Evil and Plants

Long time, no post!  I've been irritable, cranky, even.  It just never ceases to amaze me that people voted for that man and continue to support him.  Why his approval rating is over 5% is a complete and total mystery to me.  The republicans have remained mysteriously mute on the fact that the wombat basically does not pay taxes, owes $300M to someone, and if his tax audit goes against him, he'll owe the IRS around $100M.  So much winning!  If you haven't read the NYT article, you should.  It's incredibly researched and well written, and long.

Last Thursday we planted the blue sage we bought to replace the dying bottle brush plants.  We thought it wouldn't be all that difficult since the bougainvilleas had been removed and holes had been dug for the bottle brushes.  Wrong! It was a bigger root ball so we had to dig deeper.  There were rocks the size of my head in the dirt.  The two ladies from Alaska who now run a landscaping business were down the street.  I walked down to see if they had a caliche bar on the truck.  They had something much better.

It was a jack hammer!  The thing weighed 40 pounds, it was all I could do to get it home, but it was worth the effort.  It's a very effective tool for getting out rocks and caliche.  It had a spade attachment which is like a little shovel.  Jim ran it, I was too tired.

This is next door, it's a red fish hook cactus.  It's odd to see a cactus blooming this time of year.

Here is the rest of my political commentary for this blog.

Plants and Animals

It's still hot, it will be hotter by the end of the week.  Sooner or later this will break, but sooner would be better.

We got flu shots today, the old person's dosage, which has more zing to it than the regular vaccine.  As we age, our immune systems don't respond as well to vaccines, so more is better.  It's also knocking me on my butt.  My arm hurts and I'm sort of achy.  It doesn't last and after having pneumonia in 2016, I'll get the flu shot to decrease the chances of pneumonia.

We have had much wild life in the yard.  We finally gave up on the little cactus garden because the javelinas came back and chewed on them again.  So we pulled them up, redistributed the rocks that outlined the planting area and raked it over.  Javelinas are why we can't have nice things.  Farewell little cactus garden.

Yesterday we had birds and bunnies.  The palm tree is dropping little tiny fruits everywhere, the birds come and eat them.

In the lower right hand corner is the juvenile bunny that comes to spend time under the palms.

Yesterday we were driven out of the house by sheer unadulterated boredom.  We went to a nursery out on the east side, Mesquite Valley Growers.  They're huge, they recently added new space and are now very huge.  This is one of their bougainvilleas.

A cool looking cactus with pink fruit.

Another good looking cactus in a very nice pot.

These people have containers!  If they don't have it, you probably don't need it.

We bought a blue sage to go where the dying bottle brush plants were.  They were very frustrating, of the four we planted, they started out looking the best and then began their long inexorable slide into the grave.  So, they're gone, too. 

Going Back to Legacy Blogger

How much do you really hate the new blogger? I'm posting this in old blogger, despite not having the "revert to legacy" button available.  It's not a perfect workaround, but it's better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Use this url after editing it.

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=XXXX&useLegacyBlogger=true#allposts 

Replace the x's with your blogger id.

You get your id by going to the dash board and looking up in the url line.  I've x'ed out my id, you need your own.

Replace the x's with your blogger id in the LegacyBlogger=true url, then cut and paste all of it into the url line.  I bookmarked the altered URL which is not a great solution, since it's hard to find in the list.  It's not that hard to just paste it in if you're doing a new post and then paste in the blogger id over the x's. It also restores the way comments used to work as well as navigating through older posts.

Who knows how long the legacy version will be accessible, but I for one, am hanging on to the old version until the bitter end. 

Many thanks to a blogger in Denmark who came up with this. I got there via Cup on the Bus and then on to Elephant's Child and then to Denmark.

Update:  if you have the notepad app, you can paste the url in there in a saved file on your desktop and it's easy to get to.
Update 2:  apparently this only works on the dashboard page.  If you view blog, you can't go back to legacy unless you re-input the edited url.

Nattering

Well, evil blogger cut my access to legacy blogger today.  I am now marooned on a platform of stupid user interface and bad ju-ju all around.  I'm very unhappy about this.  Of course, I'm pretty despondent about just about everything today.  I had to abandon reading the NYT and WAPO, I just can't take it.  I have not felt this way since Hillary lost.  

 When I link to something, I always want it to open in a new window.  Old blogger let you make that a default, new blogger makes you click on it every single time.  New blogger makes everything take more clicks.  Anyway, do any of you know how to make that a default?

There is nattering to be done, inconsequential things to be said and all of that which makes up daily life in a pandemic.  Yesterday we stopped to snoop in the house that's going up down the street.  I previously discussed construction techniques in AZ here.  They've progressed to the stage of applying stucco.  It's not sprayed, they have to have to hand trowel it on.  There is a mixer on the job site.  They load bags of Portland Cement and shovel sand in to it to make the stucco.  This has to be brutal in the heat we've been having.

The front wall with stucco applied.

Looking down the side of the house, we notice the scaffolding they are using.  The boards just sit on the scaffold with no point of attachment.  It looks like an accident waiting to happen, but what do I know?

The trichocereus next door has bloomed again.  It's surprising to see this since there has been no rain and it's not getting any water.  I like the yellow stripes on the second layer of petals.

When we ride up to the end of Lone Star, up the hill that hurts way more than it should, we see the quilt house.  We call it that because there will frequently be a quilt hanging in front of the garage.  The why of this is not known.

I can't tell if it's pieced or whole cloth.  Since it's their driveway I don't feel comfortable walking up and looking at it up close.  Look how the blue sort of meanders across the field. 

If this is pieced, it's really astonishing work.

In sporting news, Tadej Pogačar beat the expected winner of the Tour de France, Primož Roglič, by putting 1:56 minutes on him on the final time trial.  Jumbo-Visma had really controlled the race up until the time trial, and then it all went bad.  Tadej Pogačar ended the day with the White jersey (best young rider), the Polka Dot jersey (most mountain points) and the Yellow jersey (over all race leader).  It's an amazing result for a 21 year riding his first Tour de France.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died today.  She was a giant among people and we will miss her terribly.

March 15, 1933- September 18, 2020

 

NPR has an excellent summary of her life here.  I did not think it would be possible, but 2020 just got worse.

Doves in Repose

Here is a moment of repose in the yard.  The dove on the right has made a depression in the dirt and is enjoying a cooler surface.  The rocks we put in between the hop seeds are keeping them from doing this next to the flag stones, which flings gravel everywhere.  Success!