The lead photo is the winner of the Wet Grasshopper Contest. I suppose more “normal” people go to wet T-shirt contests, but I find wet insects quite appealing. I know, I know, I need to get out more.

Neither Laurie nor I slept well last night. I did a little house work, watering and pulled some morning glories off the grapes today; otherwise, I’ve been dragging around most of the day. I noticed late this afternoon that I had a slight sore throat. I’m glad I didn’t do as much yard work as I was thinking about doing.

When I was doing the Fotóplanking, I tried Leisure Fotó. The problem is it wasn’t very leisurely. A lot of strength I don’t really have is required to laze out on a post and make it look like you’re not straining. If it wasn’t for pushing my “big, scary camera” (as one French woman called it) forward to act as a counter-balance, I don’t think I could have assumed that position.

I got some nice rose photos tonight, but when I started looking at them, I just couldn’t deal with rose photos tonight. Love’s blazing red and green gas and diesel prices I got on the way home tonight and the clouds moving in over UNM I got last night while waiting for Laurie were much more interesting to me.

Early morning sunlight backlights a sunflower, crosslights a hibiscus, while it gently kisses the dew off Christopher Marlow.

There was a sassy little finch eating seeds off the catnip and hanging out on the sunflowers tonight. Laurie got a photo of Painted Lady butterfly on the white butterfly bush.

The thunderstorm really cooled things off tonight, so I thought Hot Cocoa was in order.

I never thought of fireworks in dill until tonight. I was mentioning to Laurie there wasn’t many critters out tonight, and she thought the dill might attract more, then she noticed the dill had a galaxy look to it. It turned out to look more like fireworks to me.

Stretch was being  cute and posing for Laurie on the microwave this morning. He is doing pretty well.

Rio Samba was in fine form this morning.

The irrigation water is black from the ash and burnt soils being washed into the Rio Grande from the areas burned by the Las Conchas fire.  It’s pretty strange to see black water, and it leaves a black residue behind. We’ll see if the plants like it.

While I was out watching the thunderstorm move in about 20:45 this evening, I saw a flash/crack and the top of a dead cottonwood crashed down into the horse arena. I couldn’t see well enough if it hit their barn, but It didn’t sound like any metal crunching after the initial crack. The birds loved to sit in that old tree!

I took Stretch in for blood work this morning. He’s holding steady, so the vet told us to give him 200 ml of fluid every other day and see how he does with that. That way we don’t have to water-board him every day.

I made a giant stock pot of green chile stew this afternoon. It’s almost one of my best ever. What kept it from being my best is that we are out of Wagner’s green chile, so I had to use frozen green chile form Costco.

I’m very sore from fotóplanking this afternoon. I set up one camera on a tripod and set the timer, which gave me 10 seconds to get into position. I tripped the shutter, ran to the post and planked myself on it. Needless to say, it took many tries before I got into a fairly straight position, while balanced on the post!

Before I did the fotóplanking, I put a new cover on the canopy over the deck. That is definitely contributing to my soreness, because I installed the new cover under the old cover. Not an easy task. We’re thinking that by putting the new cover under the old, the old cover will protect the new cover and help it to last longer. These covers are supposed to last 10 years, but  we got less than a year out of the first cover before it got dry rot and ripped. We got a little over a year out of the second cover before it started getting dry rot holes where it sits on the top bar of the frame.  Having a double cover has the benefit of cutting the heat gain by about 10 degrees, as well.

Stretch is getting stronger and harder to handle when it comes to water-boarding him. He hid tonight and I couldn’t find him anywhere. I finally asked Rosencrantz to help me find him — he lead me into the laundry room and meowed at the washing machine. I crawled up on the washing machine and shined my flashlight down behind it — there Stretch was crouched down hoping I couldn’t see him. He refused to come out until a got a can of air and sprayed it behind the washing machine. Stretch shot up and out over the top of the machine with a look on his face like the devil was after him. I felt bad for him, but he needs the treatments. He growled at us the whole water boarding session.

Sisters at Heart had really nice blooms tonight, and while we were sitting on the garden swing watching the cats, birds and other critters, a really nice wall of clouds formed in the northern skies.

We have a colored lily in our white “moonlight” garden around the deck. Laurie got a photo of it in the morning light.

Pink Promise is the official rose of the National Breast Cancer Foundation and ours is a survivor. We put in six new Jackson and Perkins roses in a new bed in 2009, and Pink Promise is the only one that is thriving after the sub-zero temperatures in February.

We didn’t plant sunflowers this year but we have some coming back from last year’s seeds. We thought they were hybrids, so we are surprised they are coming back as the same sunflowers from their seeds.

Our Ronald Reagan rose is trying to come back from the cold winter. I think this is the first bloom he’s managed to put on. His rose is red and white with a slight hint of blue.

Unfortunately, we lost both of our Nancy Reagan bushes to the cold. She produced beautiful peach colored roses.