Teasels and Bugs

This is a tiny wild teasel that grew on its own in our lawn near the birdbath. When I say tiny, I mean it's only about a foot high. But it still produced a flower, because it's a teasel, and they are nothing if not determined survivors.

We also have several blooming at the side of the garden, and they appear to be the white "giant" variety, even though the plants themselves aren't very big. I think it's just too dark over there, in the shade of the hazel trees, for them to flourish.

We had a nice big giant in the middle of the lawn, but it mysteriously and spontaneously died before flowering, as they sometimes do. I'm not sure why. (OK, so they're not always survivors!) At least with the ones above we'll have seeds for next year.

There's not much to say about yesterday that's exciting. I did a big load of laundry in the morning, hung it out to dry, and found that it dried incredibly slowly. The clothes hung like limp, damp paper towels for hours. The humidity was only 44 percent, but there was no breeze -- so they sat out pretty much all day before I could bring them in and even then two pairs of Dave's pants had to hang inside overnight. Now I've got our last post-cruise load churning in the washing machine.

I did have some interesting video experiences with bugs!

The first video clip shows a Jersey tiger moth on our bay tree. (Sorry it's so shaky -- I was standing in a precarious place. The weird color comes from my camera flash, which activated because it was late evening and quite dark.) The second clip shows a wasp gnawing its way through the wood of our garden bench. I was actually sitting on the bench at the time and I heard its little chewing sounds -- you can also hear them in the video if you turn up the volume (and ignore the noises of the city and our neighbors in the background). Apparently wasps chew wood not to eat it but to build their nests with it.

Finally, the third clip shows an interesting (but sadly dead) caterpillar that I found while walking home from the high street. Turns out it's a larva of the lime hawk moth, which feeds on lime trees and then drops to the ground to pupate in soil. Unfortunately, in the city, many of them encounter pavement when they fall, so they wander looking for loose dirt. I suspect this one got stepped on, poor thing. I like its little punk hairstyle, that blue horn on its forehead.

I did finally catch up (mostly) in blogland, answering comments from the last several days and at least touching base with most other blogs. It's going to take me some time to get back in the swing of things!

I also worked on the insurance claim form for the camera, which of course is not as simple as I'd hoped it would be. They want my original purchase receipt, which I really did save for many years, but I finally tossed it some time ago because it had faded so badly that it couldn't be read. What do you do when your receipt self-destructs, like something out of "Mission: Impossible"? Even my bank and credit card statements online don't go back as far as 2012. I'm going to send them a later receipt for having the camera repaired and hopefully that will be enough proof of ownership.

I haven't taken steps to replace the camera yet. I'm trying to make do with my phone for the time being until I have emotionally detached from the theft and can look at my options more objectively. Right now I have a (possibly insane) urge to repurchase exactly what I lost! I may in fact do that in the end, but I need to take at least a few days to simply breathe first. There's no rush, right?

Last night I couldn't help checking the location of my AirPods (and hence possibly the camera, since they were in the camera bag), and they're still sitting in that bastard's car on the Via di Porta Labicana in Rome. They haven't moved an inch.