June Notes

It's June, with longer days, warmer weather, and a lot of gardening to catch up on. The fireflies have started their nightly shows; they're booked to continue until the first week of July, at least. Oddly, we saw fireflies several weeks ago, on the night of the lunar eclipse. That's nearly three weeks before their usual appearance. There were just a few, and only that one night. A special engagement, perhaps?

A pair of ospreys Our neighbor, the ospreycome to nest near the house every year, raise a couple of chicks, and fish in the lake. The fishing must be good, since I see them carrying good-sized trout back to the nest with great regularity. The populations of both ospreys and bald eagles has boomed in recent years, which has been fine to see. Here's a picture I captured of one of the pair setting off for a fishing run (click for a full-size image).

On TV, the run of Picard wrapped up in a mostly satisfying way. Most of the characters found resolutions to their arcs, and if there was any deus ex machina about it, at least the deus was sitting there in plain sight for the entire season. I only felt that the final threat came out of nowhere, and just a little more foreshadowing could have made it feel less like a afterthought. We're enjoying Strange New Worlds so far. The return to more independent episodes, rather than season-long plotlines, frees them up to tell a more interesting variety of stories. The characters are solid, though there are a couple who they've reinterpreted rather radically. I would just have soon have them be new characters than try to wrap my head around how the person they portray now becomes the person we know from the original series.