The lucky last of our monarch butterflies emerged.
I hung a basket under this one after learning that, once they’ve been hanging onto the remnants of the chrysalis for a while drying themselves out, they don’t actually fly away but, instead, they plummet to the ground like a stone with pretty wings, and then they just wander around for a while, hoping not to be seen by a passing cat.
Some wildlife and some views from my walk today:
What you can’t see in the first picture is that the council have fenced off the swan at a safe distance and put up a “do not feed the swan” sign 
See, they know swans are assholes.
They also know that people make poor choices and may not be dissuaded by the fact that it’s illegal to damage a swan nest while it’s in use, or to take the eggs…
The beach at Hat Head, throng on the ANZAC Day long weekend (mid-Autumn).
People to the left
People to the right:
I drove for a work trip recently. Along the jaunty 4 hour drive, I encountered a particularly “midwestern liminal” stretch of highway. This, my friends, is the midwestern experience. I normally do not use my phone while driving, but extra caution was deployed in order to capture the magnificent lack of magnificence.
Upon arriving in town, I had a few hours to burn before I could check into my hotel. So I did what any reaonable person would do: I drove to the nearest FLGS
You appear to be missing a corn (bean, wheat,…) field. No midwestern drive is complete without a two hour strech of corn, interrupted only by fields of soybeans.
When they said “drive all day, then turn right at the stop light” I thought they were joking.
Unless it’s a midwestern drive with a two hour stretch of soybeans, interrupted only by fields of corn.
(In the nine years I lived in the Midwest, I’m honestly not sure I ever saw a field of wheat. Wheat in the occasional large garden, maybe. A whole field? I’m not sure that was profitable enough.)
That’s west texas. I used to work with a guy from the middle of nowhere west texas, and commented once about how empty it was. He pointed out that anywhere on highway is closer to somewhere than where he’d grown up, where they had to drive an hour to get to a paved road.
Wheat is a big crop in the upper midwest (and the plains, which some people like to pretend are part of the midwest…).
In the case I experienced, it was North Dakota. (State tree: telegraph pole. State bird: Minuteman missile.)
Yeah, Midwest is a big place (as we were saying…).
once again visiting our favorite winery for the “presentation of the new vintage”
Just a few bottles going home with us
including some new low alcohol offerings.
What’s the low alcohol like? The low and no alcohol wine we can buy in the UK is appalling. It’s a long way behind non alcoholic beer
The low alcohol wine has 5% still and they told us this should be used to make Weinschorle (mix it with sparkling water). Pure it tasted okay. I like the idea of having a very low alcohol Schorle.
We also got some 0.5% sparkling wine. Those have become quite acceptable. There are several we buy regularly. They don’t compare to a good sparkly but I can recommend some German producers now.
I discovered another German food that I won’t be able to get in England: Knipp, a regional specialty from Bremen. Basically left over pig bits mixed with grain and made into a smoked sausage. In this case, fried and with apple sauce and pickles.
I had it in Bremen once and don’t actually remember what I thought.
