Hot, Cactus and the Virus

After a fairly cold and mediocre winter, we predicted the heat would be here early.  We were right.  Note the little thermometers on top of the sun icons.

The trichocereus are blooming!  Yay!  I really like them.  This one is down the street from us.

I love the little palm tree looking things in the cup of the flower.

Here are more from other yards.

This cactus has an interesting blooming habit.  The blossoms just leap out of the side of the cactus.

Pretty cool, eh?

This is a mannequin in somebody's yard, the clothing changes with the seasons.  The first couple of times we walked by, we waved and said hi.  Then we realized it wasn't a person.

The HOA sealed the street in front of our house today.  We're not supposed to drive on it until tomorrow.  That did not stop the Amazon Prime truck from moving one of the barriers and coming down the street.  I guess "road closed" does not resonate with Prime drivers.  Anyway, this is what I saw when I got back from the two mile walk through the neighborhood.  They're doing the second coat of black goo.  One of the two is a trainee.

I could hear the one telling the other one to "drop your elbow."

Later it was "raise your shoulder."

Here he is adjusting the tilt of the sprayer.  I always assumed they just walked down the street spraying back and forth, but apparently there is skill and technique involved in this.  Who knew?

 I almost made it to the end of a post today without mentioning the orange menace.  However, I waited too long and he had the daily mini rally during which he said one of the most stupid things I have ever heard.  Earlier someone had reported that direct sunlight helps kill the virus.  Taking the podium, the orange one suggested this warranted further study.

“Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way,” Trump said to Bill Bryan, the undersecretary for science and technology at the Homeland Security Department during the evening White House briefing. He urged him to test it.

The president then mused that perhaps bleach or another disinfectant can also be injected into the body to kill the virus.

“Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets on the lungs and it does a tremendous number,” the president said.

He encouraged Bryan to test that theory too, but noted the government should involve medical doctors on that one.

He wants to test injecting people with bleach.  You can watch the clip from CSPAN here.

So while I'm on the subject of poor response to the pandemic, there is this.  Azar is the head of HHS, which oversees CDC and FDA.  After assuring the public that all would be well ...

Azar tapped a trusted aide with minimal public health experience to lead the agency’s day-to-day response to COVID-19. The aide, Brian Harrison, had joined the department after running a dog-breeding business for six years. Five sources say some officials in the White House derisively called him “the dog breeder.”

Harrison raises Labradoodles.  I'm not sure how that qualifies a person to run a pandemic response.

Every single day I think it can't get any worse, and yet it does.