Author: Steve

Only 108 days to the 37^th Americas Cup!

https://www.americascup.com/37th-americascup-barcelona

Taking place in Barcelona this time.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Barcelona,+Spain/@41.7012818,1.1990642,7.25z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x12a49816718e30e5:0x44b0fb3d4f47660a!8m2!3d41.3873974!4d2.168568!16zL20vMDFmNjI?entry=ttu

The competition was initiated by the British in 1851 with a race between the British and the Americans around the Isle of Wight (53 miles), with the prize being a silver cup.  The race was won by the Americans, the winning boat being named the America, and thus the name of the cup for all the races since then.  The Americans successfully defended the cup 24 times in a row, for 132 years, until 1983 when Australia took it away.  The cup, originally provided by the British, has been held by the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland.  The Brits, of course, want the cup back, but in all these years, have not managed to get it.  They created the cup itself but have never won it.

New Zealand defending.  Britain, Switzerland, Italy, USA, and France battling for the honor to challenge New Zealand for the cup.  The America’s Cup itself begins October 7^th.  The Louis Vuitton Cup, where the challengers all race each other to determine who gets to race New Zealand, starts August 29^th.

The boats will be about 20 meters long, with masts almost 37 meters high, and will fly above the water on foils, achieving up to 10 times the wind speed.  Expect 40-50 knots out of sailboats!

The charge for attending to watch the races?  Nothing.  No ticketing.  It is open to all.  Some of us might watch it on television.

…of the Baltimore Oriole.

A driveabout with our heads out the window.

We drove on slow roads so the wind wouldn’t make Henry have to get down out of the window.

And a walk in a puppy park.

It was really interesting.

Don’t know how many more of these he gets.  He has lost so much weight his harness just hangs on him.  No more eating again.  He is still in good spirits, making the most of it.  He chased his ball in the house and brought it back three times today.  Judy is still mostly in the recliner at night, recovering from the knee surgery.  We all sleep on chairs and the couch in the front room.

A blackpoll warbler just passing through on migration.

You can see by the range map they don’t spend much time in places we can see them in the U.S.

It looks like this gray catbird didn’t like seeing him though.  Here the warbler is, getting chased.

Little insect eggs on stilts.  The insects lay them on the underside of leaves and things.  These are on the bottom of the compost tumbler drum.  I turned them up to photograph them, so really they are upside down in the picture.

I wrote about them a couple years ago, but now I couldn’t remember what they were, so I had to resort to google once more.  I figure if I can’t remember, you can’t either, so here they are again.  Green Lacewing eggs.  They’re a beneficial garden insect.  They eat destructive insects like aphids.  Laying their eggs on filaments like these, the voracious larvae will be less likely to feed on each other as soon as they hatch.

The adults look like this:

(Not my picture.)

Cool, huh?