XI in the sky, summer music, and macroinvertebrates

There's a title I don't have to worry about repeating!

The skywriters are back mucking up the sky again just after all the smoke from Canada went away. Momma deer is unconcerned, and just finished cleaning off 2 little ones who refused to wait for their picture to be taken.

We went to the second concert in the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival—Caroga Arts Ensemble. Eddie Barbash on saxophone, Kasa Quartet on strings, plus a guitarist, drummer and bass player.

Your first question would probably be "why am I doing this?"

And then there was the training for macroinvertebrate monitoring. As if the water testing I am doing in the creek with Charlie and Pam wasn't enough, now we are learning how to capture and identify macroinvertebrates as a further test of the health of our stream(s). Let's just say it is quite the challenge to learn the difference between a net-spinning caddisfly and a midge larva when they are both about the size of a fruit fly. The easy ones were the crayfish and scuds...

Where there's smoke

Canadian wildfires are sending their smoke to us just like they did in June 2023, only this time it's supposed to be so much worse, with numbers at the very top of the scale. The large photo is from 10:45 this morning when we were still in the ugly dried-blood-colored hazard zone at 500!

Where is the hazy orange sky that you can see if you click on the link from 2023? Where is the hazy gray sky with no sun to be seen that we had yesterday when it was only at 280 on the scale?

I do prefer the blue sky, but I am staying mostly inside today to avoid any nasty stuff in the air. How can it be so bad and look so good? At least the numbers came back down to around 200 this afternoon.

We escaped the house last night and went to the first of the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival concerts—a woodwind quintet called WindSync. It was a great performance in spite of the fact that those poor musicians had to breathe in our smoky air all day.

Expressions

Cool

Silly and scared silly

It's kind of odd that 92° is considered extreme heat up here—that was average summer heat in New Jersey. Zelda found a cool spot in my bug-eaten hostas to take a nap.

We had the heat for 2 or 3 days, and then we had some wicked thunderstorms and heavy rain to wash it all away. It's still hot, but not awful.

Jessie has not been appreciating the stormy weather, and Old Man Cyrus does not understand why she doesn't want to play his silly games. (Storms? We had storms?) At least he is still silly at age 13.

And the final photo is Layla wishing you all a Happy 4th. She was not impressed with the big celebration in DC. Our little hometown fireworks are just enough fun, thank you very much.

Super silly

Clouds and elderberries

Magnificent clouds mean stormy weather that makes the nervous dog more nervous than ever. (Gabapentin is our friend.) But they do make for great photos! 

And behind that fence to the right in the top photo, is our baby forest of (mostly, or maybe all) native trees and shrubs (smaller photo). The white blooms will all soon be beautiful elderberries which are nearly impossible to make into anything useful. I might try elderflower and elderberry liqueur this year, and possibly a dye from the berries. Maybe...