On June 1, Ukrainian forces struck deep inside Russia in “Operation Spider Web.” One hundred and seventeen drones, each operated by its own pilot, hit airfields in five regions. Ukraine says the drones hit 41 strategic bombers that had been attacking Ukrainian cities and destroyed at least 13 of them. Russia does not have the industrial capabilities to replace them. ….. The operation took more than 18 months of planning. It apparently involved sending trucks loaded with wooden cabins that had detachable roofs that could be opened remotely. Unsuspecting truck drivers hauled the cabins to locations near airbases, where the drones launched. …..Once the drones were in the air, the vehicles carrying the cabins exploded. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the people who helped with the operation from within Russia had been withdrawn and “are now safe.” ….. Russia denied that the damage was that extensive, but there is no doubt that the attack was a significant blow to Russia’s war effort, demonstrating as it does that Ukraine can bring the war home. ….. Analysts recognize the Ukrainian attack as a new moment in warfare. ~ Heather Cox Richardson (Letters from an American, June 3, 2025)
Слава Україні! 🌻 Slava Ukraini! 🌻 Glory to Ukraine!
The clearing rests in song and shade. It is a creature made By old light held in soil and leaf, By human joy and grief, By human work, Fidelity of sight and stroke, By rain, by water on The parent stone. ~ Wendell Berry (This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems)
It seems like it’s been raining and dreary for the past couple of weeks — we even turned the heat on a couple of times. But we’ve been seeing a lot of interesting creatures outside our windows, like this baby bunny I caught with my camera. One morning I saw two opossums scrounging around in the leaf litter for food, and another time I saw a coyote trotting across the back yard.
One day when returning from grocery shopping we were very excited to find four fledgling Carolina wrens trying out their wings on the wax myrtle branches in our front yard. And those darling Carolina chickadees who nested in our birdhouse had some little ones, too. They flit about so quickly I can’t count them but there are at least three and I got to see a parent feeding one of them.
And one delightful afternoon Kat and I designed a dragon garden to fill in the unused birdbath in the front yard. 💜
5.20.25 ~ North Carolina Botanical Garden ‘peve minaret’ bald cypress
I can’t stop thinking about something a naturopathic oncologist told my sister, who was recently diagnosed with endometrial cancer, the same kind of cancer I had. Apparently having blood group A is associated with an increased risk of cancer, and blood group O is associated with a decreased risk of cancer. Both my sister and I have type A blood.
wild quinine
Coincidentally, a few days after learning this, while going through another one of my family history boxes — I’m now on box #6 of the 14 — I found my mother’s blood type A identification card from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, where she was receiving treatment for metastasized breast cancer in 1990. She died when she was 59, in spite of four years of surgery, radiation and multiple chemotherapies.
goldenseal
As I was pondering the significance of now knowing her blood type, it hit me that her father, my grandfather, had prostate cancer. (I have no way of discovering what his blood type was.) With some aggressive treatments he survived his cancer and lived to the age of 95.
bigleaf magnolia
And then I started wondering about my grandfather’s parents. Locating his father’s death certificate I discovered that he died at age 75 of adenocarcinoma of the transverse colon, metastasis to liver. He had surgery in August of 1948 and died in July of 1949.
apple cactus
Finding these connections for four generations in a row is unsettling, as looking closely at genograms can often be. If I could trace it I wonder how far back the cancer line would go. All my children have type O blood so likely they will be spared from this specific cancer risk factor.
apple cactus
The gene for type A blood is dominant, and the gene for type O is recessive. Which means I have a recessive O gene that I passed on to my children. (They got their other O gene from Tim. One needs two O genes to have type O blood. Tim also has type O blood so that’s the only kind of gene he could give them.) It surprises me that none of them got the dominant A gene from me because the law of averages suggests that half of my children could have received it and had type A blood!
bulltongue arrowhead
Until my sister consulted one, I never knew that naturopathic oncologists existed. After witnessing the nightmare I’m living through due to radiotherapy aftereffects she is not interested in submitting to the same recommended treatment for her cancer. We both are of the mind that sometimes, for some people, quality of life is more valuable than a prolonged quantity of life. It will be interesting to see what things we will learn about other treatments from this alternative, integrative physician.
golden marguerite
Meanwhile, the current administration continues its efforts to cut funding for health care and cancer research. And now this:
If you’re under 65 and don’t have a chronic condition, there’s a very real chance you won’t have access to a Covid-19 vaccine this fall. Much depends on what happens next month. ACIP could defy the FDA and recommend vaccines for broader use, but that would be risky. We’ve never been in this situation before. ….. This isn’t about whether everyone needs a yearly Covid-19 vaccine—that’s a legitimate, ongoing scientific debate, and one ACIP was already tackling in June. This is about how decisions are made—and who gets to make them. FDA political appointees are sidelining expert panels, bypassing transparency, and turning public health into a performance. That might fly in other arenas, but shouldn’t when it comes to people’s health and daily lives. ….. Vaccine decisions must be rooted in evidence, debate, and transparency. ….. If this is the new model, we should all be alarmed. ~ Katelyn Jetelina (Your Local Epidemiologist, May 21, 2025)
silver dollar eucalyptus
Closer to home, last summer I endured three episodes of seed tick bites on my legs following walks in the botanical garden. I thought I had solved the problem by using recommended permethrin as a repellent but when I took a walk there on Tuesday I was attacked again and now have 9 bites. I’m done! The pictures in this post are not worth the price I’m paying to have gotten them!
It looked like I might not get to see the ocean before we left Carolina Beach. (The kids got to go while I was sick.) Sunday morning was our last chance and we had quite a downpour as we were packing to go, with wind so strong it created waves on the lake. But after we checked out of the vacation rental the rain had calmed down to a drizzle so Larisa took Tim & me to the beach for a quick visit before lunch and heading home.
my first view of the Atlantic from North Carolina
An Everywhere of Silver With Ropes of Sand To keep it from effacing The Track called Land — ~ Emily Dickinson (The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #931)
In a way it was nice to be on the beach in moody weather because we had the place to ourselves. Larisa took some pictures of us to mark the occasion.
On the way back to the car I spotted this little round leaf in the dune, standing vertically as if it was a little traffic sign. For some reason I was captivated. I took lots of pictures and even found a flower on one nearby.
largeleaf pennywort
Turns out largeleaf pennywort is a common native perennial that loves growing on the sandy dunes of the southeastern states. It was fun to learn about another plant found in this part of the world.
rain drops on the leaves
I had so much to think about on our way home. What a wonderful experience our anniversary was, and nothing at all like we might have imagined it was going to be 50 long years ago! 💙
Our vacation rental overlooked Carolina Beach Lake, once listed in Guinness World Records as the freshwater lake closest to salt water. It’s an 11-acre lake surrounded by a walking path, located only two blocks from the ocean. There is a great playground for the kids at one end of it. And plenty of ducks and geese to see, plus a couple of shorebirds for me. In spite of the gray skies, a few showers, and a huge downpour on Sunday morning, many walks were taken around this beautiful lake.
5.10.25 ~ Carolina Beach Lake great blue heron
snowy egret
trying to capture its yellow feet
it was moving right along
flowers from Larisa to brighten things up
While stuck inside we talked and played board games. I got a chance to do some quiet reading with Kat, and read part of one of her graphic novels. Recently I had taught her how to play mancala and so we played again and then taught it to Finn, and then to Nate & Shea, and then to Larisa. It’s very addictive!
5.11.25 ~ Carolina Beach Lake Canada geese after a windy downpour
seemed like a “tweenager” gosling
growing so fast
Dima went out to a fish market and picked up some fresh flounder for our anniversary dinner. He’s a great cook and I so appreciated the delicious fish, and not having to go out to a restaurant where it would have been terribly awkward for me, needing to bring my own special food. Larisa & Dima put together a delicious meal for everyone! I’m grateful for all the hard work they did making it a special day for us and am also grateful to Nate & Shea for making the long trip up to spend some precious quality time with us. 💙
5.10.25 ~ Carolina Beach State Park Carolina Beach, North Carolina
For our anniversary our daughter treated us to a weekend getaway at the shore, and our son and daughter-in-law came up from Georgia to join us!
Dima is still an avid climber and his children are likewise inclined
Things didn’t go exactly as planned. Tim’s shortness of breath has returned and now he has a cough that might also be related to his diastolic heart failure. (He’s had additional tests and the cardiologists still don’t have any answers.) So we knew ahead of time that he wouldn’t be able to take this long morning walk with me.
It wound up being an afternoon walk because I wound up sick with a flare-up that morning. I needed several hours to recover while the rest of the crew enjoyed visiting, and some time spent at a nearby playground and a walk down to the beach.
When I finally rallied Nate took some of us for a short ride in his huge truck — quite a thrill for me! Arriving at Carolina Beach State Park we then walked about three miles, looking for Venus flytraps in their native habitat and a 50′ high sand dune overlooking the Cape Fear River. The weather was lovely with comfortable temps and just a few drops of rain near the end.
spiderwort (?)
coastal plain forest, most of our walk looked like this
eastern prickly pear
an abundance of huge pine cones along the trails provided Finn with plenty of kicking options
The cones of longleaf pine are the largest of the southern pine and range in size from 5 to 12 inches in length. Because of their large size, only animals like the fox squirrel are sizable enough to manipulate and open the longleaf pine cones to eat the seeds before they fall to the ground. ~ The Longleaf Alliance website
eastern prickly pear
farkleberry
reaching the top of the 50′ Sugarloaf Dune
resting at the top of the dune, looking out over the Cape Fear River
a tree trunk that must have some story to tell…
The urge to run down the dune to the river proved to be irresistible for the kids, but Nate and I continued to rest at the top, and discussed possible routes back to the parking lot. Tried to get some pictures between all the trees with the zoom lens. Not sure if I’ve ever seen a dune covered with a forest before.
they spent quite a while down there
lichens and Spanish moss on some of the tree branches
We basically decided to retrace our steps and never did see any Venus flytraps. But, there were lots of pitcher plants in the area where the flytraps were supposed to be. And, as we got back close to the parking lot Finn spotted a broad-headed skink hiding in the leaves.
broad-headed skink
our ride
It was fun climbing up into the truck for the short ride back to the vacation rental. I was so happy to have shared this walk with my son who I don’t get to see often enough. A happy memory to cherish. Each one is precious, and all the more so the older we get.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments; love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove. O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand’ring bark Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom: If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. ~ William Shakespeare (Sonnet 116)
For many of the early years of our marriage we had this sonnet taped to our bedroom door, and over the years I’ve never found a better estimation of true love. It was printed with an old-fashioned font on paper that looked like parchment. At some point when we moved from one home to another it got lost, but I’ve never forgotten Shakespeare’s insights.
When we were young and wide-eyed, we used to wonder what it would be like to grow old together. Decades later, after heart disease and cancer entered our lives, we started wondering if we would grow old together. But somehow we made it, and now we know. ♡
4.29.25 ~ Eno River Farm (inside the giant troll’s mouth)
A month after we went tulip picking at this farm we came back with our grandchildren and their parents for some strawberry picking. This was their first visit, in spite of having lived in the area for many years. Of course, Kat and Finn noticed the half-buried giant troll right off the bat and wasted no time running up the hill and climbing up and down his legs and getting into his head.
look at those nostrils! (good thing the troll didn’t sneeze)
While the kids played Dima waited in a very long line to get a bucket for strawberry picking. Then he led the gang way out into the field, at the direction of a staffer, who assigned them a row, and gave them detailed instructions. We came along with Larisa at a much slower pace and finally spotted them when Kat waved to us, and I got this picture with a zoom lens. This was larger than any strawberry field I’d ever been to in Connecticut!
possibilities (strawberry rhubarb pie?)
I still can’t get over how early strawberry picking season comes here! On our way back to the store to pay for our haul we passed by some blueberry bushes. Maybe we’ll be back some day to pick blueberries — I wonder what month that will be in…
blueberries coming soon
The plan was to play on the troll again while Dima waited in line again to pay for the full bucket. As Kat and I went on ahead of the others, and she a bit ahead of me, she circled back to me and exclaimed, “Grammy, there’s another troll in the woods!” So I followed her as quickly as I could. Up another path we found two more giant trolls, not quite as big as the half-buried one, but these were completely above ground.
smallest giant troll
a troll’s cage for captured children
mid-sized giant troll
Our best guess is that the troll catches children in the cage and then keeps them in the “guest” house he stands guard over.
Finn in the troll’s “guest” house
Kat standing on the troll’s foot
troll holding the trees apart
Eventually the others caught up and Kat was very proud to show them what she had discovered. I never would have noticed these extra trolls.
fun times with our little family
The line for ice cream was too long to wait in so we decided to go into Hillsborough and find a small ice cream shop. Good choice! Had to get those strawberries home sooner than later. 😉
