Prisoners Roaming the Streets and Roses and Buntings

So yesterday I leave my house, turning on to Dartmouth Avenue, and am immediately surrounded by prisoners in orange and white striped and solid orange jump suits, on both sides of the road. Meandering along, they seem to be picking up trash. Last summer the men from The Foundry picked up trash along the streets of Bessemer.

Years ago there were complaints when the prisoners were roaming the neighborhoods and I thought the policy had been changed. Does this bother anyone? What presents a better image to people driving through our neighborhood, littered streets with no prisoners or clean streets with prisoners?










You will never, never catch me on a ladder this high, like this painter at the Broken Vessel Church. I need him over here to paint this house.




Yesterday I saw an indigo bunting in the backyard. Ted reports seeing them in Lipscomb, but this is the first one I have seen here. So, here is a fact, from The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds: "Indigo Buntings have no blue pigment; they are actually black, but the diffraction of light through the structure of the feathers makes them appear blue.” They are this bright color in sunlight, but are drab or black looking otherwise. Who else has seen indigo buntings?

You know we have lots of “redbirds” or cardinals around here, and this one little “blue bird.” Sort of like the political climate here, our indigo is a bright blue dot in a red state!

http://britebluedot.com/

Flowers





This is Blaze, so I am told, it blooms all summer

The Green Rose is kind of an oddity, having been around since 1845, the "petals" have reverted back to leaves. Some have speculated that the "stationmasters along the Underground Railroad might have used boutonnieres of the Green Rose as a covert sign to others transporting their perilous cargo northward " (from 100 Old Roses for the American Garden, Clair G. Martin, Smith & Hawken).

New Dawn claims the distinction of being U. S. Plant Patent No. 1, the first rose patented under federal regulations.

The peonies just don't last long enough, but wow!