Smells Like A New Year

L'Shana Tovah, everybody. We'll be munching honeyed apples and challah at the aBode with the Kugler half of the family on Monday. Hope yours is golden, too.

Blue Skies and Broken Hearts

The Long Beach boardwalk was lined with American flags, and there were hundreds of kites being flown from the sand when we happened upon the seventh annual Freedom Flight last week, held in remembrance of those who lost their lives in the September 11th attacks.

Whoa!

Pardon the meta-post, but I just have to say, this is a blog which, if it garners 4 hits a day and 2 of them are from my brother, I feel accomplished. And that's what it's been garnering, for all 16 months or so of its existence. Then today, I use the word "graffiti" in a post title and not two hours later I've got 28 hits! I mean, I guess it could have been the word "library" in the title of the previous post...but who'm I kiddin'? And I know 28 is bubkas for a blog, but for me, at the moment, it's a personal best. (Even if it turns out to be from a 'bot.)
So, that's it. From here on in, all future post titles will contain the word "graffiti."
(Even if I do have to look up the spelling every damn time I want to use it.)

Graffiti As A Good Thing

It takes a proper stencil, thoughtful placement, and a message we can all agree on, but it can be done.

Leaving The Library...

On their way to the big "chicken" tournament, I guess...

The Unexpected Ornament

How come I never knew about this? Do Star Wars fans know about this?

It happened years ago, but I missed hearing about it. I guess I'm really glad the kid wasn't a fan of Jar-Jar or anything. So, church and state? Ostensibly separate. But church and commercial culture? Likethis.

Pollen, How It Gets Around

By covering butterfly snouts...
...and hitching rides on ladybeetle bums,

and of course, sprinkled on bumblebee backs. Or maybe that's a honeybee, but what do I look like, an entomologist?

A Cluster of Spiders

These webs, these infernal webs, they're everywhere I go, thrown up in a quarter-hour or less. Tell me again how beneficial my arachnoid friends are, I need to hear it...
Here's one of my half-dozen common brown garden spiders, this time hiding under a leaf of the butterfly bush. Why? I don't know. All I know is, he's the size of a U.S. nickel and if he hides like this he'll wind up in my hair.

Lest this pretty green thing appear too dainty, its look is accented with spiky leg hairs.

Very scary.

All kinds of spiders are living in the depths of the tomato-plant patch, making it impossible to harvest the tomatoes in the middle. Low light also makes it impossible to photograph the spiders. Lose-lose.

And here, a funnel-web builder set up shop just a few inches from the sidewalk, weaving his luminous carpet on top of the junipers and then:

Waiting. ....................>