Day 142

Blue butterfly in the meadow.

Just a walk with Molly today, no run because I have a bad cold.  I think I caught the virus from my friend's grandson the other day, or from Emma, over the phone!  I am feeling rather miserable. 

Gary Snyder, the Buddhist poet, believes that it is etiquette to know the names of plants and animals, just as it is to know and remember people's names. 

In America I have learnt a whole new set of birds and wildflowers and tame flowers and trees and animals.  There is not the enormous variety that we have in South Africa, but they are all  just as fascinating.  For example, how coyotes have adapted so well to urban life that a whole den of them was found at the back of a closed-down restaurant in Massachusetts.  There is a six-month hunting season for coyotes and 90 000 are killed each year.  And they still manage to thrive.  We have heard their wailing calls at night in high summer, lying in our hot attic room with just a sheet covering us, chilled by the sound.  And I was thrilled to see one in the forest, a shadow flitting away and gone in a second.

My portrait today is my little figure finished.  She is a birthday gift for a friend of mine.  She is a primary person, blue and red and yellow with white!