Black-eyed Susans and apple mint, by the side of the front porch. Also vinca, which I hate, but there it is. You can't really see all the bees of various kinds that were crawling all over these flowers, but they were there, buzzing away in the way that bees do.
Back from a long, hot walk with Dora, who is now lying on her bed by the kitchen table eating a Kong full of frozen green beans With Great Relish, as Uncle Benny always wanted his food in Eleanor Estes' Ginger Pye and/or Pinky Pye. Here's a shot of the dog park from yesterday ---- we didn't go there today, and I didn't take my phone along in any case, but I did have it on yesterday's stroll, when the morning sun was slanting over the hurdles, which I had been enticing Dora to jump:
That whole end of the park is shady in the mornings, so if nobody else is there, it makes a nice destination. I can let Dora off-leash to run and sniff, then invite her to play on the equipment a bit.
As you can see, it's a nice big enclosure, with a good high fence, far more secure than our backyard. It was also dewy-wet yesterday, and after rolling in the grass a lot, Dora was as soaked as if she'd had a bath. Fortunately the walk home is at least a mile, so she had time to dry off in the sun. The greenway trail ends right at that street you see in the distance here; it's the perfect setup for us. We can just walk down our street, turn left at the railroad tracks, walk to the end of the trail, and here we are. This is also good in that we can opt not to go to the park if other dogs are there, and just turn around and keep walking instead. It would make me crazy to do the whole time-investment thing of loading the dog in the car and driving there, only to find that other dogs were there, making the whole outing a strikeout for us. This way we have an outing, no matter what --- though it is nice when we can take advantage of our own private dog park.
Today we walked to the other end of the greenway and back. We were a little later getting out --- between 9 and 10, instead of between 8 and 9 --- which was hotter, but had the advantage of being past the time when most people are out with their dogs. We still passed some walkers and dogs, but not nearly as many as when we go earlier, and that was nice. Now we're back, and she's sitting on her bed barking at me while I try to work, which is some improvement over barking at me and then biting my wrists to try to get me to play. Ah, but even as I've written that, she's given up and lain down on the floor, where I hope she stays for a while.
Having a lot of back and forth with the publisher at the moment about the cover for my novel. I chose an admittedly strange image for it: Jacobus Vrels' Woman at a Window Waving at a Girl. We're at the stage of trying to get the text colors right, and I am probably being difficult about it, but I thought this didn't quite work:
Back to the swing-dress default mode, in which I can revel for the rest of the week, i.e., today and tomorrow. I'm wearing (yet again), my home-dyed bamboo swing dress, which I continue to love with all its little flaws. I haven't washed it since the last wearing, almost a week ago, but like my wool dresses, it smells perfectly fresh, even after hard wear in hot weather, with just a good airing between wears. Swapped out my EVA Birks, which needed a rest, for these Xero Colorado sandals, which give me a bit of a dark contrast with my lighter gray-blue dress. Hair up off my neck, to help me stay cool in the heat. Bad shots, but I love what I can do with spiral pins:
This is the same kind of off-kilter French-roll-type style that I do with claw clips, but sometimes it's nice not to have to use a clip. And these pins hold things far more securely. They're metal, but they don't seem to break hair the way a metal barrette does --- the hair isn't really clasped the same way, with the same harsh pressure applied to one place.
