wherein I ramble but actually do say something unlike the idiot in the White House

Last Friday was a nice day, mostly clear sky and warm, especially if you were working out in the yard which I was. I cleared the supposed to be bee and butterfly garden just outside the fence of the little backyard of all the black and blue salvia which I do like but it just takes over with a dense root system that won't let anything else grow. It, like the wild mexican petunias I'm also trying to get rid of for the same reason, need an area where they can spread out. I also dug out the evening primrose that has colonized it and the large clump of montbretia (crocosmia) because they also multiply but did not bloom this year and barely last year and just want to lay all over everything else. I have a smaller clump elsewhere that gets more sun that did bloom. I still have not gotten the oxblood lily bulbs planted that I dug up out of the ditch along a pasture but they are sleeping in a shallow pan of dirt right now. Saturday I filled the wheelbarrow with rich dirt from the compost pile and turned that in and finally! got the pansies and violas in. Well, most of them, still have three little violas but had to do the fire ant treatment first where I want to plant them. I plan to fill this bed with zinnias next spring.

But didn't get around to cutting back the cosmos yet that now look like this

after our two nights of below freezing temps because Sunday a cold front came in and it rained lightly most all day and today calls for the same. Which is fine as the last two castings came out of the kiln yesterday and I'm going to get the finish work done on them. The leaf didn't cast all the way which I thought was a possibility and should have sprued the tips of the leaves but didn't because it's a pain in the ass and I'm really over this particular design and I decided I would use it no matter how it came out so I just need to round one leaf tip for it to be more uniform and I'm happy with the color density of the yellow. I don't usually use yellow as it is such a strong color, a little bit goes a long way. I have a lot of grinding to do on the bottoms though as I piled too much glass into the molds figuring too much was better than too little but really too much is too much.

straight out of the mold, not even washed off

And speaking of sleeping in a shallow pan of dirt, this is what the cat does in the shallow pan of dirt I brought in for her to use when our days and nights are too cold to go out (the dog just has to pull up her big girl panties and do her business outside regardless) (and no, she hasn't used it yet for more serious business).

And speaking of rambling and NOT saying anything, did you hear any of Trump's babbling in California about the fires there and needing to rake the leaves in the (33 million acres of) forest and they were going to do something and it would be wonderful because you gotta take care of the floors and that's what they do in Finland and they don't have the fires California has and on and on while standing near someone's cinder of a home. He doesn't have even a clue about the causes of the fires or that that forest is a federal forest and under the responsibility of the federal forest service whose budget he cut or that climate change (he likes good climate and we're going to have good climate) had anything to do with it. The self control of those men standing next to him is amazing in that they were not staring at him in open mouthed disbelief. And still people support this ignorant buffoon.

January 1^st can't get here fast enough.