Sewing!

This performance from AGT snagged my attention, in which the contestant turns the audience into a choir.

1) Some people with Bardic gift can share theirs with other people; it's rare but I've known people who could do it.  That's likely part of this.

2) Some people have a gift for conveying abstract ideas visually, which is rare enough, but doing it intuitively like that is really rare and impressive.  Musical scores are precise but take a lot of training to read, especially sight-read without practice.  Creating a visual representation of a song in three voices (high, middle, low) with indications of pitch and duration -- which works well as demonstrated -- is epic.

Business world: "Dammit, I wish we had someone that good with visuals to do whiteboard notes for our meetings."

Music world: "We saw her first."

Thanks to a donation from lone_cat, there are 24 new verses of "In the Heart of the Hidden Garden." Lawrence shows Stan the Iron Courtyard.

Today is partly sunny and sweltering. It's 87°F and the heat index is 95°F. :P A beautiful day to stay indoors and write!

I fed the birds. I've seen a small flock of sparrows and house finches, several mourning doves, and a fox squirrel.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/22/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 6/22/25 -- I watered the plants on the new picnic table.







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People have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.

How far should governments go to prevent its citizens from causing harm to themselves?

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A Rainbow of Queer Books for Pride 2025: Turquoise

HAPPY PRIDE 2025! For Pride this year, we’re changing up our usual rec lists. Instead of doing books with specific identities or themes, we’re focused this time on cover color! Throughout the month of June, we’ll be doing 8 rec lists, each with covers inspired by one of the colors of the original Gilbert Baker Pride Flag. We drew a little additional inspiration from the meaning behind the color and why it was included in the original LGBTQIA+ flag (in this case, turquoise = magic), but we prioritized color over meaning. The contributors to this list are: May Barros, Rhosyn Goodfellow, Linnea Peterson, Tris Lawrence, Sebastian Marie, Shannon, Rascal Hartley, and Nina Waters.

Today is mostly sunny, muggy, and hot.

I fed the birds. I've seen a few sparrows and house finches.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/21/25 -- Temperature when we went out shopping was 94°F. Temperature in our yard is currently 88°F. Trees sweat so you don't have to!

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio. The evening has started to cool off a little.

I've seen a mourning dove.

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I watered the patio plants and the ones in the house yard including the old picnic table.

Fireflies are starting to appear.

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I watered the telephone pole garden and the savanna seedlings.

More fireflies are out. :D

EDIT 6/21/25 -- I watered the new picnic table and the septic garden.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

We made this tonight. It was delicious! We used some of the pretzel bread that we got at the Marshall Farmer's Market.

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Today is cloudy and muggy.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a mixed flock of sparrows and house finches.  I also saw a male cardinal and a squirrel up in the trees.

I put out water for the birds.

EDIT 6/20/25 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

EDIT 6/20/25 -- I watered the new picnic table garden.  I picked the first 'Chocolate Sprinkles' tomato and several 'Toscana' strawberries.  I love the Toscanas and will definitely buy more if I see them next spring.