Light and Shadows

A lot of the creek paths here are surrounded by trees and produce some wonderful shadows on bright days like today*. The rain is finished for now and the high temperature was almost 80F (26.6C). John has been weeding...a job a bit like painting the Golden Gate bridge, as soon as you get to the end you have to go back to the other end and start over. It's almost barbecue weather, but unless someone's figured out how to barbecue eggs, we are out of food. 

I should go to the store, but instead opted for helping John with some of the weeds . Our little bluebird didn't come round while we were outside, but she has expanded her territory to the living room windows which she visited while we were eating lunch. We have no coverings on those windows.  Fortunately she seems to have given up for now. There are a lot of other birds which seem to arrange visits  to the bird feeders according to their size. Today I spotted three kinds of woodpeckers, doves, towhees nuthatches, chickadees, thrushes, purple finches, tiny goldfinches and lots of hummingbirds. The ravens come and go to the suet feeder but they make hard work of it since they are too big to perch on the container and have to devise more vigorous methods of getting at the suet contained within. We hear lots of hawks (I don't know how they catch anything when their screams alert all the birds for miles around to their presence) but rarely see them. We know one is very close when the feeders clear and all the birds disappear in an instant. I hear the barn owls as I'm falling asleep at night.

As I suspected, it is the economic chaos devastating the global stock markets that is finally getting the attention of a few Republicans but especially the Wall Street billionaires who are trying to talk the administration into changing tariff policy, calling out the 'stupidity' of placing such high tariffs on so many products. They don't care about the middle class Americans who are losing their jobs and their ability to pay the rent and put food on the table, but they do get upset when their bottom lines are disrupted.The presidential counselor on tariff policy,  Peter Navarro seems to have superseded Musk, who has apparently gotten all the attention he's going to get  and has been relegated to the sidelines. Musk is now attacking Navarro, calling him 'truly a moron and dumber than a sack of bricks'

When she was asked about this public fight between two powerful advisors, the White House press secretary said, 'Boys will be boys'.

You really couldn't make it up....

*Full disclosure. I didn't take this picture today but I liked it so much better than the ones I took today that I cheated....