Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

6:30 p.m.-

Beautiful day, about 82.

Three minutes after leaving the house EZ yipped, so around we turned to crush up a Percoset tablet and mix it into a glop of fine-tasting liver pâté dog food. The Rimadyl didn't do anything suitable so I insisted the Vet prescribe something more potent. He obliged, but I had to take the paper prescription form to a human pharmacy to get it filled. Wal-Mart's professional comatose staff ignored me for five minutes so I went to a more humane place, staffed by humans for humans and got what EZ needed. Still have not gotten her test result; probably Monday.

She is doing fine, about the same as before her biopsy. Though I've been soaking her dry food in water and she eats it during the night. This morning there were six small drops of blood on the kitchen linoleum. It's impossible to know if she is hurting or how much. She's a stoic. So, she'll get regular doses of pain medication.

We came upon a small boat idling slowly upstream in the secret channel, approaching my obfuscating tangle of disheveled trees. Two fishermen seeking a catch. They studied the ambiguous entrance, discovered its secret, and pushed through the turnstile.

"Who the hell do they think they are trespassing in my office? I've done all the cleaning and gardening--and interior decoration, and two lazy invaders root through my work space and blatantly disregard my clever complication!?"

"Settle down. It's public property. Besides they're probably just passing through."

"Hell with that. I'll speed--with the siren on--around to the north entry and surprise them with a summons!"

"Suit yourself."

We backed out and raced through the main channel to the upper end. They'd made it nearly through, having decoded all my clever illusions, these men without shirts.

"Any fish?" I courteously inquired, pretending I was retarded.

"No."

"I never caught no fish here, so's I quit trying long ago," I lied.

"Huh. Must be doin' it dumb then," one hoisted a prize-winning carp.

6:53-

Frogs are abundant. So are fish. Within half-an-hour we have been startled by a dozen frogs scooting frantically across the water, ending in a terrific splash. One frog got stopped by an excited fifteen-inch bass leaving the water for it.

8:25-

Hickwaters Backwoods Bar has on the roof of its outdoor drinking patio a ten-foot high inflatable balloon shaped like a bottle of Jim Beam. Guy-wires anchor it from in four spots on the eaves, secured against thieving by tonight's guests.

Yesterday--

We got on the water late afternoon. Stopped in at the office for a couple of hours and worked. No sign of sunflowers, but the grass is five feet high and tightly dense; the seeds may have been choked out. I'll have to re-sow in the fall or early spring to give them equal prospect against the weeds.

Grass seed heads are pollinating, puffing smoky powder when moved by light air.

On to Grand Sandbanks and a stroll through the high hawkweed plain searching for sunflower seedlings. It's been about a week; hard to believe none of the thirty or forty is showing.

Brought a carrot along for mid-morning brunch, the old-fashioned kind, ten inches long and unshaven, unlike how those convenience baby carrots are grown. And bitter as hell. So I got out my Leatherman tool and, although it has a file and can opener and a Phillips (and two other screwdrivers inside) is not the most recent model with convenient carrot peeler module. I scratched the skin off with the knife, doing good, rotating it nicely and came to the final scrape. Carrot leapt up and I, reflexively trying to capture its flight, sliced bare air, then a crescent-shaped slash deep into the joint of the left thumb. I stared at it for a moment to see if the pain was simply surface, then blood started seeping for real along an inch-long flap of skin, as in "what a damn nuisance for the next couple weeks." To minimize fainting I got out the boat towel and held it tight to discourage bleeding and hide it from sight.

The fate of the carrot is unknown, but presumed to have been converted to turtle shit.

Drove the boat one-handed red-handed. A volunteer EMT at work said that cuts such as mine are no longer stitched in the emergency room, but are Super glued.