I'm Back

So, last night we got back from our trip to Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas (mostly St. Louis and Arkansas).

I'm hoping to blog about some of the interesting things we saw and did -- seeing some Tolkien friends, visiting Cahokia Mounds, going to Kadoha Village, &c -- but I've come back to a mountain of pressing work, so thought as a stopgap I'd just list some things from the day before yesterday:

--visited my father's grave

--saw a car on fire in the median on the freeway

--planted a cape-jasmine bush in the yard where my grandmother's house used to stand*

--discovered that, given the chance, blue jays will happily eat dry catfood

--seen a young blue-jay following its parent from branch to branch, hopefully expecting to be fed

--discovered that sparrows are mighty predators; I saw two of them after a bug, and it made me glad the proportion size between them and me is what it is (a good reminder that dinosaurs aren't dead, they just evolved). I rescued the beetle and left them a few shelled peanuts in reconpense

--picked up the first and only toad frog I saw on the trip (though we saw some huge water-frog in the St. Louis botanical gardens). which involved some hand-washing afterwards

--saw two Tiger Swallowtails, my favorite butterfly.

John R.

*the day before having driven my mother by the place where my other grandmother used to live: the little house was still there, though now long abandoned and practically invisible from the road. Glad to see the old black walnut tree's still there, at least.