some yard work, some cooking, and now they're saying it out loud and in public

Oh joy, woke up to rain this morning cause you know we haven't had much of that around here lately. Just about every fucking day for weeks. And for the next 6 days counting today, rain is predicted for 5 of them. By the time it's finally dry enough to mow...

Sunday would have been a good day to work in the yard, overcast, not hot, a little breeze, and I still have 3 bags of mulch to spread out but after Saturday's efforts I just couldn't get motivated. I took it easy and read mostly so Monday I did get out there. The plan was to spread the mulch but first I decided to gather up the yellow coneflowers I had pulled out and tossed on the full garden cart and passed the rangoon creeper on the way to the burn pile and noticed how vigorously it had grown and if I was going to cut all the dead branches off the fence I better do it now because otherwise the new growth would overcome it, so two more trips to the burn pile. Then I decided to look over the fence between the shop and the neighbor I spent so much time and energy clearing and keeping clear all last year but have not this year at all and the ironweed/briar has taken advantage of my lack of attention, some virginia creeper too which I pulled off and out but left the ironweed as it is too labor intensive and I was already hot and sweating buckets. And of course the wild grape has made a comeback. No, no, fuck no! I pulled it all off. Now I'm going to have to go back along the fence line with an herbicide and convince the wild grape, once again, that it's dead. Hopefully it will kill off the ironweed too. Finally dragged my tired butt in about 1:45. Never did get the mulch spread out.

Then I decided to make the yellow squash croquettes that I had a recipe for 

which I had read over several times previously which turned out not to be what I started it out to be. Looked good, seemed simple...finely chop squash and onion, add amount of flour, an egg, salt and pepper, mix well, spoon into 1/2” of hot oil, cook about 3 minutes each side, drain on paper towels. So I'm chopping away thinking, raw squash and onions cooking in 5 or 6 minutes? Then I realized I didn't have any eggs. Fortunately my sister now lives across the street the real reason I moved her over there and got an egg. So now I've decided I was going to just make this into a casserole and added some milk and bread crumbs to the other ingredients and stuck it in the oven. The 20 minutes start to finish of the original recipe had now taken almost an hour and it wasn't even cooked yet. It baked for 25 minutes and would have been better if it was completely cooked. Maybe I should have used a higher temperature. Anyway, it will get another chance to finish cooking tonight. In retrospect, the recipe must have meant 'minced', not 'finely chopped'. Btw, the recipe went into the paper recycling box.

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So now we have a retired general and an active congressman advocating the armed takeover of the US government. The former, Mike Flynn, telling a group that a military coup like in Myanmar should happen here and the latter, Matt Gaetz, telling another group that the Second Amendment was added to make sure the population had the weapons needed to engage in an insurrection against our own government. It wasn't, of course, as it was meant to mollify the slave states so they could keep their private militias for hunting down runaway slaves and also because there was no standing army at the time and the new country needed to be able to call up the citizens for it's defense, to protect the new government, not attack it. And new details coming out about the Oath Keepers and their part in the attempted coup on 1/6 with caches of weapons stashed, communication amongst the members and others during, a larger group stationed outside DC waiting to be called in, that they considered themselves Trump's private army just waiting for his word to attack. And of course the spineless Republicans who voted against a 1/6 commission choosing to protect their members who aided and abetted rather than our democracy. On a slightly humorous note, the lawyers for those arrested and indicted for their ebullient participation in the insurrection, giving cover for the objective of the Oath Keepers and other militia members decked out in their military gear, are trying the 'he's just a gullible dumb fuck and believed what Trump and Fox told him' defense. 

And this from the Aren't We Lucky Department, a headline in the Houston Chronicle today: “Texas is home to the highest number of accused insurrectionists”.

At least our Democratic state congresspeople flexed their muscles and prevented the most restrictive voter suppression bill in the country from being passed. It included things like no voting before 1 PM on Sunday, making it illegal to transport more than two non-family members to the polls, and allowing the state to overturn the results of an election and appoint the winner if someone, anyone, claims there was voter fraud, no evidence needed, just an accusation.

I'll leave you with this...sweet peas.