Time away

A week at Mountain Water, conditions were dry but not desperately so, lots of berries on the bushes and lots of birds enjoying end-of-summer feasting. One night a light step on the porch woke me, lifted my head to see a little bear silhouette in the window two feet from my nose, greeted it with a soft "Hey, there." It spun around and dashed away – faster than you'd ever guess – across the moonlit meadow.
Next night we bungled latching the kitchen door for the night, in the morning found it standing wide open. No intruders, not a mouse, not a bear. Such luck.

A vase without flowers, not that there weren't any. I replanted iris rescued from an old homestead site across the road during the late '90s drought. Propagated them and brought them home. Conditions not that promising, though as soon as I placed the first one in the ground, it began to rain – no lie. Also planted a fringed lavender, a gift from neighbor Nancy Haynes.