(Found this brand-new pair of bike gloves beside the highway today, about 30 yards apart. My size and everything.
Normally, when this happens on a bike trail, I leave the lost article where it is, or hang it up in a prominent place for the owner to find. But you can't leave stuff on the road shoulder; passing cars quickly reduce it to rubbish. And, as is often the case on roadsides, there was no effective place to display these. Finally, when you lose something on a trail, you can retrace it, if you judge the time and effort well-spent. But on the road system, you're turning right and left and things get complicated fast.
And these aren't the most expensive gloves, to say no more. Had I lost them, I'd probably not re-ride a long trek, if I even noticed they were gone.
"At a peace rally in Philadelphia in 1966, a reporter asked me, 'Are you from North or South Vietnam?'
"If I had said I was from the north, he would have thought I was pro-communist, and if I had said I was from the south, he would have thought I was pro-American.
(Dipsacus fullonum, or common teasel, is an invasive weed here on the North Coast, with large cob-like seed heads that dry to a distinctive brittle brown when they die. The tall, stout stems persist into winter, looking very much like set dressing from a Star Trek episode as they become the only plant life still evident in that season.
These dried heads sometimes figure in decorative floral arrangements, but aside from that this Old World plant offers little we can use. Fortunately, we normally only find them bobbing in small sporadic bunches along rural roads and hillsides, but on a bike ride last week I encountered this fallow field – the better part of an acre – so entirely populated by Dipsacus that it brings to mind a cornfield.)
(My mom's favourite flower, seen here from her bedroom window. Since she died I haven't performed any maintenance on these, though a neighour did clean them up a little last fall. And yet they're still coming on strong.
Flowers were so important to my mom. I think I'll invest a bit more effort in these from now on.)
July has ambushed us again, and you know what that means: another whack of rock groups.
As I've explained in the past, July is that month when readership plummets, Zen monasteries close for the summer, and I run about the house naked… figuratively, at least. Which is to say, I vary from the more serious business of this blog and indulge a silly whim or two.
(Evasterias troschelli. Note that the tip of one ray has apparently been gnawed off by the starfish plague, but the organism's immune system has fought off the attack. This bodes well for the species.)
