So That Replacement Card Came......

I knew what it was the second I touched it.  I was disappointed because usually they come with a bit of thin cardboard so a random stranger can't immediately tell what's in the envelope. It's a good invitation for one to disappear for a couple days' worth of unauthorized use. But since I now had it in hand, I guess I couldn't complain too hard.

As soon as I opened it up they almost lost me immediately as a customer, even after all these years. And even though it would hurt my credit rating. Why? When I started reading through for a phone number to call to start the card working, the first thing on their communication was a QR code.

Have  I mentioned here that I don't do QR codes? I mean mention by not more than a dozen or so times?  I suppose it could be a "subtle" ploy to send me out to finally buy an expensive smart phone, figure out how to use the damn thing, add the programming to handle QR codes, learn how to use those, and finally set my new card into use.

Thing is, I pretty much know how much smart phones cost. No thanks. I don't have the credit card to cover one right now, thanks anyway, or not apparently till I use one with the QR code programming to set my new one up for use. Then I might be able to if I chose to do it. I guess some of you are starting to see the issue here, right? Or have you already had your smartphone surgically implanted somewhere in not too embarrassing a location to pull it out from for use in public? I do promise never to ask you where, nor what the logistics are for getting it recharged, or how long it takes to stuff it back where the cop who just pulled you over for using it while driving can't see it, so by the time they walk up to your rolled down car window they have no clue what you might have done with it in those last 5 seconds and are beginning to think you were an optical delusion. Honest!

Because even if you manage to pull that off I don't ever want to know how and never wish to perjure myself in court lying about it. No matter how much I care about you.

But even more pressing a reason is without that card activated I can't use it to buy the new phone I'd need in order to activate it by QR code. Just a tiny little dilemma here, right?

As I peel the card away from the paper it's rubber-glued to, a phone number magically appears. I can actually use old school tech to get my card activated!  WOW! Somewhere in that office there lurks in the shadows a human who actually realizes there are folks out here like me who refuse the universal call to turn ourselves into AI adjacent units of relentless commerce.

I guess I'll keep that company for a while yet.

Among The Not-Rich

 Every so often something comes along to remind me that not being rich has its benefits. Most of the time voices from all over work to persuade you that more money is a good thing, that spending it on whatever you want at any moment is wonderful, and that access to any heart's desire, however fleeting, is ever to be desired. In this country it's typical marketing, backed by the idea that the more you have to spend the more valued you are. Or important. Or something, presumably wonderful.

It's a rare day when a different reality sounds good. I'm not talking about not having enough food, or a home to live in of whatever variety appeals to you in terms of size and possible mobility so long as it is safe shelter, or even not having the price of necessary medical care or education. Sometimes an inexpensive life is just more peaceful, so long as you're not worrying about the true necessities.

We just got a reminder of that in our email boxes today. The mobile home park we live in is located along a lake. There are blessings and benefits to that. For many of our neighbors it means a high annual fee in addition to lot rent to lease dock space during open water season, which is paired with a requirement to relocate your boat whenever ice is a factor. A significant chunk of property here is storage for dock pieces and winter (tarped) boat storage. For most using it, life is made up of two seasons: boats in, boats out. We have no boat so rarely pay attention except to notice changes, the same way we note flocks of birds on the water or flying over it, or colors of the sky reflected in it. Steve can fish regardless, having a favorite spot along his favorite river and a permanent fishing license he earned the hard way. He'll fish from shore near the launch area, with a board on the sand with ridges to keep his folding chair from sliding into the sand and/or tipping, and will love the time spent regardless of catch or company. For him it involves planning and weather, not huge expenses.

So the note in our email caught our attention without being significant in our lives. All boats currently out at our shore docks must be pulled from the water and parked elsewhere (list of qualifying or verboten locations) by early Saturday morning. You will be notified as to when they may be returned. Failure to follow involves consequences (listed).

Now we haven't been here too long, so this is a first for us, even though it doesn't involve us. It turns out to be a climate thing this year. It's been too dry - not that inexperienced eyes might have noted how low lake levels have become. After all, we've had rain on a regular basis, and if I'm watering the gardens it's because of keeping new plantings healthy until they "take', not basic survival.

Now I'm not sure just exactly what we will be doing this coming weekend. For me it likely involves a reliable chair and one good arm pulling weeds. Add hat or sunscreen. For Steve likely some cooking shows on TV or another of his E-books on his laptop. It won't include boating, or fishing (due to crowds on weekends), or much in the way of hard work since my arm still needs to stay in its splint and Steve's hip hasn't been replaced yet. For sure it won't involve dropping whatever weekend plans there might have been to pull a boat out of the water and wait for permission to put it back in.

I did however just receive permission to dig out a tall bearded iris I planted decades ago, and bring it plus offspring over to this newer house's gardens. It's still thriving and blooming, and a fairly unique brassy/bronze color that's always stood out. It's a bit too early yet to dig,  but not too early to make plans for it. Good thing we don't have to move a boat, eh?

We're just not rich enough for those problems.

Early Iris This Year

These have varied and checkered histories. I had my own real gardens to plant back in 1991 back in east central Minnesota. Some things got overdone, some were whatever was cheap or available, some were things I grew up with, or missed because I hadn't. An example of the latter would be blue violets. We left a mobile home park with a tiny garden patch where violets thrived from my unique neglect to a huge yard with no restrictions as to what went in. One of the last things I swiped from the first garden was a small clump of violets. Aside from Arizona, I haven't lived without them since. Many of my neighbors where we are now consider them weeds, and the management hires weed killers to keep the lawns grass... mostly. Score around here has the violets winning, even if mostly in marginal beds where flowers and bushes are encouraged. Statuary as well.  Even various windmills and such. Just keep the weeds out. So in my spring border beds you will see blue violets and scillas announcing their survival of another winter, just ahead of crocus and daffodils, themselves ahead of tulips... and so it goes.

Some of the hardy survivors of that early garden were iris. With permission of the new owner, I dug out a few favorites. The two most removed were a short deep blue iris formerly next to some boulders in front of - from the street - a clump of paper birch. Those were the first bloomers this spring among my iris.

Being the hardiest of the transplants, they were well picked through when this year's new bed was planned. Single plants were often in clumps of five or six tubers, so I marked them while blooming and divided the largest of the clumps for a new home, leaving others around the outside of the raised ring to catch up next year... or try. As low as these are, it may be easy from this photo to note them growing in their own flat leaf foliage as well as clumps of daylilies. Those will be a topic for later this summer. 

I knew I wished more colors in future years. I'd have to wait for more iris to bloom, and should with lots of unique iris foliage in the garden, but meanwhile, a bit of light one-armed work while healing should be good for me, physically and emotionally. So for a while activities combine iris hunting, either at local garden centers or from favorite online sources, with an eye to new varieties as well as photo documenting older ones as they bloomeso I could make fairly intelligent decisions as to where to move things to and from through fall.

The most prolific iris I liked was a reliable pale blue bearded one. It had managed to spread over the years out into the grass and started to surround a huge boulder along the driveway and near the street. Digging up these occurred in three batches, and possibly this last time has finally removed them from the original yard, as desired. One person who was going to be given them as a gift - three different times - allowed them to die twice. A few weeks ago was my last attempt and so far has proven - with some help from her own family - to be successful this time. So far. ( She wonders why I don't share more plants with her.) Note the color is pretty uniform, the beard pale yellow, the petals not very ruffled. I just got an offer from a neighbor to take a few off my hands once she gets her own place for them, but a summer wedding is higher on her agenda.

 

The next iris from last year's transplant to bloom got a lot of attention, even more so than last year. I've also seen it under two different names in the catalogs. I bought this as "All Night Long", referring to the deep purple nearly black in tone, or as close as iris gets. The buds are close to black, giving it that name, but the similar one is called "Sharp Dressed Man". I presume that name comes from the bright orange beard both have. I have no photo with that second name and can't compare them to see if they seem identical or not. I suppose if a plant patent is in dispute, somebody can fight it out. There well may be several ways to similar results.

I have no name for this bloom, spectacular as it is in the garden. It does not match any of the descriptions of what I bought last year. The magenta is vibrant, the center of the falls a very rich blue which matches part of the blue in an otherwise gold and white beard. This was taken its 2nd day when light improved for shooting but petals faded a bit. Either way it was a huge "WOW!" and new stems remain so.

While the last one took our breaths away, it brought us closer to that part of the garden where this one was hiding low. Again, unnamed and undescribed in previous purchases. I found nothing similar in catalog shots. The white and blue are stark contrasts, and it took to the second day of shooting this one to be able to get the tiny yellow ruffle at the top edge of the standards to become visible to the camera. Wrong light? Need more computer foolery? At least there is a hint of it even if more shows to the eye. At least the beard shows yellow if the camera tilts enough to show it better, but that risks falling these days.

The abundance of light blue iris in the garden, like the upper left corner intrusion into this photo, did an excellent job of disguising this gem from us for a day. We kept waiting for it to color up, until good light showed us it had! And I had a name for it: Silverado! It's nearly white, not quite blue except deep where petals leave their stem. I'd been waiting for two years to see this one, and here it is. As differences dawn, we noticed that the petals have more frilled edges than any of the blue iris. Beards are more white. This stalk is full of growing buds, like the one popping up from bottom left, and it will carefully be divided in future years.

Again it was a different iris which pointed us to another one being something other than what we had been looking at already. That burgundy one left us thinking this was another of the same, just somehow lesser.  With a better view, I'd say not lesser, just waiting for differences to show up. Right now I'd say it looks like a sleeping kitten in its standards, and maybe a deep purple pillow supporting its head... plus a very bizarre collection of orange teeth! I'll be keeping a camera on this one and its subsequent blooms for a few days.

Meanwhile I've been placing orders for more. Sometime I'll hope to show what Cherry Fling looks like, and whether it looks as tasty as Butter and Sugar. You'll have to be as patient as I. Meanwhile I'm keeping a list of what is expected, what was ordered last year but not bloomed yet, and figuring out which daylilies will be gifted to others while they insist on multiplying 5 times faster than the iris do!

If I have to move again, I'll be sure I know where to dig for what to keep!

Getting A Replacement Card

It's not my first time needing a card replaced. Stuff happens, not everybody is honest. Even if they all were, other things come along requiring replacement sets of numbers. I've been with a particular credit card company over 20 years now. There has never been a problem replacing one, although my credit union goes way above & beyond the charge card company in simple terms of speed for putting a new card in my hand vs. waiting for the mail system to pop one in my mail stream. I can walk into my credit union lobby, any of over a dozen locations,  ask for a new card without a reason, have the old card cancelled and a physical new card in hand in five minutes... unless the line at the tellers windows is a bit longer. And one does have to actually get in the door to take advantage of that speed. It could mean over an hour round trip, possibly depending on a pre-filled gas tank, or desire to stop and taste somebody else's cooking. The first time that happened, card in my hand in minutes after walking in, it surprised the heck out of me. I'm so used to Steve's former banking system taking over a week to issue one to him... but he's now joined my credit union for its many advantages. No names dropped here, but I think his old cards were delivered via their stagecoach. Considering how often replacements were required, there may well have been an increase of bandits holding them up as they crossed through the old wild west. I guess they were a bit slow to the table for e-shipping gold bars across the country.

So this is not any kind of a complaint. I know, odd accents can be annoying when you're not sure you are communicating with another  person at some major call center in  particular.  While this person at the call center had an accent he also made sure I knew I was understood, and that he was as well. When I asked a question he had a prompt answer, every time. Unlike many people on the other end of that phone call he refrained from trying to up-sell me on their services. I appreciated that. Too many call-in services just can't leave that script where it belongs, in a bonfire somewhere, polluting the atmosphere. Not that I'm in favor of polluting, just believe up-selling a long term customer is wasteful. If I wanted to add services I'd have done it years ago. Neither of us is new to their system. Both of us can read.

Today I got the expected prompt internet survey on how did I like their company's performance in responding to my request? Hmmm, just fine, but with caveats. It's been too short a time for my new card to show up. I'm not disappointed today - yet - by the process taking the time it needs. But what happens if I change my mind? Say, if the mail is an extra two days late and I'm needing that new card already? I have no way to get back to them now with that bit of feedback, other than placing another phone call, and that puts my initial satisfaction level at a mathematically higher level than it had just become. By then if I am unhappy it's a whole new issue, for I just informed them I was 100% OK with their services, when now I'm only 50% OK. Lest you think the two balance out, note that my optimism for this call is already 50% impaired, while the combination of the two calls registers as 75% satisfied while I'm still believing in promises made, as opposed to maybe 63% unsatisfied  now until it comes to pass. The"when" of asking that question is significant. Add two more days now. My satisfaction might be a lowly 10% while my overall optimism is bouncing down at, say, 27%. The figures are unsteady, changing with promises kept, not promises made. All kinds of other pressures, moment to moment, vary them. Did I miss a deadline for a special sale, for example? Or perhaps been saved from my own impulsiveness?

Somebody in Marketing found a way to fudge the books... or will have by the time I know I'm disappointed with them. Tsk tsk tsk!  Now if they made that survey satisfaction call several days after they fell down on the job I'd know I was unhappy, but that doesn't get a chance to register. How much you want to bet another follow-up call is never made to find out what's happening when a full report is possible, meaning card is in hand?  

Same here.

Sneakey...........  

So how long till the Marketing person who found out the way to fudging the books on company satisfaction gets promoted to a higher enough salary that the head honcho starts looking at them favorably enough to promote them to the rank of "desired family-in-law member"? Just asking, FYI. I have my own collection of desired inlaws already, thank you, and none of it was dependent of sneaky financial manipulations on anybody's part. Just acceptance, kindness. communication.... Human traits.