Nature and Netting

We had more rain Wednesday night. I took the camera in the morning when I went down to see how the drainage ditch handled it.When the rain filled the ditch the last time, we had gotten about 2.72 inches of rain in just over 24 hours. This time we only had 0.65 inches. I could see where the water had risen and made the mud shiny, but it was already down by 10 am.

Camera in hand, I went walking around to see what I could see.

A while ago I spotted this indigo bunting nest while picking black raspberries. There was one bunting egg in the nest and two cowbird eggs. I identified which was which after a little Googling and removed the cowbird eggs. This morning the parents were feeding their fledgling outside the nest already.

These hot pink flowers are Deptford pinks, Dianthus armeria. They are tiny little things that grow wild in the grass.

I try to mow around moth mullein (Verbascum blattaria) rosettes when I notice them in the grass, and eventually I am rewarded with a spike of flowers. I have both white and yellow ones, but the white made the prettiest picture.I'm always a little bemused to find some of my favorite wild flowers are alien species.

In fibery news, I've been bashing my brains against the netting wall again, trying to figure out a 17th century netting pattern from text directions.

The first four rows are straightforward, and from there it's downhill. I've tried several possibilities for the vague fifth row, and unpicked the knots a number of times..

The directions for the sixth and seventh rows are very plain, and put some constraints on what can have happened in the fifth row, so I drew many diagrams and made some assumptions, and got as far as this.

It's good work for hot humid summer days. Our dew point hasn't dropped below 60 F for days, and I wouldn't be touching thread at all if not for the air conditioner wringing the water out of the air.