Day I’ve seen more than a few fly over while I was out running errands etc.
P.S. Apparently the larva left turds all over the place. I mean, I know they’ll do that (in 6th grade I tried to raise a silkworm), but gracious: I thought someone had spilled a bag of peppercorns there.
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