Saturday, March 7, 2020

Cards, Bikes and Cactus

Today I have odds and ends and a trip to a nursery.  I screen grabbed this off Twitter awhile ago.  It has long been a mystery to me why Bernie was so popular with the millenials, given his advanced age.  This sort of makes sense to me. 

We're residents of Arizona now, they have closed primaries.  We recently received a nice card from the party welcoming us.  That has never happened before.  I guess there are so few Democrats here that they can take the time to hand write and mail cards.


Their art appears to be a riff on the Great Wave off Kanagawa, a Japanese woodblock print first produced in the early 1800s.  I guess by now there are no issues with copyright infringement.


The weather has been weird.  Thursday it was really windy.  We rode up the Santa Cruz trail, coming back was very unpleasant due to headwinds and the occasional gust from the side.  I hate the gusting side winds, they're unpredictable.



Friday's wind was even worse.  We gave up on the thought of riding.  We went to visit a friend who has a very nice looking flat handle bar bike.  I'm liking this bike a lot because it's a more upright seating position, which may decrease the pain in my shoulders.  I also like it because we can put 28 mm tires on it which will further protect us from the horrible roads in Tucson.  More air, more comfort.  So I rode his bike and it rides very nicely.  Then we went out to bikes direct dot com and they're sold out!  It's not fair.  So there you go.


Later we drove out to a nursery on River Road.  We keep seeing their ads so we decided to go look.

This is a Moroccan Mound.  They're kind of cool looking.  A neighbor has one that's pretty big, I may ask if I can break off one little finger of the plant.



Roses do well out here.  In Seattle it requires propitiation of the plant gods to keep them alive.  Out here thrip, rust and mildew are not so much of a problem.


A Hibiscus.  They pretty much define not cold hardy, so no, none for us.


This really surprised me.  Those are pansies.  Pansies are a cool weather plant.  I do not understand why they are growing them here.  Very soon it will be in the 90's and the pansies will die.


I love these.  What could be better than teeny tiny baby cacti attractively planted in terracotta pots?


It's only $8!



In the end we did not impulse buy anything.  If you're in Tucson it's the Green Things nursery, which is co-located with Zocalo Village.  They're out on River Road in horse country.  It's a cool facility.

8 comments:

  1. Do you miss RV life at all? Just curious.

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    1. I don't miss the costs of insurance and storage, and fixing the inevitable broken stuff. RVs are like condos that go down the road, something always breaks. The big test of the decision will come in June, July, August, and September when it is hotter than Hades. We'd pretty much seen everything we wanted to see in the RV, I guess it's time for a new mode of travel.

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  2. Riding in the wind would not interest me a bit.

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  3. Riding or running in the wind isn't fun. I've walked many times on the return trip. Nice bike though ... hope you find one! I do love going to the nurseries. There's so much cool stuff there, but you're right ... they are all hard to grow between the freezing cold and the screaming hot! LOL Now cactus, which grows in almost any weather, I do appreciate.

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  4. I need new tires for my bike. I need new everything for my bike. maybe I need a new bike. though I haven't ridden the one I have much since we moved out of the city which is why it's in such terrible shape since I didn't ever ride for exercise but for getting around and running small errands in the neighborhood instead of in the car.

    In our small and underpopulated county (farming and ranching takes up a lot of land) there were 7000 republican votes cast and 1500 democratic votes in the primary. I alway register as an independent though I have never voted for a single republican. how nice that you got that cute card. we did that japanese wave print twice in etched and carved glass over the years before we retired from that work.

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  5. Love the little cacti in the pot with the black rocks. So pretty! Have you looked online for the bike you liked? Lots of online sources for bikes these days, but of course then you have to hope the LBS will not give you the stink-eye when you come in for service. But, if you can't find one locally.... Love the postcard from the Dems and definitely hoping for a blue wave this fall. I voted in the Democrats Abroad primary -- all online. Very 21st Century!

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  6. Thanks for that quote on twitter. That does make sense. So I understand the feeling I just can't quite see how they think Bernie will get them there. I love that Moroccan Mound. I see a lot of those up here. I also love the hibiscus. We don't get as many freezes as you do down there so they do pretty good up here. I also see pansies everywhere especially this time of year. You are so right about the crazy wind we had this last weekend. It was beautiful weather to be out but the wind was disturbing.

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  7. I think I recognize the Moroccan mound from my time in Morocco, when I used to see it in the wild! I agree with the quote to a point -- but I think even some older people see Socialism as a gentler system than the Soviet gulags.

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