Dead and Dying Plants and Other Stuff

It continues to be unseasonably warm in Spokane.  The weeds apparently love it, because they continue on their quest for world domination.  Just before we left for Tucson, I noticed that another arborvitae was looking a little yellow.  This is what we saw upon our return.  This took three weeks to go from slightly yellowish to death.  This is such a pain in the butt. If we cut it down, we can never plant there.  If we dig it up, there is an excellent chance that we'll damage the surrounding trees' roots.   If you look closely, there is still a green stalk in the tree.  We're thinking that maybe we'll cut out the brown part and see what happens.  I don't know why people plant these trees.

We have two Rose of Sharon plants.  Something is wrong with them.  The symptoms are the same for each tree.  They leafed out, and then the leaves quit growing.  What the heck?  Why are they doing this to me?  I do not want to take out any more trees!!!!  The bigger of the two serves as a visual block of the fireplace exhaust, so I would really like it to survive.  Ellen, any thoughts?

The last item on my list of death is my agave, that I brought up from Tucson.  This started last winter while we were in Tucson, and continues to worsen.  It almost looks fungal to me.

So that's it, that's the last house plant I will ever own.  There are several of these in the front yard of the new house, two of them are pupping, so I guess they're happy.

CDC has finally posted infection data.  It's not good.  It's unfortunate that they don't break it out by state.  During the early days, they drilled down to the county level.  At long last, they have re-issued guidance that one should mask in crowded places.   Handwashing is not getting it done, it's airborne.

If you have Amazon Prime and you watch their videos, here are two that we recently watched.  "Downwinders" was astonishing.  It details the open air nuclear weapons testing done in White Sands, New Mexico.  Nine hundred twenty eight bombs were set off on the desert.  Nuclear fall out headed out with the prevailing winds.  Then there was an almost equal number of tests underground, which was supposed to be safer, except, of course, for the off gassing to the outside.  Anyway, it was a fascinating look at the military and their desire to explode nuclear weapons.  The other program  watched was "Inside Job."  Also extremely well done.  It explains in detail how the 2008 collapse of the global economy happened.  I always thought Hank Paulson was a good guy, he was not.  There was a lot of stuff I did not know, it's really well done. 

Other than my exasperation with people who should know better that are calling for Biden to step down, I have not too much to add.  Thus far, the "step down" people never follow up with a plan.  Can you imagine a brokered convention, all the money Biden has collected is not transferable to anyone but Kamala Harris.  The networks of campaign offices are not transferable, either.   Nobody seems to be even considering her.  I did cancel my subscription to New York Times, they pissed me off one too many times.  Washington Post may be next.  Where is the coverage of the 900 page Project 2025?  Ok, my BP is rising, I will stop now.