Well, it's the start of Summer and the tiger swallowtail is gassing up.

The wild cherries at Shelby Bottoms are few and far between.  This is the only one I have seen and it doesn't have any low branches.  Dern!

Early July on the Harpeth River after the flood waters have gone with Harry and Mark.  Lots of stuff that got floated off is now along the river or up in the trees along it.

Well, the battle of the yellow kayaks.

This is interesting.  These guys are Cheatham County prisoners.  We didn't know what the hell was going on at first.

Then they spread out and started moving down the river.  Like a drag net. This was weirder and weirder.

Then we saw this woman with the blood hound and remembered that there was still an assumed drowning victim missing from the flood, almost a month ago.  He was finally found several weeks later  inside a trash pile  in a tree.

This perfectly good boat was stranded on a gravel bar.  I got the registration number and told the Game and Fish, who said they would contact the owner.

Fran, Heloise, and Sherry on the upper Duck River.  We were kayaking.  Fran has passed since then.  She wore almost as many clothes as Sherry.

Early July and this large mouth fell for the old stutter frog lure.

Honey bees at BiCentennial Mall love the St. John's Wort blossoms.

This is such a pretty blossom.  Don't have a clue what it is.  Help?

This is one of the hundreds of Magnolia Blossoms on the trees at BiCentennial Park.  I used to walk there from around 5am until time to teach my yoga class at the YMCA at 7:30--when I wasn't walking at Shelby Bottoms, of course.

Tennessee Wildlife Resources agency has a good web site for salamanders of Tennessee.  Go there http://www.tn.gov/twra/tamp/salamanders.shtml
if you'd like to try to find this one.  Closest photo I could find was that of the Eastern Newt.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

At Shelby Bottoms there is at least one family of beavers at the pond.  I have a photo of one swimming just before sunrise on one of these pages.   

Harry and I went way north to get on Yellow Creek near where it joins the Cumberland River.  Where we found a place to put in it was pretty big and we never did get upstream far enough to find moving water.  I got a long way up but there was a tree blocking the entire creek up there so I gave up.

This is, I think, a mayfly. which many call a willow fly.  They do their breeding in one day and then drop dead to the water where the fish...

gobble them up.  We found the trees along Yellow Creek loaded with them and knocked a bunch off to see what happened.  Nothing did.  I guess the fish were already full up.

Mid July and we go down the Caney Fork from Happy Hollow to Betty's Landing.  Lots of folks out, so it must be on a weekend.

Here are the Super Bubbas, Wayne and Harry, enjoying the chilly water.

This little pumpkin seed bream attacked a rapala almost as long as he was.

This is an eating size red ear bream.  We say "Brim" down here in Tennessee.
We also say "Croppie" instead of "Crappie," which I always has thought of as a Yankee way of speech until I fished in South Alabama where it is the same.

This is one of the springs that feed flat creek.  Always nice and cold, even in the middle of Summer.

A buckeye dragon Fly.  They don't hold still very long.  Got lucky.

I tried corn this year and the ears never got very big.  Most of it just rotted on the stalk.  I planted beans next to it so they'd grow up it, but they didn't. 

Here is a young squash about a day short of pulling.  You have to check them every day, as with okra, since they fill out very fast.

Two of the nice flowers in Mom's flower bed.  After this year she decided not to have one here because the work was getting to be too much.  I use the space now for squash which needs lots of room.

More of the lovely flowers in her driveway garden.  

Destruction of the house at 2213 continues.  They tore out most of the hardwood floors Hanley and I installed over the entire house way back when he was in grammer school.  He would put down a slat and I would nail it.  Saved a lot of bending over.  I made Servpro leave this section of the den floor which is maple and put down in a herringbone pattern.  Jerry put the long boards in around it perfectly and it now looks great.

Here you can see the mud left on the side of the garage.  Shows the level of the high water.   James and Bill Benson rode Bill's boat up to our front door so James could get out and put our oriental rugs up on the table.  He also got my guns out of the closet in the back bedroom, which was a foot lower and put them up.  Then the two of them spend all day moving stranded tourists out of the condos across the road up to higher ground on Music Valley drive. I'm told every car at the condos was ruined.

Jerry is busy putting in new steps from the deck down to the back yard.

The steps needed replacement before the flood, so now seemed the ideal time to do it.  There is another stringer to go in between these two.  Much stronger than the one we had before.

Here's sister Ann wading in Marrowbone Creek where we stopped on a trip to the spring beside the road there.  We used to get our drinking water there, but in the Summer it's so slow it isn't worth the trip.

However, we did see this nice batch of tiger swallowtails enjoying something or other.  Maybe a dead crawfish?

Mid August and the pears at 107 Dellrose are big enough to eat, though hard.  They never do get really soft, but they are delicious!

One thing we had at 107 was a 4 strand clothesline with aluminum lines.  Saved a lot of dryer electricity and much better for the environment.

Well, when you are a dumb ass you have to use your head.  Got out to Percy Priest with the kayak and guess what?  Got part of one paddle and part of another and they wouldn't fit together.

So, sat down and cried a while and then used the fine knife Tommy Bush gave me for my retirement party to whittle a limb to fit into both sockets and make the paddles useable.  Not great, but useable.  Saved the day.

Harry and I went up to Cheatham County where the Game and Fish has a shooting range.  Nobody there to supervise.  We shot some rounds and then left when a bubba showed up with an assault rifle.  You know what those bullets cost?  He probably lives in a trailer.

Nice photo of a yellow billed coo coo, if I do say so myself, as shouldn't.

Late July and all the veggies are coming on fine.  These romas look good.

Hot chili peppers which I can't take.  Grow them for Hanley and Milwant.

Michael and Marcia, Sherry's her Spanish teacher, go for a kayak ride with us from Caney Fork Dam to Happy Hollow.  Perfect day.  Hot as the blazes.

One of the critters we saw. I believe, from the info I've found on the web, tgus is a mink.

Early September on creek X and the small mouth are hitting.

So are the large mouths.  This one fell for a tiny torpedo.

Up at Ed's farm the hogs are getting fat.  Little do they know what late Fall has in store...

The turkeys like to hang around the hog lot and get the spilled food.

Late afternoon on Fall Creek at Percy Priest.

This is a buckeye, according to my Insect ID book.

By September Jerry Ledsinger, our one man renovation crew,  had taken out the old log floor joists and replaced them with 2Xs.  For the first time in our 40 plus years habitation here...

...we would have level floors all the same height when we moved back in.
Jerry did all this by himself and a whole lot more that should have had to have a crew working on it.  He is a marvel and we are very appreciative.