Of Cicadas, Rabbits and Realizations...

Of Cicadas - They were very noisy last weekend at the little country cemetery where my relatives are buried.  I saw them crawling all over the tombstones and trees in the cemetery yard.  The photo above is a shot of one on a tombstone with his bulging red eyes.  Cicadas make their appearance every 13 years and the high-pitched buzzing sound you hear is their mating call.  Once the eggs are hatched, the baby Cicadas crawl back underground to hibernate another 13 years.  They feed underground on the sap of trees.  Thankfully, their appearance only lasts a few weeks.  We haven't had many of them in our yard yet.

Of Rabbits...The little critter in the collage above has been dining on my vegetable garden.  I see him hopping merrily along toward the garden nearly every day.  I haven't had the heart to do much about it, but I do think I'll try sprinkling some cayenne pepper on my plants to see if he'll leave them alone.  At least the deer haven't made their appearance yet this year!

Of Realizations...Okay, call me slow.  But as I was looking at some of my recent cemetery photos and shots of dates on the tombstones of relatives, I was doing some math and noticed that my paternal grandfather was 3 years younger than both his wives.  I never really thought about the ages of my grandparents at the time of their marriage and I don't recall my parents ever mentioning that fact even when I announced that I was marrying a man nearly 3 years younger than myself.

Here's an interesting story, at least to me.  Grandpa, as I called him, was married to his first wife and had a little girl named R.  His wife died at age 34 when R was 3 years old.  He then married his second wife, who had also been widowed and had a little daughter named L who was about 1 1/2 yrs younger than R.   So the two, each with a daughter, married and a few years later had a son who was my father.  To make things more interesting, when the two girls were older, they married brothers!  So the two girls who weren't really sisters ended up being sisters-in-law!  Confused yet?  They were my father's half-sisters, though, and as my father's older sister was 11 years older, I'm sure he must have been quite spoiled.  Another interesting tidbit, my 3 years younger hubby's birthday is the same day in September as my grandfather's.  

I had to put in a photo of my kitty, Stormy, in the collage.  She was front and center when my daughter was opening her birthday gifts recently.  She had a blast playing with the ribbons and hiding in the bag.  And she's now waking me up every morning by batting my mouth with her paws so I'll get up and feed her.  So much for sleeping in.

Until next time...