Day 198

Paper Wasp and Dun Skipper chatting over their morning milkweed nectar.

When you lick your lips you discover again that we come from the sea.  Sweat drips off red faces.  You don't want to complain because it is summer, after all, but really, it is too hot and humid and thirsty.  The black dog pants constantly.  The ancient cat lies flat on the tiles and then gets up and moves often because it is not good to leave old bones in one position for too long.  She loves the dog's water bowl. 

You work hard most of the day, cleaning out the garage which has been accumulating dust for about a year, and grass everywhere from the bale you have for the piggie's bedding and food.  After hot hours and a couple of trips to the dump, it is all ordered and swept clean, ready for working at the workbench your dad made mostly from driftwood and an entire weathered table-top or door found on the beach.  You thought he would always be here, but at least it is good to see his workbench still there, strong and heavy.  And some of his old old tools, that you think belonged to your grandfather, his dad.  He brought them over one year, all wrapped up in an old fabric tool-keeper, which probably belonged to his father too.  They must have weighed his suitcase down so much! 

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail visiting my thistle.

My father.  So curious and knowledgeable about so many things.  And he could be ridiculously stubborn and bloody-minded sometimes.  Once when he and my mother went over to England to visit friends and relations, he took a chameleon with him!  He wanted to show his mother what a chameleon looked like!  So he settled it in a little box with some greenery and airholes, packed it in his carry-on luggage, and off they went, my mother completely unsuspecting.  Of course she was horrified when she found out, and justly so.  My grandmother, however, was suitably charmed and impressed by the little creature, and my grandfather was taught how to half-kill flies to feed it, so that the fly was still moving, otherwise the chameleon wouldn't eat it. They learned how to stroke it very very gently, just the way it liked, and it stayed with them.   My father and mother travelled all over the British Isles for 6 weeks, checking in on my grandparents and their little treasure periodically, and then my dad repeated the hand-luggage trick and brought it all the way home to South Africa, where he set it free at 10 Forest Drive, in the hedge in his garden where he had originally found it.  And what a story it had to tell all the other chameleons!