getting the vaccine, confused flowers, and 2020 review

I have an appointment on January 26 at 6 PM, eleven days after the first date it had shown me two or three hours earlier, to get my first covid vaccination shot. Out of the 9 available locations I focused on the two nearest me, both nearly an hour away. It took me a good 15 minutes flipping back and forth between the two locations, constantly refreshing the sites. Four times it gave me a date and time and then before I could get name, email, and phone entered and clicked register it told me that, oops, someone else already got that one. Many times it told me no dates or times available and to try again but I persevered and finally succeeded in getting an appointment. Not my first choice in location but no farther away. I don't know which vaccine I'll get.

My sister sent me a link to a site that lists all the places in Texas that have and are distributing the vaccine and surprisingly enough, the HEB (grocery) pharmacy in this little podunk town has it but is only vaccinating front line healthcare workers right now. I imagine they have the Moderna vaccine since it doesn't need extraordinarily frigid temps to store it as I'm pretty sure the HEB doesn't have sub-zero celsius storage capacity.

It seems the word has gone out that the bird feeder is open for business. I'm seeing chickadees and sparrows and the little warblers that winter over here and white wing doves and inca doves and cardinals and goldfinches that are migrating through. And of course the curious little wrens though they don't eat seed.

Yesterday morning I looked out the back door and there was, no surprise, a squirrel on the bird feeder with it's back to me. I opened the door, it ignored me, I walked right up to it, it ignored me, I poked it on the butt, it sat up and looked at me. What are you doing I said and then it finally jumped down and went up the tree. Later in the day I saw the same squirrel, I'm sure it was the same squirrel by the way it was behaving, on the rim of the turtle pond acting sort of woozy with its tail in the water trying to get a drink which it did and then jumped down and went over to the overturned bucket on the ground upon which I had put a hand full of pecans and there it stayed. I took its picture and came inside. Haven't seen it since but that squirrel is not well.

I had thought I would get out there and clear out the last 12' in the barn yesterday as the days are nice and warm but it was so windy and gusty that raking and sweeping would have been an exercise in futility and I finally got tired of being pushed around by the wind and came in so maybe today as we're supposed to get to the mid 70s.

I saw the first bloom of the 10 petal anemone in the yard yesterday

and there is a bluebonnet plant in the front that is putting out buds. In December.

Some of the plants look like this

when they should look like this at best this time of year.

And the spring weeds in the yard have just exploded the last few days. It looks so fresh and green. In December. The woodland violets and the little yellow oxalis are starting to bloom.

This is all way early y'all.

Well, tomorrow is New Year's Eve and I suppose this is when I usually post about the past year but I think it can be summed up in a few words...as bad as we thought 2019 was, 2020 was exponentially worse, the only bright spot being that we kicked Trump to the curb. I'll leave it at that.