Heat Wave!

 I'm used to dealing with cold weather, being a Minnesota native. Spending three years in Georgia back in the '70s was a total revelation, particularly after watching the neighbor mow their lawn on Christmas eve! Any yard care we'd have had to do in MN would involve shoveling and spreading sand or salt. Becoming recent AZ snowbirds for ten years got our bodies accustomed to heat, and our wardrobes bereft of heavy coats, boots, mittens, scarves... all things a part of us hoped never to have to deal with again.

So now we're back for good. It was a chilly winter, nothing like the old ones which routinely hit -40, which is just as cold in fahrenheit as it is in centigrade. But we did hit -30 at least once this last winter. It also bounced right back again so whatever snow we got was gone from the streets in a couple days. Our bodies adjusted a bit, our wardrobes more so. We again were surviving winters. Minnesota winters.

Our bodies didn't adjust all the way, however. It used to be the thermostat was set to heat the house to between 65 and 68. Now our old bones start feeling comfortable at 72, which is comfy if we're moving and wearing sweats as a second layer. When we sit to read or watch TV, or even snooze ( because geezers, hello!), a lap blanket is added in addition. Double layer polar fleece.  Ah-h-h-h-h-h....

Last summer we turned the AC on about 3 times, not for long periods, but with ceiling fans to keep us comfy. I was being cheap about it too, having no idea what the electric bill would turn out to be. Turned out to be fairly modest for the summer, and even for winter, because this place was made with gas in mind instead of electricity. Gas furnace, gas stove and oven, gas water heater. I do all the cooking I can in the microwave. There are ceiling fans for cooling down - 4 in various rooms. A light whisper of breeze over my bed at night in the summer usually means no AC needed. For contrast the AC was on 6 months of the year in AZ, and we were grateful to have gotten solar installed on the roof.

This summer is being different. We switched from El Nino to La Nina. We're setting summer heat records. If that isn't enough, the humidity pushes up the heat index - the "feels like" temperature. I wanted to hibernate inside for two days, since the low temperature this morning was 81! In Minnesota! That's often the nice warm summer high, good swimming weather. But today the feels-like temperature is supposed to be around 110! Inside my little car with a black interior and no garage or shade would be just plain cruel. 

Life intervened.  I had to climb into my mobile furnace just before noon. It was a short errand, a trip to the local grocery store which would almost cool it down by the time I arrived. But it was all in a good cause.

My youngest son called, asking if we had a mixer. Nope. OK, he'd bring one if I'd go pick up some heavy whipping cream. Also, if I made shortcakes (Bisquick alone will fill that bill, no other brand allowed!) he'd also bring the strawberrries! I am so glad I taught him years ago what Mom taught me, the one and only acceptable way to make strawberry shortcake! In addition to the good company, he will have been out at the local apple orchard to a separate patch on thier property where you pick your own strawberries, charged by weight. He'll have picked extras for making jellies this fall when it cools down, and meanwhile they'll be sharing freezer space in his basement with cherries, elderberries, grapes, and whatever else he can harvest from his yard, or maybe supplement from the store, to produce jars of jelly for all on his Christmas list.

But today, it's "only" strawberry shortcake. Yummmmmm!

Tomorrow it's supposed to cool back down, a good thing since my yard is calling. Heat-blown flowers are in need of deadheading.

A Granddaughter's First Rainbow

I'm "borrowing" a granddaughter for a few days. She's old enough now that we can do some things together (making her some earrings), and she can appreciate a trip to my favorite nature center to look for swans, cranes, egrets, eagles, turtles, deer, herons, water lilies, and whatever else there we might be able to find. She's also old enough to have her own cell phone and use its camera. I planned to give her some tips, as well as lots of opportunities to try to use them. She's got the technical stuff down, but I was trying to get her to do some horizontal shots for wide subjects, or zoom in before clicking instead of cropping afterwards to get a full(er) and less pixelated screen shot.

She soon tired of that, so we had supper and she returned to her cell for non-photo reasons. After a few minutes I wondered why planes were flying overhead. The sun was shining, so surely it wasn't constant thunder? I stepped outside and not only was the thunder louder and non-stop,  but I was getting pelted by the first onslaught of rain. As soon as I was back inside, I noted hail hitting the neighbor's roof and bouncing down its slope and into the grass. 

I called her in the room I was in to see it before it stopped, and then we went to the other side of the house since the cloud was moving in that direction. Besides there is a covered porch on that side for our protection. Even more hail was falling on that side of the house, and with a metal roof over that porch, was loud enough to keep her jumping until she realized she was still protected. We watched it bouncing off several roofs, and both grabbed cameras to see what we could capture. 

Suddenly she cried, "There's a rainbow!" Both our cameras pointed in that direction, and I shot some video trying to include both hail and a rainbow in the same sequence. It didn't seem to be working, and the hail was letting up. I lowered my camera enough to pay more attention to the rainbow and discovered it was now in fact a double!

I grabbed a still shot, noting later a few pieces of hail still stuck on the neighbor's roof peak. There was also time to notice that the space between the rainbows was the darkest part of the sky, as if rainbows stole light from their surroundings so they could paint the sky in all their colors.

It didn't last long,  the hail was over, and we both retreated back into the house. I went to pull out my laptop for a radar view of what else might be coming our way. Only now, finally after all the action was past, were the town sirens going off. Was more on the way? Worse?

Radar showed us as getting poured on, orange and red with a trace of green covered the screen. It just wasn't raining any more however. Radar is goofy around here, showing rain where it won't hit for at least 5 more minutes, or not showing this while I checked it before the hail hit to see if the rumble was weather or aviation created. Now it was working, and I expanded the view outward for a bigger picture of what lay in store. 

Nothing.

Nada.

The one lone cloud in the entire state had landed on us and us alone, giving my granddaughter, at 11, her first ever rainbow in a real sky. She'd had hail before, and shared a couple stories. Only now, not just her first rainbow, but a double!

I can't wait to see what the rest of her visit has in store for her!

No Kings... And Way Fewer Monarchs

We in America, for the most part, honor our history of separating from a king who wanted to rule us from across a wide ocean. Our ancestors came here to be free of such kinds of governance. Just because your dad was a king didn't make you qualified to be one yourself. We all recognize that our children are not carbon copies of their parents in every other way, but somehow there are still places where who your parents were determines your right - or not - to tell others what to do. For the most part, we elect the people we most wish to write our laws and lead our country. Millions of us were out demonstrating all over this country last Saturday, showing our displeasure over somebody who would do their best to declare himself King - or autocrat - of this country. With the backing of a very narrow segment of the population, he is doing his worst to change how this country runs, and who it does it for. 

 

 There is another change in monarchs in this country, and it is becoming just as worrysome, a visible symptom of a much larger problem we have caused. Latest counts show the population of monarch butterflies is down over 22% in the last few years. All kinds of reasons are looked at. Pesticides get part of the blame. Extending agriculture over wide swaths of the country to eliminate habitat and food sources is another problem. Perhaps the most telling is climate change. 

In the last few years, I've seen plenty of milkweed blooming. We have deliberately planted, or allowed self-planted milkweed plants to grow where they would in the yard in small-town Minnnesota. They infested the gardens, the grassy patches which then protected them from being mowed for the full season... and the next... and next.  Butterfly bushes (asclepias) mostly left the formal garden areas and sprung up in the lawn, so mowing detoured around them, allowing their growth and spread. Neighbors may have complained, but while grass height lowered, individual plants remained. We have been trying to provide for the ones that do finally reach here.

The problem these days is the timing. The above photo shows the ideal. Milkweed blossoms are in full bloom, each filled with nectar for the curled up proboscis to extend into and drink from. Unfortunately, this photo is nearly a dozen years old. These days the flowers are done blooming, and seed pods forming, before the first monarch appears.

Sure, the plant has been pollinated by other insects, its seeds will develop and be fertile. Grandchildren will be invited over to POOF! them into the winds to be carried wherever then can go in hopes of finding the right spot of soil. But no monarchs will have been fed here.

With luck they might have found another plant to sustain them for a bit, like this liatris.

Or they may have landed on a late season balloon flower, long past offering anything but a perch.

 They might have even laid eggs which hatched.... though this picture is several years old. These lucky monarch caterpillars found plenty of tender leaves to munch on while they grew.

Some find food but which comes with competitors for the supply.

 I haven't seen a caterpillar for about ten years now. They are hard to miss! Even the smallest of us can usually spot them even hiding in a bunch of similar colors.

The last time I watched a green chrysallis turn clear, split, and allow a new butterfly to spread its wings was so long ago I didn't even have a digital camera yet, nevermind being on #4 in my series of them. Somehow cameras just don't work at capturing what is no longer around to find. And while I do oppose having any kings over us in this country, I do hope we don't soon loose sight of our spectacular flying monarchs.

How To Earn $50 Grand In A Few Easy Steps

1: Live in the right location. This is very difficult to plan for of course, because it depends on other people's actions. One significant part of that is that somebody puts up a cell tower providing good service to your home.

2: Set up trail cams around your property and get in the habit of watching them to see what's going on in your vicinity. While this may only bring you wealth in the rarest of circumstances, it can still reward you with hours of entertainment and information.

3: Keep your phone handy and with a full charge.

4: Practice calming breathing exercises so when you get that "money shot" you can take the appropriate steps. All this preparation will be for nothing if you pass out or start jumping up and down, loudly yelling "I've got him! I'm gonna be rich!" or some other such nonsense loudly enough that your whole county can hear you.

5: Keep abreast of the important news which may affect you and others in your area. Every so often, mentally practice your "'what ifs" about what kinds of actions you would take if certain events unfolded where you could observe them. Consider the possible need of a wide range of actions in response to an even wider range of events.

6: Learn to know and recognize your neighbors, know where they live, learn their names.

7: This is the most difficult part of your preparation: have a neighbor become a whack-job killer who goes around killing and/or trying to kill famous people and making national headlines.This must be somebody who doesn't immediately get themselves killed in a police confrontation, but who successfully flees and becomes the object of a widespread hunt. Note that a large reward has been offered, and what the details of earning such reward entail.

8: Have said person hiding out on or near your property, in the process of which they pass in front of one of more of your trail cams, and do so at a time when you can see them do so and recognize that they are the object of a huge manhunt.

9: Once all those pieces fall into place, call in the sighting of said fugitive ASAP to the authorities who are hunting that person., giving all the relevant details that are necessary to their capture or death, depending on the specifics of the reward offer, of course.

10: Lock your doors and wait. If no capture is announced, keep an eye on those trail cams, especially those nearest your house. Once capture is announced, claim your reward.

Clockwork Rage

 By now you all know I use these pages to vent about things that annoy me. I'm at it again, though this time I'm going to mellow it at the end with some flower photos.

The replica antique Coca Cola wall clock that has been following our travels around the country for years now is beginning to have some interesting glitches. It's nothing we can't deal with if we give it a few tweaks over the first couple days after we put the new battery in. For some reason the hands seem to snag on something in the vicinity of 7 or 8, and the time needs to be reset. We also have noticed that when setting the time we have to come at it from behind. In other words, we can't set the time to before where it was sitting, we have to go around the dial  until our last crank comes from behind, making the hands move ahead. None of these are a big deal, but it can get tiresome. We decided to look for a new one to replace it. It had been sentimental for Steve, but he also was willing to leave it behind via one of our garage sales before we moved. That didn't happen.

Rather than hunt for clock stores we went online to hunt. Steve started with the idea of looking for a pendulum clock. Not a huge Grandfather affair, being way beyond what we wanted to spend. But the ones we did find had chimes, and much as we like the Big Ben chimes which are now in our front doorbell, we were sure they'd be going off right when there was something on the TV which sits right next to where it would hang, with something we'd want to hear obliterated by the chimes going off.  In short, no chiming clock.

We did find a nice enough looking one (in it's picture), with a reasonable price, and ordered it. It arrived on time.

That's the last thing that went right.

The pendulum is shipped as a separate piece, which makes perfect sense, since a jolt during transit could give it enough leverage to bend something. We did try to put the pendulum on when we unwrapped it, but there was nothing we could find for it to cling to. There were a lot of things the right location, size and shape, but....

I'd recently bought batteries since we were siphoning so many through the old Coke clock. I dug one out and put it where it went... except it didn't go there. Or the other spot that looked perfect. Or even the third one which really did fit it snugly. Maybe it was upside down? I always make sure when I'm changing either AA or AAA batteries to be sure to note the orientation of the ones I remove and lay the dead ones out in that position as a template for their replacements. This didn't have any old ones of course. Nothing I tried, or that Steve tried, worked. We looked at each other and nearly simultaneously, said, "Call Paul."

He'd be off work soon, was usually willing to come over after and fix or install whatever we needed to make this place livable. (We joke that he does it to keep us from moving back in with him! I like to think it's a joke, anyway.)

When he arrived, he immediately found where the pendulum went... after three other tries. Buy hey, who's counting? I brought him a new battery and he figured out where it went, even if not sure after trying both possibilities which was correct. When he got no results from a second hand that resembled any kind of motion, he pulled the still functioning battery from the Coke clock, and... still nothing in the new clock. He replaced it in the Coke clock and it's still going strong. 

In the process of working with the battery he discovered that the pendulum swings freely - so freely that nothing in the clock mechanism is set up to move it. The damn things moves only when somebody swings the clock! It stops whenever gravity and friction win, usually about 3 swings.

Since we all came to the same conclusion that this was a total piece of cheap-shit crap, I started looking around for the box to put it back into for a return. Considering how things were going so far, it likely won't surprise anybody that the shipping box had already been torn up, de-taped and de-stapled, its pieces ready for the recycling bin. At least one thing worked! If I don't mind being called a thing in this context, that is. Yes, I did that. : (

Today came the email I've been waiting for, a chance to give a review on the clock. I wasn't going to get a refund, but I could give out a warning to the next rube. and boy, did I!

Meanwhile the Coke clock is still keeping perfect time up on the mantle. There is a large supply of  AA batteries left, and I'm just not in a hurry to buy a replacement. The next purchase clock-wise will be one of those kits like the one in the back of the current clock, where a central post/spindle/whatever goes through a hole, batteries on one side and hands and numbers on the other so it can be turned into a clock. I have just the thing. It will be its second life as a wall clock.

 Long ago, in a state far far away, friends of my parents used a kit to turn a piece of petrified wood into a clock. It's grey and white and red and tan-ish yellow. (The bright white at about 6:30 o'clock in the photo is from the flash.) The hole is well placed, and somebody worked a long time in lapidary to turn it into a smooth- faced pretty thing. It worked as a clock for a very long time. Unfortunately, rather than finish it off the way I learned to do for a polish, they simply poured lacquer over it all, stone, numbers, everything. Decades later the color was old brownish yellow. I mean everything was brownish yellow, except the black numerals were still black. I liked the stone, remembered its former glory, and went about finding out how to restore it. About three bottles of acetone later, in which it sat in a flat pan of, face down for several days (outside), the numerals were scraped off, the mechanism removed, nearly all the lacquer now gone, and color mostly restored. One more bottle for a last soak and scrape, then on to the machines in the club. This time however it got a wax-type polishing with a cloth wheel for a couple hours. The back side is rough but who cares? Someday if somebody wishes to reverse the clock and use new numbers and motor, they can repeat what I've done on the other side. I refused to find it necessary for my own use. Perhaps as a present? For me it was just restoring old beauty in a nod to its original maker and it's being gifted to my parents. Petrified wood is one of the hardest stones to work, and one side sufficed. The ugly yellow is gone. Now it's just a matter of style and size of what goes on the face.

Meanwhile I bought another houseplant:

This one is a calla lily, with lavender-purple blooms, bluer than shown. But purple is always hard for cameras to figure out: Red? blue? I had a decades long best friend who died a couple years back. Calla lilies were special to her, but at that time the only ones on the market were white. Where my plants sit for light is already white enough, so I go for color there when I can. When this came home there was a single bloom. Today there are 7, one hiding from the camera. A ponytail palm intrudes from the right, and a begonia maculata is trying to photobomb from the left.

Heading outside, this is the first of these greeting me in full bloom this morning,

They have a story to tell as well. Decades ago at the last MN house I lived in, a humongous rock was delivered to my front yard, granite with large seams of feldspar, and big enough to sit on - for two people. All because I stopped at city hall and asked the clerk if they city had a plan for it or it needed a home. It wasn't my choice of location, but no way could I budge it! When I got some sky blue iris needing a new home, they were planted next to it. They thrived. It became impossible to mow the lawn near it. Last year when I needed iris for my new raised circle bed, they got dug out and transplanted. Or at least we thought they all had. This spring Paul showed me three which escaped the shovel and which will be moved in a month or two. This is the first to bloom in the new home of all the iris or daylilies planted.

Meanwhile over by the rhubarb bed, my newly planted fancy columbines are thriving.

Yellow were the first in, followed by the rose/white ones.

Because Steve is from Colorado, one very important color combination was missing:

Have I stopped planting for the year? Do pigs fly? There are some late sprouting lily bulbs just showing life now, and a pair of potted early blooming ones on sale at a discount because they were already dropping petals. No more pictures for now, however. The weeds after 4 1/2" in recent rains are thriving all too well  and are calling for attention.

Those Damned Yahoos!

Yahoo used to be an exclamation of celebration.  On the other hand, yahoos were pretty clueless folks, provincial, ignorant, not terribly well educated. It was with a smidgen of wonderment that I first noted an email network with the name Yahoo: which did they mean?

Yahoo is not part of my email address. I have a much older name on my address, so old that it's been prevented from going through on form replies at times as being likely made up... or something. Eventually the company originating it "sold" those email addresses to Yahoo.com. It didn't change much. The address is the same, format was the same, the boxes in the same locations, using the same commands, in the same colors, shapes, and sizes. I particularly like the wide box for writing the body of any given email. I knew exactly where the new ones were, which were archived and how to send stuff there, how to designate spam and even rescue stuff from span.

Yesterday, with no fanfare or warning, everything changed but the name. I dread trying to read or send my email now. There's a space called folders but .... it's empty and no clue what goes where or how to organize. I can't find my old archived stuff. Things might or might not be going to spam, with or without my approval, but there's nothing named spam to go through to check. Somehow the system has decided what's important to me to read (yeah, sure....) and I had to search to find an "all" to click on to see what I was missing, but still with no indication of what might be spam. If you happen to send me stuff and know I want to hear from you but haven't replied, this may be why. If it's about that gadget you're selling or wonderful new financial plan,well......

When I want to send something out, especially in reply to what it's attached to, I'm used to the new, composed-with-proofing-required message going on the bottom. It was the widest part of the email, getting about 2/3 of the page, horizontally. Now it's squished between stuff at the top of the message  - I finally found it! - and squeezed into a vertical column about an inch and a half wide. I can use a single word that takes up more space!  And it limits just how many people I can send the same message to. Or at least I think that's what happens. 

It's more complicated than that, starting with garbling up what I should just be able to click on among possible options to finish the first two characters into a choice of people to send to. There are a lot of people in that address book it's no longer communicating well with, and once it chooses the wrong one I have to fully delete after multiple tries, try typing it again, and hope this time some stupid algorithm picks a different one or just stays the hell out of the process! For some stupid incomprehensible reason it won't accept a backspace erase of characters on bad addresses. It will accept a full delete of everything, which is my frustration's last resort.  (Well. tossing the laptop across the room is a bit too expensive for my budget, so it's not part of my last resort list. However, if I could locate the one the software Yahoos put their new program on...  That might be worth worsening the pain in my bad shoulder for, right? )

How did I find this out? The first thing I needed to do with the new piece of crap software was type and send a birthday invitation to bunch of people. I finally made a single one successfully, sent it to my husband, and had him forward it in one group-send to all the recipients. He doesn't have Yahoo anymore, switching to Gmail months ago. (Did I need to mention that?)

Meanwhile I had to deal with disappearing messages whenever I hit a shift key to capitalize a new sentence, or addresses that weren't but just put the first letter followed by an X inside parentheses and couldn't be deleted, and about every other thing I could imagine somebody pulling on any given April 1st.

After fighting my way through that, Yahoo had the audacity - or hubris - to ask me for my feedback on their new system. After a couple thoroughly rude but honest paragraphs, including asking them to quit "improving" their system because they weren't, I asked for my old system back.

They've been a bit slow in acknowledging that.

Hey, I wonder of those DOGE boys were fooling around with some new project after Elon was done with them. Or is he actually done.....???????

ADDENDUM:

Having cooled down a bit after venting, I went back to my email out of desperation to explore some more and see what else I could figure out.  Let's just say the results were mixed. I did manage to find my Spam folder. In it was one thing of interest. It said I needed to reactivate my account in the new system, or words to that effect, "click here" (which yielded no noticeable result,) and it had to be done by May 31st. I didn't even get the new stuff until yesterday.  But as soon as I read it I went back to the main page to see if the opportunity for feedback was still up. It was. I used the opportunity:

Are you insane????? You tell me to click to update/activate my account in the new version or face deactivation, and then HIDE IT IN SPAM WITH WARNINGS ?????????

I did, of course, include a link to this.  : )

About Long Covid Anosmia

Steve and I met friends in St. Paul for dinner last night. It was raining very lightly, so little that I didn't bother with the umbrellas I'd put in the car. Walking past some evergreen plantings in the restaurant's  landscaping, he commented on how wonderful they smelled in the light rain, and all the great memories they brought back. Like me, much of his childhood was in or near pine forests.

I told him I know what he meant since I have those memories of that scent. But since covid I no longer smell what I used to enjoy. (Of course I no longer smell what I hate either.) Very rarely does some kind of scent get my attention, like the first grass cutting of the season this month. Subsequent ones in the neighborhood were simply mower noise. I have been with him in the car when he mentions how strong a skunk stink we just passed, and I take a deep breath to see what I might be able to detect. If there is anything, it will be faint and bears no resemblance to the weapon of that adorable black and white fuzzy creature that, when alive, waddles so cutely past. There is the tiniest bit of something, but bears no relation to any skunk, living or dead. Or anything else I can recognize or name. That's on a good day. Otherwise, nothing. If I had a farting dog I wouldn't have a clue, and unless you're noisy, none about you either.

This morning we were again discussing last night, and his reminiscence of the evergreens in the rain. I love that he can still have that as part of his life, and hope mine can someday finally return. He sympathized with me while I rejoiced for him. But I added I might be just a bit selective in my wish for myself, not being over-eager to smell my own stink again!

Probably best to just assume it's still there though, eh?