Various topics: Bill Burr, the morning walk, and weeds

I'm like a teenager when it comes to comedians, or actually, anyone on TV I really, really like:  I get crushes on them; yeah, I even get girl crushes on a few woman.  Dolly Parton has been on my "girl crush" list for many, many years (surely you realize I'm not talking sexual attraction).  Perhaps the reason why Cliff and I have been married so long is that we both have a sense of humor, and we even enjoy the same comedians.  Anyway, my latest comedian-crush is Bill Burr.

Just look at that babyface

This morning, imagine my surprise when I realized the voice in my head (when I'm talking to myself but my lips aren't moving) is the voice of Bill Burr.  Hey, I like the guy, so I enjoy that voice.  Maybe he'll eventually start telling jokes as I take my walk.  I won't leave a video here for you, since he sprinkles the F word liberally throughout his routine.  But Cliff and I go into a flurry of anticipation when we hear that guy is coming out with a new video on Netflix.  By the way, his voice in my brain never says a curse word.  When I'm alone in the house, I have fun with Bill's voice in my head.  I may be cooking and suddenly wonder if I put the vanilla in the batter; I will ponder awhile, then say, "Bill?  What do you think?  Did I or not?"

Now that you know I not only hear voices but also answer them, I'll probably lose the few readers I have... but wait!  Everybody wants to watch a train wreck, so I might get more readers!  Yeah, that's the ticket, you get to watch and see if Cliff puts me away.  

The furthest two trees on either side of the path Cliff mowed are walnut trees.  When my cabin was back there under those trees, I called the one on the right the Old Chief (it's the one that leans to the left from a wild grapevine making it bend some) and the one on the left Brave Warrior.  I loved laying in the cabin on a windy day because of the sound in those two treetops.  Gabe and I felt pretty special that Cliff mowed our path yesterday in the awful heat.  

I saw many of these spiders (above center) on our walk today, big old fat boys (or girls).  I wanted to get one of them in the middle of her beautiful web, but when I got the camera too close, they did the same as this one and started climbing a long strand back into the treetop.  Gabe happened to notice a terrapin in the weeds near the path and showed it to me, sniffing it from one end to the other.  I took a picture, but apparently didn't shove the button hard enough, because there is NO picture of a box turtle in the last group I downloaded.  According to the Missouri Conservation department, there are no true terrapins in Missouri, but I had mistakingly learned to call them that.  The proper term is box turtles.

Last year I read that Monarch butterflies are endangered because the only thing they eat is milkweed leaves, and farmers have taken up a lot of the land where weeds used to grow by planting crops.  They suggested we should go to a nursery and buy some milkweed plants; I bought one, and was thrilled to see a Monarch caterpillar (larvae) on it, although I never saw it make a chrysalis.  I'll never know what happened to it... maybe one of the birds I feed had it for dinner.  

Anyway, many of my flowers are done blooming for this year, so I was pulling weeds and cutting down some flowers.  There is a vine that insists on invading my flower bed every year.  As I was jerking about 20 years of vine out that had wound around the tops of some flowers, I noticed there were pods on it and, on inspecting them, realized they were milkweed pods.  

So I'm the fool who went and bought a milkweed plant when I had plenty of milkweed plants at home.  They are different varieties of milkweed, since the one I bought is not a vine; but Monarchs like all of the varieties of milkweed.  I'm going to watch for someplace near a sunny fencerow where I can plant the seeds in the pods.  I'll make this place a Monarch Butterfly hotel!

That's it folks!

Yours truly, 
Donna