Cousin PJ pays a visit

Regular visitors may be aware that Maggie and Belle, the intrepid damsels of New Orleans adventures, are part of a large extended family. They have so many siblings I doubt I could give an accurate count without inventorying two large houses. (Hey, I know all their names, I just don't count my kids; they're not numbers after all, and look at how God viewed King David doing a census!)

Anyhoo, I had not expected to be home this weekend when the San Diego contingent was in town and was thus pleasantly surprised to see Cousin PJ, shown above with Aunt Debbie Bear. (Yes, Debbie, like me, is a bear. One really needs a shamanistic viewpoint to follow some of my posts, I know.)

PJ, or Paddington Junior, is a homemade teddy bear that Debbie made for her mother, Anne. This was after Debbie had made a larger homemade bear for me, my official teddy bear, Paddington. My Paddington looks like the Paddington Bear in Michael Bond's books, not like the commercial Paddington Bears one sees for sale which look about as much like Paddington as the Disney Pooh looks like the real Winnie the Pooh. PJ had a nice visit with the two Gregorys during dinner (Gregory Bear and Gregory Hedgehog).


That evening we marveled at this colorful and humongous spider in the garden. Quite impressive and I did not get near enough for it to try eating me too. Any experts on Arachnidae out there care to identify this critter?

Dinner included grilled pork loin; a medley of incredibly sweet and delicious canteloupe, green grapes, and blackberries; grilled vegetables including red peppers, zucchini, and tomatoes from the garden; and corn from the garden. All this was followed with German chocolate cake made from scratch. There were lovely wines. On mange bien ici.


Here we have the cottonwoods in the golden light of sunset.

That was the end of August and one could feel an autumnal edge to things.
--the BB