Commonalities

Something is happening to my summer. It's beginning to fade despite my best effort to make it last forever. Ah well the beauty of it all is that it will be back again next year. And even better, it's not quite over yet. I hope you enjoy the following photos taken over the last few weeks.

Tennis anyone? OK, so it's not a tennis racquet but rather a dollar store piece meant for badminton. There it sat beside a citronella candle, probably from the same store. And there I sat with my camera in hand. What else was I to do but snap a shot?

Not to give the impression that dollar stores get all of our business but they really do come in handy sometimes. I'm guessing that these colourful bottles of bubbles were purchased there too. It's all a guess because everything in these first two photos was found at Frank's place and really, where else are you going to buy toy racquets, anti-mosquito candles and bubbles for Benny to chase and burst?

I can't remember where we were driving to or from on this day, but the rain had begun, and I liked the way it streamed down the windshield in small rivulets, allowing a peek at the cars' lights, like little bubbles ahead of us. The window was a lot clearer than it appears. I was trying to focus on the lights and water droplets. Can you tell it was a hot, muggy kind of rain?

Where there's rain, there are puddles. This is one I tend to photograph fairly often. It's not as large as I've seen it before. Then again we'd not have very much rain at this point in the summer. Don't puddles make you want to return to your childhood just for a moment so that you can stomp around in them without looking like the neighbourhood loon?

This umbrella wasn't made for rain. It's the kind you latch onto the arm of a chair so you can sit in the hot sunshine and still have some shade. Colourful, isn't it?

Speaking of that, when I snapped this shot of a Queen Anne's Lace, I thought that the underside of it kind of resembled the inside of an umbrella. If you ever pull one of these flowers out by the roots, make sure you give it a good sniff. It's related to the carrot family and the root smells just like carrots. Did you know that?

And finally, since we're enjoying the flowers, here's a photo which I meant to include with the previous "purple" post but I forgot. Milkweed grows all around the field near Frank's place and it does its best to attract Monarch butterflies. It does a pretty good job of it too. Had you noticed that up until now, I've ended every photo description with a question?

How about now?