Waning Summer

On Sunday we met at a place called Jelly's, down by the ballpark, for a birthday brunch. Marie, the birthday girl, is the one in the center. It was in a sort of industrial setting on a pier near some tugboats, but the food was good. It was also out of the fog.


After brunch, I took Steve over to a nearby park I know from birding called Huffaker Park. It is along Mission Creek and there are these cool funky houseboats. In winter, there is often a rare warbler in that tiny park. It's a little strip of green amidst a very urban area.



Steve took pictures of some of the wildlife there.


These flowers are called "Naked Ladies." The leaves die back and the flowers pop up out of the ground as if from nowhere. They are harbingers of summer's end.


My friend Deb emailed me the other day that she harvested 75 tomatoes from a raised bed she had planted in a friend's yard. Here's my tomato harvest:


Besides the varmints devouring the tomatoes before they can even start to get ripe, my plants are getting their wilt.


I was watering and surveying the damage this afternoon. This chestnut backed chickadee came in to swipe a black oil sunflower seed from the feeder about 4 feet from where I was sitting.


Ms. E. was giving me this baleful look from her perch, so I was persuaded to bring her out for an airing in the eddying swirls of fog.