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I was very happy to get downtown to the river last weekend. I think this is my favorite photo. To me the clouded, weak sun looks vaguely like descriptions in SciFi novels where a sun is far from a planet. And I like the shape of the rock I'm standing on -- looks vaguely to me like a tortoise!
Standing on the back of a tortoise - rock shape

And got a heron shot --
Blue Heron


So the tree is changing as I transition to LED lights. This year, it is VERY pink 😁. And I'm okay with that -- it's very festive!
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Book club met at my place last night. Everyone liked the book (A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr). It's always good when folks like the book that that you chose! Having said that though, some of our best discussions are when some like and some dislike the book.

I cooked a few things to provide for dinner. It was a good meeting, and I was glad to be back in the book club swing after taking the summer off.

Made it to the river today. It was nice to sit on the rocks in the sun and listen to the water! Click to view --
Sitting on the rocks
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Down to the Texas Beach trail yesterday. I hadn't been there in a good while! It was nice being there, and it was mostly empty until towards the end of my walk when more folks started showing up.
River

Saw a Mourning Cloak butterfly -- I'm not sure what their host plant it, but I have only seen one of these at my house in all the years I've been here. So it was nice to see one at the river!
Mourning Cloak Butterfly - Nymphalis antiopa
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Temperatures got to 67F (19C) today, so I took a walk along the river. It used to be that a long exposure required a tripod, and some testing of shutter speed and aperture. But now, you can just point the phone! But I do think the phone sometimes is bit over-done, so I'd like a way to scale it back a bit.
I think the phone goes a little overboard with the long exposure. I wish there were settings to tone it down a bit.  First visit to the river this year!

I have an appreciation for Brutalism, but I don't love it.
Brutalist RVA

These stair structures are at various points at the river and are connected to bridges over railroad tracks. These get you over the tracks and then down to river level. They are old, and one was recently closed because the bridge is considered unsafe. It will probably be a century and a half before the City gets a grant or something to fix it, and in the meantime when I go to that spot, I guess I'll have to climb over the tracks myself -- which is not my favorite thing to do.
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This first Monday of Sabbatical has been pretty nice. I slept in until 7...then breakfast....a walk at Texas Beach...and now lunch & a glass of wine while reading on the porch. It's supposed to start raining this evening, so I'm picturing a movie night!
River rocks

Big snake -- a Northern Water Snake, I believe -- warming itself on a rock --
Northern Water Snake warming on a rock at the river this morning.

The graffiti is always changing at Texas Beach. It is a bit incongruous, but it can be interesting.
Graffiti at the river

It was my host for games group yesterday. And of course it being 95F outside, the downstairs AC had a funky smell -- in the way it does when it has been used once and then not used again. So we had to deal with a bit of unpleasant smell. It just means I need to open up the air handler, flush it out, and use some AC drain cleaner.

The game I chose (Shifting Stones) was well received. We used a swiveling Scrabble board as a turntable to turn the game facing each player.


I still have a few surviving roses, back from the time when I had a fair number of roses which I tended properly with fertilizer and pruning, and spraying for black spot. Most have died off without my constant care, but there are still a few in the yard.

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"O seguro morreu de velho, mas o desconfiado ainda está vivo." -- "The safe one died of old age, but the suspicious one is still living."