Hummingbird...

..on Mexican Sunflower.

I don't like the texture of the wall behind the plant, but the hummingbird was more obliging than usual. They often pop up out of the grevillea right outside the kitchen but then they zoom off before I can get a camera.  There are now quite a lot of flowers on this plant which is twice as tall as we thought it would be. It is completely out of scale with the rest of the spot where it is planted, but it is attractive to birds and bees...and us.

Just to clarify a rather weird phenomenon, the ocular migraine, or migraine aura is not a headache at all, but a sort of jagged edged visual disturbance. It starts as a small, almost pinpoint of bright light that appears in both eyes and slowly expands.Here is a link to somebody's idea of what they look like. It only lasts a few minutes and is completely painless.  

As is often the case when the cause is not known, common triggers are listed as:  stress, hormonal changes, bright/flashing lights, drinking alcohol (red wine), changes in the weather, skipping meals/not eating enough, too much or too little sleep. That pretty well covers everything....I think they may have forgotten an allergy to peanuts and hanging upside down....

If you have an iPhone, you probably have a white app with a red heart in the middle of it. I looked at it today to check the number of steps on Spike's favorite walk. It isn't very long but climbs quite steeply and then descends just as steeply. We don't seem to get any credit for that increase in aerobic activity. As I looked to see if this is really the case, I went down a rabbit hole of all the other things this health app offers to do for you:
1) Set up your medical ID for emergency first responders (Are they really going to look at your phone?)
2) Headphone notifications: limit the maximum volume to protect your hearing
3) Set up sleep: your devices can help you get better sleep and understand your sleep patterns
4) Walking Steadiness Notifications: your iPhone can measure your walking steadiness and send a notification if you're at elevated risk of falling in the next year.

Dear me, is there no privacy at all? Can I do nothing for myself? I already reach for Google many times a day when I can't think of a word or the name of the star of 'Moonlight'. I know my vacuum cleaner, doorbell, Alexa and Siri and I suppose any 'smart' device I have in my home (knowingly or unknowingly) is spying on me and collecting data. I'm undoubtedly showing my age when I say this, but I think I would go slowly mad if I lived in a 'smart' home. I like to think I can still turn on lights, decide when to go to bed or go for a walk without a notification from my phone. What I can't do is figure out my computer or my phone when something happens to it. What if I couldn't even turn on the lights without it?

I'm about to embark on another quilt...this one for Susan, the daughter of our former Berkeley neighbors who  lives in Minneapolis. She is going to donate money to Planned Parenthood in lieu of paying me. John just asked me how many quilts he thought I could make in a year, and I said I honestly have no clue. All I know is that's why I don't charge money for my quilts. You couldn't charge enough for the time involved. or for the satisfaction I get from doing it. Does time thinking about it count?