[sic]

It wasn’t more than a few days ago that Susan spied our first teeny tiny tomato on the vines she’s been nurturing since March and there was much rejoicing.

Then today Susan found the first born ‘mater had an unwelcome guest that had moved in (click to triplify):

Drats, but such is life in the backyard. I hope that first fruit helps nourish  this caterpilar through its metamorphosis to whatever it’s to become. And in the meantime Susan’s gonna step up repellent procedures to prevent further invasions.

(click to triplify)

Not really a rose, but this tiny flower was certainly shaped like one and caught my eye as I was raking the backyard enough to stop what I was doing and go get my cam (along with the dime about six inches in the background that I used for scale). I was going to pick a dozen for Susan, but they were too cute to disturb.

(click to triplify)

(click to quadruplify)

I think this collection began a couple/three years ago when we first started enjoying the food of the restaurant called Pho situated in an unmarked section of the Susnet Boulevard strip mall a half block away from us.

I know the coconut half shell is a souvenir we lifted from our room at the Breezes resort on Zanzibar in the summer of 2005, and it sits on top of a heavy iron utility cover we found sometime thereafter sitting on the sidewalk while walking back from breakfast at Millie’s up in the junction area of Silver Lake.

Since then whenever we’ve had meals that involve fortune cookies, we’ve saved the fortunes and stuffed them into the slit in the shell.

 (click to quadruplify)

Pumpkin, Jiggy and Pepper await Susan’s arrival and breakfast.

(click to quadruplify)

I’m loving the rain (while at the same time hoping it doesn’t bring about slides in the burn areas), but then again it looks like it’s gonna linger  through today and even tomorrow which’ll keep me off my bike and stuck about 50 miles from the 3,000-mile mark I would have passed today had the weather stayed fair.

The smoke-filtered harvest moon as seen from Silver Lake this morning just before 7 a.m. (click to doublify):

 Shine on, baby!

This is Ranger’s “I’ll be good from now on” face, which is pretty much interchangeable with her “I didn’t do nuthin’” face and her “I swear the cats started it” face (note the blur of the wagging tail):

[click image to enlarge]