My corner of the world

1. There are now TWO colonies of bees under our new deck. The spaces between the boards give them ample room to go in and out. One of these bunches is simply "honey bees" of some variety. They play in our flowers and then come and go under the deck. The other bunch is bumblebees. They are about 3 times larger and they make a loud "mumble". So far they have been fine guests and haven't stung anyone. I'm reluctant to try to kill them because I hear so much about the disappearance of bees with "Colony Collapse Disorder."

2. The other night, not particularly tired, the cat and I stayed up late to watch some educational programming on TV. At 2 AM, my wife came into the family room and started asking me questions, like: "What's the matter, can't you sleep?" and "Why are you still up?" So I said, "Did you get up in the middle of the night to organize my life?" Turns out this was not a good thing to say. "Yes" and "no" was all that would have been required.

3. We went downtown today for a coffee club gathering and I was reminded that at one time, this town would have been hugely a-bustle at 9 a.m. The sidewalks would have been busily peopled, and the bus and car traffic would have been heavy. I remember those days quite well. Now, one can proceed all the way down Washington Ave without confronting another driver or having to avoid a pedestrian, and I don't think buses come down there at all anymore.

4. Here is one corner of my world:

5. We have gone to the Farmers market any number of times this summer and bought some wonderful fresh things including locally grown berries. So much better than those tasteless little turdy things we sometimes get from California or Chile. This week, we canned 44 quarts of tomatoes and 18 quarts of tomato sauce.

6. I have been made aware this week of a notion I had never considered. Should we be using the automatic checkout machines at grocery stores? What happens to the checkout people and their jobs if we do this? In truth, I made it a point to try to learn how to use the darned things so that I could get with modernity and check out quicker to boot, but now I'm reassessing my notions.