Summer night

Discipline disappears in the summer.

All I want to do when I get home is go outside, play with the dog and enjoy the dusky sunlight on the patio under the umbrella.

So I do.

Bird Park fungus. Another life form I don't know much about.

Last night, we sat outside and watched a tiny, fragile spider fling itself from umbrella rib to umbrella rib, vibrating wildly in the breeze. And after a bit, a thick cloud of starlings, or some variety of noisy black bird, darkened the sky in a cackling rush, zooming to the treetops of the park.

I know so little about this world, and am reminded of it every day.

That's why I love watching the life that goes on around us, as oblivious of us as we are of it.

Downtown today, in a flower bed outside a PNC branch, I watched a sparrow feed bits of purple petunia flower, torn from the bed, to two squawking chicks.

Petunias!

As I walked past the bank's ATM, a man waiting to use it, who obviously had been watching me watching, said "Givin' you a nice bit of entertainment, aren't they?"

That made me laugh.

I don't know a lot about this world that I love to watch, but thanks to Shannon M. Nass for this really informative article in the Post-Gazette today about fireflies.

Delightful.