Day of the lilies

Nothing like a flower to relieve your mind for a time.

These Day Lilies adorn the earthen platform where
our fountain would otherwise hold center stage.

These Day Lilies are at the corner of our garden shed patio,
right below one of our bird feeders.
The tall rock to the left in the background
is actually a light fixture (but it's real rock).

These yellow Day Lilies are in the south corner of
our yard, beyond the raised planter I constructed the
first summer we lived in Mebane.

These "pumpkin" (or orange) Day Lilies grow
alongside the fence on the northern side of our back yard.
 The Japanese beetle seems to like them.

A fuzzy bee also relieves your mind. This one was the main reason I took this photograph of a Butterfly Bush blossom.

The Butterfly Bush grows fifteen feet from the fountain,
right outside our screened back porch.

July 28. My friend Kat comments today: "Your “fuzzy bee” isn’t—it’s a type of sphinx (hawk) moths, such as this one or this one…most likely a hummingbird moth."
    Thanks, Kat. I think you're right.

Energy to unload my camera

For my renewed energy I credit the therapy of not trying to use both eyes for computer work (for about 48 hours now). This seems to have made all the difference—or at least that part of the difference that doesn't derive simply from renewed hope, a factor very hard to account for in both introspection and scientific investigation.
    Hope, of course, also plays a role in the matter of religious belief, and might even generally account for the persistence of religious belief. Religious beliefs may not be true, but they do provide hope. Hope that injustice will be righted, that those who died young or horribly will rise again and their oppressors punished appropriately (if not inappropriately by all of them being tortured equally forever and forever), that our old, sagging bodies will be restored to their youthful, sexy (erect) versions, that, alas, we will see our beloved mama and papa again (or that the bastard will have the opportunity to burn in hell),....