Comments, a Cricket and Nicole

I did some cleanup in the garden yesterday and found this little bush cricket hiding under one of the leaves on the phlox. Always good to see wildlife!

Some of you may notice I've made a minor change in the way comments are posted to the blog. I went back to so-called "embedded" comments, which allow me to respond directly below each comment. I used to use this format years ago but some people had trouble commenting -- something about Google and their logins. My impression is that problem has gone away, and switching back to embedded comments puts all the comments on older posts back in the proper order, which is a big plus. Anyway, if you have trouble commenting, e-mail me.

Also, I'm finding that I constantly wind up in spam on other people's blogs. So if you comment here and you're not seeing any return comments on your own blog, it's possible they're in spam. Check your spam folder. (This situation makes me rather indignant, because after eighteen years of almost daily blogging you'd think that Blogger would by now realize that I am a REAL PERSON and not a bot.)

Here's Nicole the Nicotiana and my most successful dahlia, side-by-side. The Nicotiana, a type of ornamental tobacco, has the nicest smell -- a sort of mentholated lemon pungency that emanates from its slightly sticky leaves. But don't worry, I'm not going to smoke it.

I mowed the lawn. Here's Olga before the mowing, looking bored with the teasel forest. I'm kind of bored with it too, to be honest, but I'm leaving them for the bees. (They are covered with bees.) I did mow part of our no-mow grass patch from earlier this spring. Apparently August is the time to cut long grass, because insects have largely stopped reproducing and the grass will have time to re-generate before winter. I may do the rest of it this week (going around the teasels). I want to run it past Dave first.

I also picked up the second batch of Joan's scanned slides yesterday. I have to have two of them re-done because they didn't turn out well, but overall I'm happy with the results and I'll get that gallery posted sometime soon.

Since I had to go to St. John's Wood for the slides, I decided to pop in to school, drop off some of my library books and water the poor suffering library plants. (They needed it, too -- normally the plants get watered by the housekeeping staff, but they've been left high and dry this summer. I think whoever normally takes care of that task must have taken time off.) Now, when we all officially go back to work this week, the library will look more welcoming.

On the way home I found some child's art project out with the trash on the sidewalk -- a fantastic rendering of London landmarks. I kept it and I'm tempted to take it to work and put it on my desk, I love it so much. I'm not sure what the black objects are in the river. But I like the apparently gigantic "bug" west of Buckingham Palace, and the curiously mouth-like St. Paul's Cathedral. Apparently this child is a monarchist -- Parliament didn't even rate a mention!