more yardwork and the Republican House's first week

Saturday was a fine day, clear blue sky, low humidity, no wind to speak of. I dug up the spirea which had finally given up the struggle. It was a beautiful shrub that would be covered in its little white flower clusters in the spring but the first arctic blast in the winter of '20/'21 that caused so much havoc in Texas, the power grid failing and houses and people freezing, damaged it severely. It would put out new growth which would die back in the heat of summers until this winter with another week of temps in the teens and twenties, it was done.

So now I'm sort of rearranging that flower bed. Saturday I started weeding it and turning the soil, getting my hands in it, so a good day, I got to dig. I like to dig and the soil was just right for it, not wet and clumpy, not hard and resistant. I'm taking out the rest of the black and blue salvia to expand the area for zinnias and also for a small spring garden, a few tomatoes, green beans, a couple of squash maybe. I want to grow potatoes again but not there.

My squirrel deterrent seems to be working. Besides the one I saw on the bird feeder Monday, I haven't seen any since I moved the elephant plant stand farther away. After the pole fell, when I got it back up I went ahead and slipped a section of galvanized downspout over it as an added deterrent as one of my readers has commented that it works for them, squirrels can't climb it. Sunday morning when I got up and looked out there was a squirrel foraging in the area beneath it and looked to be getting plenty to eat and made no effort to climb up to the feeder.

Sunday I cleared out all the dead orange cosmos and cut back the rock roses (not a true rose but like the confederate rose, part of the hibiscus family). Still some clearing to do...cutting back the wild Mexican petunias, cutting the dead fronds off the holly ferns, 

clearing the shell ginger on the east side of the house. Almost all the azaleas are showing tiny green buds of new growth and the roses have just exploded with new growth. I don't usually cut them back until February but that will have to be done this week.

You can stop here if you're sick of American politics, what follows is a summary of the first week of operations in the new Republican majority House.

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McCarthy, in his acceptance speech as Speaker a week ago, claimed that this would be a transparent House and then they passed the House Rules in which was included a secret 3 page document that not even all the Republican representatives had seen that contains McCarthy's promises to the insurrectionist cabal and which contains, among other things, the pledge to refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless cuts to social programs are made. They think they're covering their asses by excluding the military, interest payments, and Social Security as line items, as if that's even possible, as if people still getting their checks will counterbalance shutting down every other part of the federal government sending the country into default which doesn't just affect us but the entire world economy. And make no mistake, these are the debts Trump incurred that they will be refusing to pay by failing to raise the debt ceiling, something they have no problem doing as long as Republicans have the majority in Congress and the presidency. This should backfire spectacularly on them.

The other thing McCarthy said in his speech was that because of the long fight to elect a Speaker, they have learned how to govern. So after two years of screaming about inflation, the price of gas, the economy, the fake border crisis, crime, and Hunter Biden's laptop this is what the House Republicans have done during their first week of the new session:

   -Removed the metal detector from the entrance to the House.
   -Allowed smoking in Representatives offices.
   -Passed a bill to repeal the new funding for the IRS to hire and replace agents included in the Inflation Reduction Act and is currently set to vote on abolishing the IRS altogether in a further attempt to protect millionaire and billionaire tax cheats.
   -Decimated the Office of Congressional Ethics to hamstring it from conducting business in order to protect their members from investigation of ethics violations.
   -Established the Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to conduct investigations into the 'government's collusion with private companies to infringe the rights' of the people to free speech ie their butthurt and false accusations that social media platforms wrongly silenced the free speech of the far right and to investigate the DOJ and the FBI for their legitimate investigations into Trump's and his sycophants' criminal activity.
   -Passed the 'born alive' bill that forces doctors to give life sustaining care to any baby that is still 'alive' after an attempted abortion or face new penalties. As if that happens, as if doctors aren't already required to do so if it does happen.
   -Passed a resolution condemning attacks on anti-abortion facilities (apparently attacks on clinics and doctors who perform abortions are OK).
   -Removed Democrats from committees.
   -Is considering a vote to expunge Trump's impeachments.

So much for Republicans 'learning how to govern'. Not a single bill has been put forward to address any of the things they have been attacking Biden and democrats for for the past two years because they don't actually care about any of those things besides using them as a weapon to gain power. Power is what they care about, the ability to force the rest of the country to kneel.