Contemplating the tree

Our cats, contemplating the Christmas tree when it came into our house in mid-December. 

Angel-wing begonia

The proudest survivor of all the plants in our household: this angel-wing begonia was originally a cutting from one of my mother's plants more than a decade ago. During our move to Iowa in 2013, it suffered badly in the car and lost all of its leaves and stalks right down to stumps. We gave it up for lost, but just in case put it out on our back patio, where it began to sprout again a couple of weeks later. Not long after this picture was taken, it became a target of interest for our stuck-at-home bored toddler, who experimentally ripped all of its leaves off once again. Now recovered in a more protected room, it is once again flourishing, nearly back again to its biggest extent of broad, dark spotted leaves.

Dipping into the light

 Petals of the kalachoe dipping down into the light beside it.

Kalanchoe lit from below

 Zoomed in on one of the tall standing portions of the kalanchoe in the light.

Bending kalanchoe

 One of our house plants, bending its upward shoots towards a light.

On guard from above

Looking pensively down the stairs from above, Salvatore stands guard while simultaneously seeking refuge from the marauding toddler.

Stretching out

Salvatore, stretched out to absorb solar power into his white fluffy tummy.
 

Tightly curled

 Tightly curled cat, happily snugged on the edge of a sunbeam.

Inquiring cat

 Veronica looking up inquisitively from the quilt that she has occupied.

Focus

 Tightly focused pupils as Salvatore contemplates some target.

Visiting butterfly

A butterfly camped out on our outdoor table next to me. I noticed that it looked rather asymmetrical, and suspect that it may have been wounded, a chunk taken out by some predatory bird or such.

Bee in the beach roses

 A bee, burrowing into the beach roses in our back yard.

Joyful forager

We, of course, aren't the only ones who enjoy the juneberries, and only eat the barest fraction of the fruit. Most is gorged upon by birds and squirrels, like this happy specimen who I observed out of our upstairs office window.

A bounty of juneberries

Our front yard has a wonderfully bountiful juneberry tree. For years, I just thought they were an annoyance, beautiful but unknown-and-therefore-must-be-poisonous, and ending up heavily caked all over the front side of my car. Then my sister in law, who really knows her plants, identified them for us and explained that they were both edible and delicious. I still went cautiously at first, but once I'd eaten them for a while without incident, others in the family joined as well. Their season is very short (mostly just a few weeks in June, you know), and usually I miss it in the hustle and bustle of our lives. This year, however, bound at home in the pandemic, I managed to pick many quarts and we enjoyed them fresh by the handful, baked in pies, sprinkled over cheerios in the morning, and other ways besides. I have six pints in the freezer still, waiting for use to remind me of summer across our dark cold winter this year.

Tolerance

With all of us at home during the pandemic, the cats have been unavoidably much more exposed to toddler shenanigans.  Fortunately, both have proven to be surprisingly tolerant, as demonstrated by Veronica sitting with these pompoms that two-year-old Vera was putting on top of her.

Stalking amongst the violets

While our cats are mostly required to be indoor animals, my wife is ambitious enough to actually get Salvatore here onto a leash and take him out for walks. Here he is stalking through the violets in Spring, ears all a-twitch in hunting mode.

Tracking a bunny

One of the most favorite subjects of cat attention is the backyard rabbits. We have a handful in burrows back there, and they are especially cute in spring, when the little baby bunnies appear like tiny fuzzy handfuls.

Kitty television

Up on our kitchen windowsill, the cats stare intently at their entertainment, all the birds and rodents in our back yard.

Sunbeam flatness

Our other cat, Veronica, stretched out flat on the ground to contentedly absorb a sunbeam.

True relaxation

Our cats are an important inspiration for us for how to try to properly relax.
 

Spring blossoms

Another little cluster of blossoms on the tree, this one bursting out of the side of a rather substantial branch.

Spring blossoms

Clusters of intensely colored blossoms on one of the trees in front of our house. I don't actually know what tree this is, and I'd love to know: when we moved in, it was a little bushy shrub, and as we just didn't bother pruning it, our little shrub has boosted itself fifteen or twenty feet high and is exploding with these bunches of blossoms all over its branches every spring.

Budding trees

And now, let's go back to a bit of a more positive space: budding trees throwing out new leaves in the early Spring.
 

Canned vegetables

Cans of vegetables, packed tight together in a storage box. As happens, we've been able to stay in fresh vegetables, and are actually eating more of those than before the pandemic, but I'm not sorry to have a bit of reserve for if we need it.

Jars of sauces

Jars of sauces, stacked up on our basement shelves, waiting for their turn to come upstairs to cook. One of the little bits of luck we had before the pandemic is that, following a couple of flooding incidents, we'd recent installed a whole lot of storage shelving in our basement to be able to raise things up above the ground. So we just happened to have a bunch of extra shelf space, just waiting to be used for storing dry goods. So when I started noticing coronavirus news in late January and early February, it was easy to lay in a store of a month of food and toilet paper and such just in case... though at that time I never realized just how long the scope of the crisis we'd all be dealing with might be.

Packages in quarantine

In our basement, piles of packages wait in quarantine before they can come up and be opened. One of the words our toddler has learned is "dequarantine," and when I say it she cheers and comes to "help" with taking things out of the box.

Swarming packages

Along with the tulips came the packages, swarming to our front step as we adjusted our life to be entirely at home during the pandemic.

Spring tulips

 Tulips outside of our front step this spring.

Corn sign, Iowa

Sign for a business carved in the corn beside, returning into Iowa.

And this is it, folks: I'm out of travel images to post. From here on, we're going to be staying close to home in Iowa, at my house or the parks I go to walk in here in Johnson County, until the end of the pandemic. I'm also going to be switching back to one post per day, since I'm acquiring photos at a much lesser rate when I'm not traveling.

O'Hare lighting

 Neat angled lighting in O'Hare Airport, diffusing upward near the ceiling.

Snowy containers, Chicago

 Shipping containers in the snow, beside a set of train tracks in Chicago.

Kellogg Building, under construction, Evanston, IL

The four-lobed Kellogg Building of Northwestern University, while it was still under construction. I've also posted a view of the finished building in all its asymmetric glory.

Sunset Washington Monument

Washington monument at Sunset, taking off from DCA.

Minneapolis airport train

 Another shot down the lines of the airport train in Minneapolis. Whenever I can, I like to get to the front or back of these automated trains, since I really enjoy the view of the airport's guts and architecture.

Minneapolis airport train

Tracks of the airport train line in Minneapolis.

Dividing lines in DFW

Two dividing lines of airport tram track in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. The trains don't actually divide which way they go in the main line: this is their switch-off point for maintenance or storage, where they leave the world of passengers and dive under a runway to head to their yard at the North end of the airport.

Southwestern quarry

Another complex quarry, off in the Southwest somewhere.

Quarry near Dallas, TX

 One more look at the quarry, this time focusing on the crossbow-looking outline of the right-hand wall.

Quarry near Dallas, TX

A closer look at the precise deep cut between the two separated halves of this quarry.

Quarry near Dallas, TX

A great big quarry somewhere near Dallas, Texas. It bulk is divided in two, with only a narrow channel in between, with the causeway of untouched land carrying a high-voltage power line.

River of Road- Interstate near Boston

 A river of road, snaking back and forth, is my impression of this highway near Boston.

Barker lift, Sunday River, Maine

Ski lift up Barker Mountain at the Sunday River ski resort in Maine. This was our favorite destination for downhill skiing when I was a kid in Maine, and I was bemused to find myself hiking there in the summer in the break-times of a conference. This particular lift (or its predecessor) used to terrify me as a kid, because it goes very fast and the moment you get on you are blasted out over big dark pond that always seemed to have open water even in the deepest part of winter.

Staggered building side, Boston, MA

 Neat bulging out sides of a downtown Boston office building.

Downtown Boston near the Common

 Looking at the mix of old and new across downtown Boston.

Rocket strut, Huntsville, AL

Strut holding an old suborbital test rocket upright in the rocket garden at Huntsville, Alabama.

Swooping lines, Huntsville, AL

 Swooping lines decorate the outside of a large commercial building in Huntsville, Alabama.

Porous parking structure, Huntsville, AL

 I liked the style of the dividing walls in this Alabama parking structure: the number of holes and their thinness make them seem almost lacy to me, which is something strange to say about structural concrete.

Pipe access, Reykjavik, Iceland

The other side of the pipe is much more serious.
 

Pipe access, Reykjavik, Iceland

In a green space between lobes of the city, somebody decorated this pipe access with a wonderfully goofy smile.

The Bus to Reykjavik

Now we're getting into some truly old miscellany, as I go through the last of my pre-pandemic travel photo backlog. Here is a smeary snowy night on the bus from the Keflavik airport to Reykjavik in Iceland, on my first and accidental trip to that country.