Monday, January 18, 2021

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.

----------

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.


 

10 comments:

  1. I don't even bother to put my bananas on the burn pile. We just have a place in the back of the yard where we stack them. No way those things are going burn unless they can dry out for a year.
    I just has a shouting match with my Trump neighbor across a road. She and her husband, who thought covid was a hoax, have had the virus since Christmas. They're pretty shocked to discover it's more serious than they expected. Her husband has leukemia and he's not eating much. I am ashamed to say I got into it with her but finally said, "We're not having this conversation," and walked off. Their Trump signs still stand proudly in their yard.
    I cannot deal with this shit.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yeah, I should probably drag all the banana tree trunk sections off and just throw them against the back fence.

      as for your neighbor, there is no saving them.

      Delete
  2. Ah, a Trump is a Trump is a Trump. Wasn't that what his cuz said?
    Here it is winter. The light is icy cold, and the weather is turning to rain. Then again we need rain. You are still allowed to burn things? I'm amazed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I was concerned about the vast number of people the FBI had to vet, so I called a vet who is a clear thinker on this stuff and learned the FBI really can get this stuff done fast, and 25000 names in three days is nuthing. And I felt much better. I talked to another friend who works in DC, three blocks from the fences. It was a stay safe and out of the way sort of call and he said, Shitty as it is, this is history and I'm going to be looking at it. His pictures were pretty bleak.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The landscaping crews around here have been busy pulling out stuff and replanting, too. I'm not sure what they're putting in, but there's some sort of of low white'something' already installed. I don't know if I missed the snapdragons this year. It's been so crazy, I may just have missed them. What I do have is robins! I'm so excited -- this is the first year a lot of them have shown up. Every day there are more; I wish they'd sing, but they're just passing through, and it's not time to start looking for a mate yet.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Well, you're right about the lipstick, that's for sure! I hadn't heard that Ivanka and Jared got rejected by the country club. That's awesome.

    I just spent a lot of time clearing in our garden. It seems early, but as we said the other day, those spring plants are already coming up!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Next time, collect some of the banana leaves and try out some weaving. When we lived in the best tropical paradise surrounded by banana plants (like weeds) the neighbour kids showed me how to make baskets and bowls and of course, were always brilliant whereas I struggled along crookedly.

    ReplyDelete
  7. We should have paid closer attention to his attorney Cohen. He explained that Trump would only leave via revolution. He testified and still idiots are suprise.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Cold and gray here so I am inside reading blogs as I do every morning! It is part of my daily routine now that I am retired.
    I will be so glad to have Biden/Harris in charge after tomorrow! I have run out of words to describe how bad these last 4 years have been.
    Thanks for posting. Peace!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Well I waited long enough to read your post that the inauguration has come & gone & no terrible things happened (that I know of). Whew!

    ReplyDelete

I opened my big mouth, now it's your turn.