preparations, white knuckles, J6 referrals

Minnie and Cat getting closer.

I got up Sunday morning and checked the weather app hoping hoping hoping that the low of 21˚ on Thursday night had been revised upward. It had been revised all right but not upward. Now the predicted low for Thursday is 15˚!!! And 19˚ Friday night, 31˚ Saturday night so I spent the day pruning back the pink angel trumpet and the begonia and brought them and my tall cactus/succulent in the house, pruned the tops of the wedding bouquet plumerias so the big tarp would cover them in the garage, took cuttings of the firespike and morning glory bush which will freeze to the ground but I don't know if they'll come back, moved the two potted altheas into the garage, moved the big pot of walking iris in the house, snugged the white orchid tree up against the house protected on the north and west side, cut back the porterweed and bougainvillea in preparation for being covered both of which probably won't survive the teens anyway as well as the bird of paradise and gardenia which I will also cover. I'll have to cut the yellow trumpet flower back hard to cover it and it's just now covered with buds. I'll have to cover the ponytail palm too but I don't expect the foliage to survive the teens and twenties. It will be the third year in a row that its growth gets frozen down to the bulb. We're looking at 36 – 48 continuous hours well below freezing. The ginger, the shrimp plant which just started blooming, the leopard plant, the confederate roses, the crinums, the banana trees, the morning glory bush, the firespike, the yellow bells will all freeze to the ground. Some of those may not come back and I'm afraid this might just kill my azaleas. It took them til this summer to really recover from the arctic blast two winters ago and my sweet little Japanese azalea is so small.

I'll cover it but not the rest of the azaleas because I just don't have the material to cover everything. Hopefully it will finally kill off the white fly on my camellia that has resisted my efforts just so long as my camellia doesn't die as well.

I know my readers up north are probably rolling their eyes since they deal with temperatures like this and worse every winter plus snow and ice but I live on the coastal plain of Texas. It's not supposed to get this cold here. Just looked at the revised forecast...now four nights: 15˚, 19˚, 19˚, 25˚.

I did all that yesterday so that I can start getting things covered Tuesday and Wednesday. Today rain was predicted and I needed to take my sister to the airport this morning, an hour there and an hour back, for her flight to spend the holiday with her daughter in Albuquerque. It sprinkled/drizzled a little bit on the way there but mostly no rain at all and for the first half hour on the way back, but the last half hour was through a near zero visibility hard rain white knuckle drive. Seriously, if the vehicle in front of me was white, I basically couldn't see it unless they tapped their brakes and then I could see the tail lights. Fortunately I made it home without incident.

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The last J6 committee hearing was today and they reviewed their previous findings which findings they felt were enough for criminal referrals of Trump and unnamed 'others' (possibly Eastman, Meadows, Giuliani, and Clark) to the DOJ for:

1. Obstruction of an Official Proceeding - Title 18 Section 1512

2. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States – Title 18 Section 371

3. Conspiracy to Make a False Statement – Title 18 Section 1001

4. “Incite”, “Assist” or “Aid or Comfort” an Insurrection – Title 18 Section 2383

Unfortunately a referral doesn't mean the DOJ will follow up with an investigation and indictment but we have high hopes that this DOJ will proceed on the recommendations of the J6 Committee. In addition to these criminal referrals, the J6 Committee recommended 4 House members, including McCarthy, to the House ethics committee for refusing to honor subpoenas. That will likely go nowhere once the new House is sworn in since republicans have a slim majority. And of course the usual House republicans and the MAGAts over at the cesspool Twitter has become are going nuts.

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Well, I totally messed up my 'finished with my task' post. I meant to juxtapose the starting picture (which is really first day progress picture because, well, me who always forgets to take a before picture) with the finished picture. So I know we are all tired of seeing these pictures but I'm going to post the two anyway because I want to see them together. You don't have to look at them or comment on them. You can see the hackberry tree in both pictures that I still need to cut down.

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Alright, tomorrow is grocery shop day and my night to fix dinner which I think I'm going to make a lentil stew and in between those tasks I'll start covering stuff.