FOURTH OF JULY

When I was a child, the Fourth Of July used to be a very fun holiday. Over the years, it got more low key... as it was this year. I made pizza. I decided to not bother with fireworks -- any sparklers I have are stored away somewhere -- and as I had no guests over, there was no real reason to pull out the sparklers and light any of them.

The surrounding neighborhoods had very few fireworks going on. The City's ban on them has quashed such activity for the most part. As I have written before, even "safe-and-sane" fireworks are banned, which seems a bit extreme.

The moon rising over the River on the night of the 4th. The second, tiny light below it is a jet airplane.

On the hills on each side of the area where I live, however, there still were numerous rockets and mortars being lit, and the 'boom' noises echoed down through the valley.

I took a night-time bike ride, and got a halfway decent picture of the moon rising over the Cedar River. I also saw a lone electric shopping cart -- apparently stolen from a store somewhere and ridden until the battery gave out.

The renegade shopping cart, a day or so after it was dropped off alongside the Cedar River Trail.

I saw some guy riding an electric shopping cart down a nearby sidewalk the previous evening. His ride seemed awful slow -- I think one can walk twice as fast as those carts move: now I know how far he got before the machine would drive no further. :-)

A pic taken of the Cedar River closer to Solstice... But it's how everything looks here when it's full-on summer.

Today (July 5th) the weather was sunny and 85 degrees F. Full-on summer.

Hopefully, the weather will hold. I still have a lot of clearing to do around an apple tree that has been taken over by that common threat, the Himalayan Blackberry. :-) There are so many Himalayan Blackberries in Washington they should be the State plant. People treat them as a weed, which they sort of are: except during August and September they're loaded with very edible berries.

I've sometimes wondered why people want to kill off a plant that grows without any cultivation needed, is the world's cheapest security fence, and provides baskets of free food. Ah well.

Usually the local pond ducks never stay still long enough to get a decent picture. This time they apparently changed their minds.

A couple shots of the moon rising a couple nights after the 4th of July. The Nikon L32 can take decent moon and night shots.

In honor of the veterans, of whom I often think about on the Fourth, I found a link of music that I usually think of when the Fourth hits. It's not American band music, but -- after all -- I played in a bagpipe band for 4 years a long time ago, and the bagpipes historically were an instrument of war. All The Blue Bonnets Are Over The Border shall have to suffice. Apparently a piper played it while the Brits were storming the beaches of Normandy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YsMCqgZPKE

A slightly cleaner sounding recording of it is here: it's the third (last) tune in this short YouTube audio clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwKgGTANQQg

I've been relearning All The Blue Bonnets, and still have a ways to go before I get it down right. Perhaps if and when I do I'll record it and post a link here.

As I post this, it's about a week after the Fourth, and the last fortnight has been a bit tiring for some reason. There was more work than usual, which is good; but less sleep than usual for some reason, which isn't so good.

We're having lots of sunny, pleasant weather here in the great green Northwest, and plenty of yard work and bicycling awaits.

Hope all are having a great July so far.

CC -- July 9th, 2017