the promise of spring in more than one way

The grackles showed up Saturday as they do about twice a year, swarming, eating, squawking, pooping everywhere.

The woodpecker has been hammering away on something trying to attract a mate.

The crop duster was out this weekend. I could hear his plane swooping back and forth but I never saw him. I don't know what it is he sprays this time of year.

I did a little work out in the yard Saturday as it finally warmed up enough from the latest cold front and the wind died down enough. I pulled out the rest of the dead orange cosmos from the long flower bed at the end of the barn, pruned back the red and blue/black salvia, and wired an old metal trellis to one of the wrought iron fence sections my grandson and I put up between my neighbor's and my property at the back because he was infringing on my side when he sprayed poison to keep the weeds and grass down around the storage buildings. Same property that the bitch, his widow, is now in charge of with the container. Anyway, I took the pot bound bougainvillea and planted it at the bottom of the trellis. It will only get morning sun because...container but I think it will do all right and when it gets big will help to camouflage her rude spray painted sign, in the summer at least.

I pulled out all the rest of the cosmos Sunday in the other long flower bed on the other side of the yard as all the seeds had either been eaten or scattered and did some weeding. Then I got a knife and cut down the five banana trees that bloomed this year though only two of them made bananas. They die after they bloom and two of them had already fallen over. 

The knife worked well enough to cut through the trunks but once on the ground it wasn't working very efficiently for cutting them up so I fetched the machete and whack whack whack cut them up into pieces about 2' long, like cutting through butter. Then I loaded it all up in the truck along with the dead cosmos and dumped it on the burn pile along with the accumulated fallen branches. It will interesting to see how it burns, or if it burns, as those banana trees are full of water.

The yard is still winter brown, well, except for the spring weeds, and like everything else it's early for clearing out but the signs of the coming spring are unmistakable. The flower beds are still sleeping but the baby blue eyes, love-in-a-mist, poppies, rocket larkspur, and woodland petal pinks are all sprouted and growing getting ready. Even so, the only color in the yard is the violas and pansies and the shrimp plant.

Those grassy looking leaves that the stems of the shrimp plant are laying in belong to the woodland petal pink.

My plans for today are more work outside (maybe, it's become overcast and windy after nearly a week of glorious blue sky days) and preparing a contribution to tonight's dinner for Meatless Monday. We have other meatless meals during the week but always on Monday. I'm going to attempt to fix the butternut squash/apple saute that Boud at Field and Fen showed us last week. And of course yoga class tonight.

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Two more days and the FBI and the military are so concerned about threats from the inside to Biden and Harris that they are vetting every single one of the 25,000 national guard troops. And still a core of the Republicans are clamoring to not convict Trump in the Senate when the articles of impeachment are sent over because it will cause a large segment to leave the party. Well, if the Republicans want to save their party then that's exactly what needs to happen. Let the crazies splinter off and form their own party to die a slow death because whether they realize it or not, Trump is done. He owes more money than he has and the only bank that would lend him money has cut him off, he and his family have become pariahs (the swanky country club on the island where Ivanka and Jared plonked down $30M for some land declined to accept their application to join), NY has canceled all it's contracts with Trump businesses, he's been banned from just about every social media site except the far right wing and crazies, big money donors have stopped giving money to Republicans who support him and the Big Lie, and he will be facing a lot of lawsuits after Wednesday and hopefully actual arrest even as he has spent his last several weeks trying to get as many loyalists in the government he's leaving behind as he can. I wonder what it is he expects them to do and if they will still be in place and how loyal they will be a year from now.

And so, on his way out, Trump is planning 100 or more pardons in the next two days. Rich felons are paying thousands of dollars to Trump aides to lobby him for a pardon. He plans to leave early Wednesday morning for Mar A Lago, his last use of Air Force One. He's also planning his own sendoff at Andrews Air Force Base the morning of the inauguration, every invited guest allowed to bring up to five others with them, since the Pentagon declined to give him the military send off it has done for previous presidents. It should come as no surprise that he and Melania won't attend Biden's inauguration unlike every other outgoing president for the last hundred years. Just one more example of how classless they are regardless of how wealthy. They will not be welcoming Joe and Jill the way the Obamas welcomed them.

Just goes to show you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig.