Will This Election Season PLEASE END?

 First, yes we plan to vote, on the day of, in our small town where crowds just don't exist in mid-morning. Most times we head in we are outnumbered by poll workers. From parking to driving away it takes all of ten minutes. OK, maybe more if nobody sees that Steve needs a hand getting out of their very low chairs set out for "help" for those mildly disabled, the ones who don't need to come from their vehicle in their own mobility transportation. He can walk in, but for the decisions and marking the ballot he needs a break, sitting. Then he needs a helper. Sometimes I need to request one for him. The place is often so slow the poll workers are off chatting about weather, or crops, or some sports game, or how sad they are this fishing season is over. Good thing those conversations are easily interrupted.

Our decisions were made months ago, for all candidates with a party affiliation. Nothing airing on TV is going to change our minds. We stay informed all year, every year. So this 11th hour blitz of poison during every single commercial break is only making us angry. Lies only make us dig in  deeper.

This is the time of year we love the fact that we can prerecord everything we view on network TV channels.  We can pause, mute, skip, or whatever we need to do to eliminate the poison ruining our peace. We're very well practiced from normal commercials, avoiding them all on a regular basis. If we can't manage to get to the controls in time, we are deluged with even more reasons to stick with our original choices, even if just out of pique!

Apparently candidates and parties have way more money in hand than they know what to do with, so now they're finding new ways to try to get to us. First emails started to carry the crap. I turn on my laptop after several hours away or in the morning to see if any are interesting before I go elsewhere, perhaps what is important that I "might have missed"  - however rare- because most of the really important messages don't come with time pressure. (Seems counter intuitive, doesn't it?) Important ones will be something like a new set of test results from the doc are now posted on their secure site for me to look at. If any were truly urgent there'd be a phone call. Or there might be a reminder that a bill will be $X dollars this month (please pay by _____).  Or there might be some news from friends or family. Those are important.  Now I'm deluged by political ads, not just one or two a day from each Candidate Y, but repeated ones from many of them. Recently they just added the information - as if I might have forgotten - that records show I am a registered voter who votes regularly, and an election is imminent.

Tell me: How many people in this country have missed the fact that a major election happens Tuesday?Are any of them over three? Or under 110?

How many campaign managers believe that deluging me with whatever about their candidate so frequently that I have to spend an unreasonable amount of time clearing my email just to make it usable again is going to persuade in in a positive direction?

Who really thinks I need 8 reminders every day that there's an election coming up? Even if they aren't pushing any candidate, just the fact of me needing to show up? Is there any unlucky human in this country who is just awakening out of a coma to find out an election is happening just around the corner? More, one who can jump up and run over to plaster their ballot with well thought-out decisions, or in lieu of those, will succumb to the influence of this blast of commercials because this is apparently their target audience?

This last week, and presumably into some ugly infinity, the way it's going, I've been getting texts on my non-smart flip phone. It tends to get clogged up with a lot of crap, and stops performing as a phone any more, the only reason I really use it. I can't even answer it when I'm driving these days, which is bad enough when I can't pull over safely to check importance.  But if somebody sends a waited-for voicemail, I can't tell until I wade through all the crap, and then listen to an actual voice. If it was important, we're both SOL.

Somebody, please wake me up gently Wednesday morning with the reassurance that this whole nightmare is finally over. And by that I'm truly hoping the news is good regarding who won, as well as that all the deciding is now done for two more years!!!!!

NOT Shopping On eBay

I wanted to, honest. I had a very particular item in mind I wanted to replace, and knowing it was older, thought eBay might stand a chance of having it. I've been shopping there for decades, as long as I had a computer capable of doing so and a card accepted by PayPal.

By now I'm convinced if I had searched that item, I'd start to see ads blocking all  kinds of non-commercial sites  by covering patches of the data or information I wanted to look at. It just happened to me a couple days ago with ads on a different item (SHAME ON YOU, ETSY!) on my usual local weather site, the one which has local radar, even if it gets it wrong on the boundaries of where rain is actually falling. These days I have to do a really quick view of high and low temperatures for today and tomorrow , or they'll be covered with ads. Every time I pull it up! It normally offers ten day information on a chart, and hourly information for the current day on a different chart. I can't view them anymore, or maybe get just  one set of numbers before they're covered.

I was a bit reluctant to check on eBay, but figured what I wanted to replace might just narrowly be there if it could be found anywhere. It might be worth the risk of being flooded by unstoppable ads.  But now  this new frustration from eBay prevented any search at all. I couldn't even get on the site.

First it asked me to click in a small box to "prove" I was human. I did. It asked again. I did again. Usually one was enough, but now two? OK, that should do it. Right?

Nope!

Next I got the box of squares with fuzzy photos in them asking me to click in each one that fits in a category. I'm used to "all the bicycles" or "all the buses". 

This time the pictures were fuzzy. One had a spray bottle, no kind of label so I'd know what it had inside, and asked me to click on all the squares I'd use the bottle on. First, I don't have nor use spray bottles. So many of the squares were too fuzzy to properly identify -was that a flower a vase or pot in front of a pretty setting? Or a picture of one? Why would I spray either one? Neither with a cleaner, possibly yes if it held water but absolutely not if it were a picture. There were also possible buildings or tools or toys like Legos. My guess was they were hard plastic toys and I might spray them if I were one of those germaphobes who went around sanitizing my kids total world. Whatever I tried, it didn't work and I got too disgusted with the stupidity of the game to bother trying to use the website. 

Sorry eBay. If you can't figure out how to separate actual paying customers from cons or unbridled AI, giving the humans a reasonable chance with clear pictures, you really don't need my business. Your sellers lose out. Your potential buyers - like me - go elsewhere or decide whatever they're shopping for just isn't that important.

Trump Sent Me A Letter !!!!

OK, that's what the typing said. It came in the mail yesterday when I was busy, and had a totally different return address on the envelope. Nothing yet to draw my attention, but I don't throw ALL of those out without looking at them. At least when I do they go into the recycle bin.

The first mailing from my prescription company, from last week, indicated some changes in next year's medical insurance plans. Part D in short. Today's other  piece of mail was also from my prescription insurance company. I opened that first, they had just informed me that their formulary for which drugs are categorized how in terms of my out of pocket costs were going to be for each regular medication I'm on now. Two of them were going up. 

What else! Anybody expect their costs to go down?  Really? Care to share what you're smoking?

This piece of mail simply said I would need to find a different company for next year. 

Now that is just annoying enough in its own message, just after saying costs were going to rise. But I'm betting somebody in the corporate offices just might to want to give a thought to the high costs of of a huge mass mailing  just before a follow-up mass mailing says something making the first totally irrelevant? Is the rise in costs supposed to cover that nonsense? Is that your business plan? Especially now that I'm not paying your company a red cent next year?

OK, time to read the other letter, actually from today's mail. First thing I noticed was that it was sent out weeks ago. I guess DOGE did a bang-up job of clearing waste ... uh, useful, experienced people... out of the postal system. Several weeks? Holy Shi..... well, you get the point. The content claimed to be from Trump, giving some indecipherable illogical excuse for why he's sending me $90.  

I'd heard "he" was giving out $90  checks to seniors. First, not checks, but deposits just like Social Security gets paid. But is the $90 significant? Say, another attempt at a bribe for voting for him next month? OK, he's not on the ballot, but acts like he is. Be honest here: his real fear is he'll be impeached by a Democratically leaning congress, and suddenly have to face the consequences of the Epsein Files. And nothing in the letter really explained why now, why that amount, and why he had to stick his name in the first couple sentences.

It couldn't be him. The man is sundowning. He can't express coherent thoughts, aside from who he hates (super long list) and who he loves (Putin). The letter was written by a much more cogent hand. It won't increase my SS payment next year, nor help the drop in it that Congress's COLA is supposed to protect us from. That's Cost Of Living Adjustment, if you didn't have to  know that yet. I suspect he wants to appease us in advance - or his handlers do - when we find out all too soon that Social Security is running out because he's tapping every penny he can grab in his fist for himself and for his disasters of monuments in DC and the government no longer can continue paying us from the funds we paid into all the years of our working lives.

It does manage to throw in his usual lies, like how important we all are to him, when we know he's the only one important to him, unless we offer huge bribes. It did manage to make his illegible pointy "signature" at the bottom. Of course, when we see it, it's several inches wide and pretty tall, about the only thing one can pick out in the scritchy-scratch mess. This one is a quarter that size, both directions.

When I finished reading the page, I carefully set it in the trash. Now, note that the paper was clean and pristine. Around here that goes into recycling. But why pollute the recycling stream with that?

So... My Email system Made Some Changes....

 My fingers are sore. You know, the ones that had to keep hitting the "delete" button a few thousand times.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

They sent me the notice of change by email  in the new format they've decided to use. Luddite that I am in many things, I wish they would have left the option open for continuing with the old system. My fingers  knew what to hit where and why. Now any single stroke has to be researched first. Where are they hiding the symbol for this? Or that? Or yet another thing? Whatever the "spam" symbol is now, I'm not finding it and have to try to recall the longer version of how to accomplish that. Every time.

About four days into it, I'm actually beginning to find their new placements. (See, not totally hopeless.) I found the inbox, the delete button, and most everything else, though SPAM is still a horse on the Kentucky Derby's track in new locations each time I think I've got it. And boy, do I get spam!

Tonight I decided to settle in and tackle my unasked-for new/old email system. First thing was they allowed me the old version of light background with dark characters and symbols. Dark isn't the same color as last time, so I'm not fond of it, or not yet, and it jars whenever I open it. I may decide to go back to the white background. Maybe. Perhaps that option lept out the window once used. 

(Did I mention that one of the first things I did locate was where/how to give them feedback on  the changes? You are  guessing that I took advantage of it, aren't you?)

I got a bunch of SPAM today, the kind I've been told is just a way to test if there is a real somebody to try to fleece at this combination of letters and symbols. Most of it is recognizable as SPAM from a collection of random letters, numbers, upper and lower cases, along with symbols posing as an email address. Other "interesting" emails come in from dead people. I know, since I visited one of them in hospice and attended her funeral. They think I'll believe she's still sending me photos every few days out of her box of ashes. Intriguing view from there, no doubt, but I choose to pass. I'm just not curious enough to wonder what those pictures would look like. Both of my sons supposedly send me photos, but neither of them ever has. Ever.  And somehow there are still fools out there that think I'm in the market for penis enhancers. I have all the penis I need, thank you very much, but it just isn't mine to choose that for. I firmly believe that's for each individual owner of one to decide for by themselves. And no, I'm not going to forward those emails.

I did mention sore fingers a few paragraphs ago. I make it a point to regularly clean out my trash and spam folders. With this new change, somehow every single old spam email and deleted actual email came along with it. I had well over 800 just in the inbox, 4 of which were new, and another half dozen read but saved, all that was showing before their changeover. Over 800??????

WTF???

My "sent box" still claims to have 3400  outgoing messages in it, but again, those are supposed to be long gone and done with. Tonight I had the patience to clean out incoming emails for the second time, going back over three years to where we were collecting bids for ways to get our belongings shipped north for our move, communications with our realtor, and notices about our solar bills. They also had one side of the conversations I held with my former email penpal, up to the time he no longer could reach a keyboard. I knew we communicated regularly but there were over 600 just from him! He was a climate change geek, in the best possible way to mean that, and shared all the latest data and links, plus little tidbits on health or his art, which he was no longer able to do. Seeing it all in one continuous feed, I was overwhelmed by how long it had been going on. As a process, I just noted the sender and if questions, the subject. If my keyboard were noisy, one could have heard taps less than a second apart.

I was also annoyed by how long the email company had been keeping them all. Hey, it's good when Blogspot does that, but not when mail does. I have to wonder if those are actually deleted even now, while my fingers are tingling from the work, or will they pop up again sometime? 

For now, my inbox claims to have 5 messages in it, read and unread combined, and spam claims to be empty. But tomorrow or sometime soon I'm going to warm up my fingers again and delete my Sent box. Yep, all 3400 alleged emails in it! Well, maybe not 5 or so.

After my fingers stop tingling, of course.

If I feel that patient. It will be raining then, after all.....

Fueled On Rage

  Call it "fighting with" my computer if you will. First, it's ancient in the opinion of all those who'd love to sell me a new one. Hey, it still (mostly) works, OK? But apparently I've overloaded my photo library memory. It was to the point  where I'd be blithely typing along (OK, young'uns, keyboarding if you must. It's still a qwerty keyboard, just with some new symbols.) But all of a sudden despite typing as usual nothing would show up on the screen. I'd have to stop, go back and read to figure out what I had been trying to say, and plug it in at the right place. At times it would be 7 or 10 dropped characters, other times other numbers. In short, just ANNOYING! Piling on where piling on was the last thing needed!

I figured I'd overloaded my photos storage. (Need I say DUH! ?) No surprise since I haven't been purging it enough lately, but using it heavily, sending out daily photo filled shots to a friend. That's taken up time often spent elsewhere. She is no longer communicating, so I'm fearing the worst for her... or possibly in her circumstances and with her beliefs, going on to the best. I also am working on a project for the upcoming holidays, using my own photos, tailored  to recipients individually. I'm beginning to understand what "painstaking" has its roots in. Continuous frustration does become rage, with varying results, like no ability to set the cause of it down, it's own kind of pain, it's own set of results.

The people on my list are a very eclectic bunch, so I'm finding individual combinations for each of them. And no, no hints of the nature of the project. It starts with trying to figure out what would appeal to each individual or couple, thinking back to what I've shot over the decades of going digital, and worst of all, locating the photos I think I have. I already have been filling up thumb drives, each with a specific type of shot or location during out travels. Whoever invented thumb drive could make it a hell of a lot easier! Once I plug one in, what comes up are rows and rows and rows of tiny rectangles in a grid pattern. If they have some order it's not apparent, except perhaps by order taken, since while fighting with it all is identified by the sequential numbers the camera gives each shot as it's taken. So... I changed digital cameras a couple times in my years of shooting. No camera has any way I know of to communicate with another camera what the last number was. How do they avoid duplicate numbers? If you told me I only used one SD card and kept recycling it I could see that happening. I confess to that a couple times. But I change those too. Since they can record time and dates to print on pictures, they must connect with operating wifi  or cell systems. One time I found all my photos showing up with date and time stamps. I had no idea how that happened and dug for a while for how to "correct" that... for next time. Cropping fixed it on already taken photos. Occasionally the cropping needed would spoil the photo. Sigh.....

 Did I mention these cameras were the same model and none of them came with a manual? Or that I was buying them, after the first one, online, listed as refurbished?) They are much cheaper that way, and muscle memory is a great way to use equipment you depend on when you're concentrating on getting the shot instead of  taking a pause, fiddling with camera controls. If you have to think about the controls chances are you've already missed the shot. I practically never shoot subjects that stand still and pose. OK, scratch that: mostly flowers stand still. That bird is flying or swimming or hunting.Those clouds are moving and changing the light. Wind blows, leaves drop, bees fly away, kids are perpetual motion machines. And seasons change.

All that concerns getting the photos. I wouldn't be here with a problem if that first part had been mostly overcome. The current problems are finding the photos to use for the project, out of thousands.

When I open up a thumb drive, what pops on my screen are lots of short rows of teeny tiny rectangles. They start with a logo on them instead of a photo. If you can't clear that, it won't open at all. As long as the same camera was used, the logo is the same on every single one. It takes a while, usually imperceptible,  to lose the logo and "see" something under a half inch by 3/16th inch which holds, potentially, 16 megapixels of data. It just looks like a blob of some over-all color or tiny bits of different ones. No clue yet as to the contents of each one. I have to click here and there, opening a selection to get an idea, first, of where the ones I'm looking for landed on the thumb drive,  then where they were taken. That might get me a when. 

When? I can't tell a when at first glance? OK, how many times have I stopped for a couple days at Rocky Mountain National Park? How many trips to Crex? To the Gilbert Water Reserve? To northern Arizona? Utah parks? The back yard as the plants and passing critters change? Since Alaska, Florida, and Oregon were unique enough to not be worth their own thumb drives, some of those photos might be on a drive with scenery, others on a drive with people. Take Oregon: the seaside pics are on one thumb drive, the wedding photos, the reason we were there in the first place, are on one labeled for people. I even have one drive I kicked videos off to, nice to see if one is very tolerant of bumpy jerky motions. Sigh. I'm not even including any of those, even to edit out a single frame. Getting a bit of information without having to search an entire thumb drive or series of them could make the job much easier!

Are you starting to see how the frustration builds? It's just starting.

I have ten thumb drives to sort through at the moment, now that I've tossed out the ones that no longer send the signal to the laptop that they exist and can be opened? I'm supposed to see a logo and, say, "empty" if no pics are on it. Or AK. Or MN. Or RMNP since, just from shots taken there over the years, it's earned more than a full thumb drive on its own. Others land on Miscellaneous Travels.  That would be drives #1 or #2, so far. I have tried to tape a tiny paper indication on the outside of the drives. The tape is only so wide and if taped crosswise instead of lengthwise,where it might actually do some good, it prevents me sliding the connector forward to insert. It may have departed once that tiny bit of tape dried and hitchhiked to Elsewhereland. Each drive without a tag must be checked. Some are disposed of when nothing indicates they exist once I insert them. Not even if I wait five minutes. How do you open something that insist it doesn't exist? If anybody has a solution for that, let me know. For me, it's toss and replace, fingers crossed that it's not been ruined like the Crex backups. I'm getting adjusted to that particular loss but it still bites, especially when I remember some of the really good shots that were on that drive, like bald eagle close-ups. Reminders don't improve the mood.

Over a week later I've manged to find most of the shots I remember for the project. I pulled them off their thumb drives and parked them on my desktop with a new name. It's easier to locate them again when they're labeled, say, "elk1" and "elk2" up  to "elk10" and so on. Then those got collected and gone through again, kicking out the ones not good enough or not for the particular project, and pulled off the desktop either for a new thumb drive or sent into my main photo library.  For days I fought to get them back into my library from a thumb drive, but my laptop won't take them in like it does off an SD card. (I call that process "insert SD and the library sucks it all up."  Or, "insert and suckup" for short. Trial and lots of grindingly annoying error finally showed me I could click and drag a stacked pile of them, turned into a unit by drawing the cursor nonstop over the stack, which can then be clicked and dragged into an open photos library. I often do that when tossing them to trash, so I'm familiar with the technique, just now delighted that it works to input them to the photo library for editing. Suddenly I could crop old photos again for new purposes!! Or make light and color changes like I do with every raw photo arriving there! Some change colors a bit in storage for years, especially sitting for months in a hot PODS.

Then I got to the place where certain attempts to do anything in the photos library made the program crash. I could go back in and discover most of my photos had landed, but certain ones I found important were no longer either on the desktop or in the library. I know exactly which ones they are, but there is a repeat of the job ahead in going back to those tiny hard-to-decipher tiny rectangles and locate the ones previously sitting on my desktop all over again. Was that particular one in the MN file? Or a National Park file? Or AZ? Or even the People one because it combined two themes?

I placed certain select "probably" pics on a special thumb drive, used for taking pics to get printed, like for X-mas cards over the years. It's easy to pick out because it has a "tail" that curls a round in a loop so I can slip a finger into it and keep it in possession while fiddling with the machine to select its choices for what I'm there for this time. Who needs to hunt all over a store's floor to find a dropped drive? It had been hard enough to pick out these. It works just as well for taking print files to my home printer, hooked up to another, older laptop reserved for that use and the only one which works with my old printer. Just text files however. It's old enough that it doesn't do photos, never mind colors. I need photographic quality prints, best done in a properly equipped store. I'd hate to have to do the hunt all over again for a photo after changing direction. The missing picture I really need right now is on one of three possible thumb drives... somewhere. I know it's there. I saw it three days ago now. It was taken on our "free again to move because we have our covid shots" extended vacation trip, with Covid hitting all kind of national parks nearly empty of visitors and rangers both, a great photo op time we took good advantage of. Elk slept next to ranger checkpoints, no waiting in long lines to get into the right space for that particular shot of landscape, and yet somehow the restrooms still got cleaned... enough. Fantastic trip, whole lotta shots, bunch of thumb drives to go through for my hunt for that one perfect photo.

It was hours past my bedtime so I tried to give myself a break. As I tossed and turned, obsessing over a few particular photos, I couldn't sleep. There was nothing to do but get back up and head back to the computer and drives and sort out what I could. I resulted in getting some progress, and eventually two hours of actual sleep before the need to continue while I could remember what was lost, and change some plans of which shot to use where while I could still recall my plan. I quickly typed notes to myself to keep the new details.

Giving up on all sleep, I also popped up with a "must-do-this-first" plan. Obviously I couldn't afford new memory right now, helpful as a few terabytes might be. Property taxes come first and in a couple weeks. In the overall scheme, I can try a small version of my plan to do a test on the overall concept. But meanwhile, I need to pull photos out off the computer's photo library and load another, empty, thumb drive first!

The choice was easy. I had recently gone through and purged some old ones where I had too many duplicates by choosing better ones out of, say seven, of which one or maybe two were worth keeping. Since I was putting some back in for the project, and the system kept crashing, it still wasn't empty enough. One category was the primary culprit: flowers. Each new season the same flowers enchant me all over again. Maybe this year in different light, or it's got a different backdrop, or.... It was time to locate an empty thumb drive that would still identify itself, then change it's title from "empty" to "flowers".  

As I started that, the system was still crashing too often. I could always pull it up again, but where I was pulling from was the oldest of its files and it reopened at the most recent. There was a whole damned lot of scrolling each time back to  the earliest. Three minutes wasted each time? Ridiculous! And adding more irritation into the whole project. I had a fix to help that however. Lots of my photos of flowers either had been winnowed down to one on its own like, or maybe two (as I thought erroneously at the time) or had just enough shots in it to overflow one full line and drop a single or double down to the next. I could start from the bottom, for one thing, keeping the post-crash scrolling as short as possible, and fairly quickly clear those out by a line at a time, prioritizing short lines, erasing them from the library. So that's what I did. Mind you, I still hadn't slept more than that two-hour bit in 2 days, so I cleaned up just just the short lines and called it a night. At least the vertical or scrolling distance was significantly shortened, time and irritation saved. It still manages a crash, but much more rarely.

After, finally, a reasonable amount of sleep, plans back in place for making the job easier while still an enormous time-killer, I stopped being fueled by rage. There will be more purging flowers EXCEPT those taken at Crex. There will be another photo contest next year, and the next, and previous years photos remain eligible. Wildflowers are always a category. I'm still pissed that the thumb drive labeled for their caegory was one of the "I don't exist" drives and had to be tossed. The others hadn't been labeled at all, so I'm consoling myself that they are blank anyway. But I still have some previously selected out photos that need to be found again.... somewhere. Once the purging of flowers is complete, I'll be back up to the job. Or rather, the photo library will.

OK, OK: both.

That Change-Of-Insurance Time of Year Again

Phooey!

I'm so glad I don't have to deal with it. I'm on straight Medicare, plus the additional "Cadillac" supplement plan. It's such a good deal that the government discontinued it, although the plan is grandfathered in for those already on it. Yeah, the price of the latter goes up each year, but it's certainly been giving me my money's worth since I first got it. I get the medical costs summary sheets in the mail. They tell me what kind of unearthly costs I've pulled out of the system since the last letter, what regular Medicare knocked them down to as a permissible charge - which they accept just to get patients and at least some money promptly. Then the forms list how much of that Medicare pays for, which is still just a percentage  of the allowed cost. After that I see what my "Cadillac" plan kicked in. Finally is the best of the news: how little I myself have to pay. Most of the time it's zero.

I've been putting that to damn good use this last year and a half! It reminds me of the year I had three cardiac procedures weeks apart.

On the other hand, Steve puts his faith in his Medicare "Advantage" plan. It covers most things, but it tells you which doctors you can see, which hospitals you have to go to, barring a life-and-death emergency, and follows other stipulations. As a result he's paying off several medical bills for individually agreed upon prices every month. He's had a tough year.

Just to add insult to injury, they sent out the dreaded letter informing him he's going to have to pick a new insurance plan starting in January. He had a better plan the previous year, but that company sent him the dreaded letter as well. We are both used to shopping around for Part D plans, the ones covering medications. It seems each plan covers different percentages of different medications, likely dependent on how the pharmaceutical companies change their prices each year, or what restrictions the governments puts on prices for say, insulin. My letter on Part D changed my cost on several medications next year by small amounts each, from no cost to under $5 each. It will be a nuisance, but not more.  Steve's Part D is included in his "Advantage" plan, and will be what the new company says it is. No separate shopping around, either a benefit or a disadvantage. We'll see.

He got on the phone this afternoon, calling back on one of those flyers getting sent out by alternative companies. Ironically, the company that just kicked him out was among them. Good old left-hand, right-hand, no brain between. Or maybe it's just cheaper to sent one out to EVERYBODY on a large list. 

His call lasted around an hour. They had lots of questions for him, he had lots for them. This time he found out our primary doc isn't on their list of acceptable doctors, what they call "in network". They did have one about a mile closer. I'm keeping the one I have, thank you. I like her for my needs. Even more, I'm willing to sit in the waiting room a bit longer knowing she takes several extra minutes listening to her patients to get the full picture of their condition and needs.  But Steve called the clinic to make a get-acquainted visit with the new plan's recommended in-network doc. Yes, she's going to get paid by the old insurance now, and seamlessly (we hope) switch over to his new plan next year. He'll visit her in a few days to check her out. 

I hope she works out for him. I was on an "Advantage" plan early in my time of being on Medicare, just one year. I was given a list of possible "in network" doctors. Of those fairly nearby, I heard over and over that they weren't taking any new patients. The last on the list, farthest away, was open to more customers. I quickly found out why. His waiting room was nearly empty each time I went, and I was getting weekly blood tests there while on a blood thinner and needing testing. He had almost no personality, never asked how I was doing, just announced test numbers and whether I should change the dose. 

The minute Steve got a doc he really liked was just after I switched back onto "real" Medicare, so I switched to that same doc just a few blocks away. My next change was the one required by our relocating 1800 miles away. Just too long a commute!

What's fun is when various medical services back where we lived three years ago still reach out trying to remind me I need their services again. All have been notified that we no longer live in the state.  No, I'm not going there for an eye check, or a mammogram, or anything else! Sure, it would be covered. But how about the mileage, and cost of a motel and eating out?

It Rained... Again... No, Honest!

I know last time it rained things were just a little bit disappointing. I mean, five drops? I'm not sure if that was better or worse than no rain at all.

A few days ago - too busy to notice it then - much less write about it - there was most of a day and some of the night full of light but steady-ish rain. I'd been busy with computer issues, and wasn't really paying attention except to be grateful I had an excuse to avoid outside chores after the last batch left my unused muscles sore, and concentrate on the computer. Then of course there was a modest family party to plan and prepare for, kind of a conglomeration of birthdays plus celebrating the new porch/stairs combo being finished. 

Was it really only Wednesday that the rolling garbage bin had to be brought back from the street after weekly emptying and tucked discretely out of sight again? I finally had cooperative weather to move it out and back long enough to stay dry myself for both moves. It was my final return to the house after all that was finished that I noticed the blob of red in the garden. With no flowers currently blooming, it stands out, even if the forecast freeze hadn't materialized. It's where the rain gauge sits, poked into the ground next to the border, mostly free of all foliage. 

It's one of those with a wide top and a narrower tube, so amounts are exaggerated to the eye but marks give the actual amount. Each inch of rain fills about four inches of tube. The tube can be lifted out of its holder to drain and easily replaced. Altogether it's so much easier to use, read, and empty than a plain tube. There is another piece of floating plastic in the tube, rising and lowering depending on how much water is sits on, also red for easy viewing from the house without having to head outside in the rain unless one chooses, generally done after rain ends. If it's more than five inches, the tube is too full to be accurate. Not that it happens around here, but hey, just gotta explain. Whenever possible I buy those for wherever home is, even Phoenix. It does occasionally rain there too.

This time it actually registered an inch on the gauge. Real rain! After so many disappointments all summer, and despite heading out and back in several times refilling the garbage and recycling bins, or in and out of the car running errands, I left that little proof of moisture actually arriving this time sitting in the bottom of that tube.We had a whole inch of rain!

I suppose next time some is forecast, I'll actually have to go out and empty the tube first. I'll want to know how much the forecasters are lying about rain totals next time! For now I'm just enjoying it.

I Just Walked Out Of Walmart... ARGGHHHH!!!

I walked in with expectations of finding an employee to answer some questions for me. Up to today, it's been my experience that most employees are helpful. Of course most of my questions simply refer them to their hand-held units telling them which row in the store the item I need  is in... this time. The store seems to play a sadistic game of moving things all over every few weeks, whether an aisle or a whole department. When I ask, they are  very friendly, and if I can no longer reach that high to get it, help is at hand.

When I walked out, I was fuming. I'd been prepared for a wait, for complications, and for a long time working through exactly what I wanted. I left fuming and looking for a new vendor. (It looks like Etsy can fill the bill.)

I have a plan I've been working on regarding presents for people. It's getting about that time. I'm not making sterling jewelry any more. I have no access to a kiln these days to work on glass fusion projects.  What I do have in great plenty are photos, mostly nature photos since I rarely shoot people. I could be there ostensibly to record their activities - and have been many times with growing grands and great-grands - when something else will draw my attention. If we're having a bonfire for the gathering, like years ago at what in now my son's house, the camera almost mandatorily turned to capturing the flames. If we were at a vacation spot, the people could do their thing and I'd be shooting scenery, whether flowers, weather, mountains, rivers, or critters if they would hold still enough. If they were fishing I'd go for the lake or river or the actual fish. Perhaps the person was needed to hold it, just for proof of size... or lack thereof. Sometimes the trail of line across the water with resulting ripples was more interesting.

I've been going through them with my project in mind, looking to find the "right" photos for each person, based on what I know about what they like to look at. I won't say more because some of them actually read this! But I came across the information that Walmart's photo department could actually produce what I wanted.

Special preparation was needed. Almost none of what I have planned limits me to a single photo. So I've been very busy in my photo library, well over 5,000 files as I started. I had already pulled hundreds of photos out to make space for new, putting them on a collection of thumb drives. Others got tossed as unworthy to even return to and look at myself. My camera shoots 16 megapixel files, pretty dense if uncropped for things like piling into emails, or ever sending video to somebody. (Yes, I've seen that it can be done, just never shown how to do it myself. Search "lizard porn". My footage, somebody else's work to make a file small enough to go online.) Recently my laptop has been struggling when I'm writing something. It's not the typos: I take full responsibility for those. But I'll be typing away and the letters will stop appearing on the page. No cue, no warning, just white space. 

I concluded I was keeping it way too busy. So first thing was to weed out what was possible. Seventeen pictures of something?  Surely I can purge a strong majority of those. I find that I tend to be fascinated by certain subjects, to the point where another person might take two shots and note that my library holds dozens of the same thing over the years. Like my favorite daffodil, for example , a frilly double in white and orange. This double is my favorite shot, with others I haven't gotten to yet to purge.

Like Steve, I like to shoot dead trees, whether standing or sprawled across the ground, like this sensuous beauty:

Or this complicated hulk:

And of course I shoot sandhill cranes whenever possible.

So my first and most frustrating task was clean out the library. I'm down a thousand-plus shots at the moment, with about half left to go through. The issue with keeping text registering is better, but I can still be a couple sentences ahead of where the last letter gave up in frustration before I notice. So the side job is both rewarding and frustrating at the same time.

 My plan involved combining photos on whatever topic, but I had questions, involving size and spacing. I had been warned that their machines would crop and arrange the photos as it chose, not necessarily as I'd choose. And I'm really, really fussy! To me several combinations only worked a single way with a specific layout. I needed to talk to a real person, somebody familiar with the process and how the software works before I committed to spending a chunk of change. I had a thumb drive of photos in my pocket to start the process.

I walked up to the electronics counter, holding the experts and cashier for all electronics including the photo center. Nobody was there except one person cashiering in the department. Usually it keeps two busy. The line was long, and I excused myself from where I've moved up to in it and wandered back to photo to see if there was anything there to answer some of my specific questions. 

First question was answered: nobody had been hiding in here, busy with something, anything. The next thing to catch my eye was a price list sitting out near a picture of the media for my desired project. I'd been in a couple weeks earlier when there was an actual human. The first thing that slapped me in the face was that prices for what I wanted had just doubled! Ouch! Do I need to reconsider? 

An employee approached, pulling items out of a basket and putting them into a cart, obviously to be moved elsewhere. I asked her did she work in this section or just passing through on other store business? For all I knew what she'd picked up were returns or for some other reason needed to get off the floor. She answered it was her station. 

Now hearing that, wouldn't one expect some kind of familiarity with the merchandise? Especially since every year going there for photo greeting cards, the equipment and programming were overhauled and for luddites like me there had to be some kind of help. In answer to my question I was told to look at the material laid out on the counter. Yeah, been here long enough to have done that. All it showed were pictures of somebody else's irrelevent types of  projects, and those glaringly offensive new prices. In short, she didn't know, didn't want to bother to find out, and didn't care. She walked away to prove it.

In response, off I went to the pharmacy, a line I thought I'd be waiting in anyway to pick up a meds refill for Steve, a good use of my time while the hoped for project got a go. One hour service was a possibility, per a previous discussion with a different employee. Then I walked out, returned to fuming, after a time out for the pleasant interaction in pharmacy.

I have other ideas and questions other people can - I hope - answer for me on the strictly photo side, like can two photos be fused into one on a laptop (mine or theirs) so I'd have control of location of each in relation to each other, margins touching? And if so, how?  Or how do I get a photo off the thumb drive and back into my laptop library so I can do  some different cropping to get a product with different size requirements? My system takes photos off an SD card but has no interest in accepting one off a thumb drive so I can crop it differently... or anything else I need. I can, once it's on the desktop, the only place that I can get to hold it, pop it into an email or this blog. I just can't change it except for size to fit either of those. Software for resizing photos for both of those comes with their programming.

I WANT ACCESS TO THOSE PHOTOS!!! They're mine. All mine. Somebody must have an answer. Even if it's in a different direction, so long as it's not toooooo expensive.

Having An E-penpal ... Uh, A keypal? An Epal?

I'm not sure if there is a specific term these days. But regardless, this is the second time I've had one. The first time I had never met the person in real life, only on a community type site. With that other one we corresponded on various things until he died, from climate change to the challenges of disabilities to sharing his art.

This time it's somebody I have met, immediately liked, and put her on my emailing list for jokes and other trivia when I get a list of jokes or silly signs that I like enough to share. I recently heard from her with bad news she had to share, that her last two close family members had recently died, and she was now in an assisted living facility. Not only was she grieving, she was less than impressed by the high price and low quality of care of the facility. At least she knew some of the people in there, having lived in the general area for a number of years.

I can't go visit her in person. 1800+ miles is a humongous drive these days as well as awfully expensive, and I no longer fly because I use the "wrong" middle name and the state refuses me "Real ID". Either is expensive. When we lived in Arizona most of the year she'd be a hop and a skip away. We demonstrated together and chatted while doing so as long as that group lasted.

But you're reading this and know I can communicate online. So can she. I didn't have her new physical address but still had her email one, and did what I can do: sent her a chatty email and sent a photo of a flower I found especially lovely from my summer garden. As I put it, I couldn't send her real flowers, but I could send her this one and she could still have it any time she wished to look at it. Any of the other ones she'd gotten for the two funerals would be long withered and tossed.

She emailed back expressing her appreciation, and we started a daily correspondence. I'd send her flower photos and chatty news, occasionally input on some similar issues I'd had myself or some questions I thought she might find helpful to ask. I informed her I would continue to do this every day, so long as she emailed anything back to let me know she was still there. (I'd had that issue with my previous e-penpal. He'd died and I hadn't known until months later when somebody reached out to people he'd been corresponding with to let us know what had happened.) I in turn reached out to the online community who knew him and where I became acquainted with him to let them know his fate, as well as a reminder of why he'd been a valued member there... and to me. I have no expectations that anybody would do the same in her case, so I let her know stopping correspondence would be my signal she couldn't any more. I won't have any idea who's left in her life to mourn her passing to express sympathy to anymore. Friends at the facility will be informed of course.

Most days I go through my photo library and pick out favorites to send. Most come with stories attached so I share those as well, but briefly. For example, I'd say this was taken at (_____ National Park)  and add a query might  she like more from there? It might be a flower from where I used to live and got dug and relocated so is now blooming in both locations. Or rainbows.... or birds.... or fall foliage.... or whatever it happens to be. 

This week I'm going though photos from Alaska. Now other than common garden flowers like the incredible variety of columbines popular where we stayed, they are reduced to just a colorful multitude of flowers I'd not seen elsewhere and have no names for, like these,

sitting at the foot of a rapidly retreating glacier, or this,

from who remembers where, or even this

 

delightfully intricate little gem from some walking path on a tour which couldn't possibly escape my eye. Have you ever seen such a frilly little gem? I still have never seen another. Once the Alaska flowers run out, there's glaciers, mountains, ocean life behind glass, in hand, or viewed from tour boats... if they are desired. I could add from horseback, but mostly those are close-ups of horse ears, and I doubt they'd be interesting. Any time my attention was drawn from the horse, he stopped for grass while the rest of the tour dutifully kept going without us. I guess it beats getting one who always wants to gallop and toss me though. Not so wonderful photos however.

I "only" have somewhere over 4,000 photos still in my laptop, with some hundreds more each on a collection of thumb drives that actually survived sitting in AZ for a few months while we looked for a new home to move everything into up in MN. Yes, my favorite collection, the best from Crex over a couple decades, didn't survive but for some reason it seems most of the others have. So we can continue this correspondence for years. If by then we have to start going through them again, does anybody think either of us will remember what's a repeat?

We can also discuss classical music, which we both love. Or places we both have traveled which hold special memories. Or the issue of having somebody with their hand out for your possessions or money which they firmly believe they have a right to control even while you still can, and legal protections one can put in place so any final wishes are carried out as desired. She needed to set up a reliable trustee, while I was made one years ago for a minor child with a difficult parent who was convinced it should go for a more expensive wardrobe when I limited spending to health and educational expenses. Different sides of the coin, different experiences, different states, but same problem. We have stories to share. When she needs to vent, I can "listen" using skills training and years of experience as a facilitator in a support group.

Of course I'm presuming I'll outlive her. She's 16 years older, whatever that means these days, but I'm still connected to close family - in fact, close family on both sides - and am now mostly free of pain, unlike her situation, and can get out and about for activities I still love. Right now I'm in the planning stage for everybody's home-made holiday presents this year while still putting the gardens "to bed" for winter, both of which keep me feeling productive and useful.  None of which are  guarantees of more years to come, since nobody gets that guarantee, but they are incentives to continue.

On Overhearing A Neighbor

 Sunday was like summer in October for us, a light breeze and full sun, 87 for a high, a perfect day for those fall outdoor chores. We still haven't had our killing frost, or even a light nipping one. For me it was perfect for making and cleaning up fall cuttings by stuffing them into boxes. All I needed to do was move my folding chair a couple more feet to the side along a garden bed to grab the next batch of last week's dried clippings, break them into shorter pieces,  stuff the box for taking them for compost, and move on. I wasn't making any noise, so sound traveled perfectly from a few yards away.

Apparently some Grandmother had her granddaughter over for a visit, playing outside of course. There was another child there that  she was scolding, though I saw never of the children. I hadn't had even a  clue anybody was there until I hear one single, emphatically loud sentence from the girl:

"Stop that! This is my Grandma's garden and they love their tomatoes !" 

Hmmm, apparently somebody else didn't love tomatoes? What was their plan?

Oh, the thoughts running through my head at that. It's getting close to Halloween, and I can imagine all kinds of things kids can get into who don't respect tomatoes, not one idea among them that didn't involve mischief: picking and throwing them at... (where did your imagination just go? Maybe waiting for them to rot first? Were you thinking splatting another person? Messing with somebody's house? Car?  Would it involve breaking something? )

I love that the little girl defended Grandma's garden. It's rare to still have them on the vine this late in the season, so Grandma is likely thinking her unusual abundance is a blessing with food prices being so high these days... a very necessary one, especially if a young child is aware of them being valued. 

But the person being scolded, what was their plan? Where did it come from? Peers? Parents? Media? I never had the kind of upbringing that tolerated any of that kind of mischief, not with food, not with toilet paper, not with paint. I did hear of high school students using fertilizer on an unloved teacher's lawn that would darken the grass there for possibly years with some very rude words, but while laughing at the cleverness of it, I would never have considered it myself. I save much of my mischief for words on a page, while trying not to be hurtful.

How about you? Who taught you what's OK when mischief is afoot? What do you teach your kids? And who would you protect from it?

There's Always One!

Yesterday we drove down to southern Minnesota to visit a relative, doing a nice long extended bit of "leaf peeping" along the way. We have lots of fall color around home now, being much further north, though not quite at peak. 

There was much less color as we drove south, but Highway 169 there follows the general path of a major river, the Minnesota, after it turns north to join the Mississippi way up in the Twin Cities, so the wide valley is bordered by hills which bore tops much further along than all the fields in the process of changing color. As the driver, that meant glimpses caught here and there. Most of our way the hills were full of maples, so oranges and reds were well represented. There was a single beige-leafed tree in a yard next to the highway we passed while wondering why anyone would plant such a thing.

I'd added extra time into our route before we were to meet, due to a major construction project being in its second year in a town called Jordan. Last year the northbound side was expanded, with walls added to keep noise out of the residential area it passes through. From appearances the highway is becoming more freeway in places with bridges and ramps instead of left turns and stoplights, both for speed and safety. Meanwhile there are long delays. Two highways combine and cross the highway we were on, per the road signs, currently controlled by a light while narrowed down into one lane southbound with construction vehicles very present but inactive over the weekend.

As usual, signs warn people long ahead to use both lanes until you have to merge. It gets the most people through the merge point faster. As usual most people believe that means move over into the one through lane immediately so you can sit and stew for an extra ten minutes at being passed by all the vehicles who actually read the sign and are passing you and merging at the last minute, for some reason selfish enough to expect you to grant them room after they've sped by for so long. How rude! 

FYI I pulled over to merge about four vehicles from the single lane, right behind a truck towing a flat of some sort with vertical ladders sticking up from the back. I figured correctly that the following vehicle would be giving it a wide space instead of tailgating it, likely fearing either of those ladders could fall back and hit their car it they got too close. It's not that I wasn't more confident about how secure they were fastened, I just liked a nice space to move into, so I could give that vehicle plenty of space myself. I'm always more comfortable when not tailgating. Meanwhile there was more time for leaf-peeping during the long stops still ahead.

As slow as we were at that point, Steve rolled down his window. He asked did I hear the  sirens? In a couple minutes I did. While slowly approaching the light, noticing how all the different lanes were allowed through or stopped in their direction in sequence, especially noting that our single lane was still single at the light. Other directions had a turn lane with it's own arrows at the light. With no turn lane, anybody needing to turn after the arrow disappeared held up all traffic wanting to go straight, until the next cycle. No wonder our lines we so long! We both had plenty of time to note a police car heading straight through and past, lights and siren on.

Our lane eventually disgorged another few cars, and Steve noticed a collection of people in the intersection in the next lane over from us. It turned out they were preventing our access to a through lane as we wound up shuttled into the turn lane despite going straight, As we were stopped again, he pointed me to the action blocking forward traffic's lane. There was a motorcycle down, and people gathered around a very still person lying on the pavement, flat out. Since they were talking at the person, I presumed it wasn't a fatality, or at least not yet. The police vehicle had gone straight past, which I found weird, but apparently there was another crisis elsewhere. 

Getting our light to proceed, I did so while Steve maintained his view of the accident. He identified the victim as being female, and with no helmet in sight. Neither of those facts I'd had time to note myself, but it put into context the person kneeling at her head end holding her head very still, a hand on either side. I presumed they had some kind of training to know why/how to do that, even though no marked vehicles were stopping those lanes. As we passed through only cones had been set out, the same cones as earlier but now taking one more lane so only the turn lane had traffic. The room was needed.

Gaining our second lane as we continued on our way past the construction, we wondered why the cop sped past and no ambulance had appeared, but a mile later saw the familiar box shape of the ambo, and later its colors, heading our way from the other direction. All that was left for us to wonder at was why anybody would be out on a motorcycle through a construction zone - or anywhere for that matter - without a helmet?

But there's always one. Ouch!

Guillermo!

 Full disclosure here: I have never in my life watched "Dancing With The Stars". Until now it's never occurred to me that it would be worth my time, much less even checking out what channel it airs on. Snooty skinny athletic famous people in fancy dress moving in prescribed ways, presumably designed to push the typical viewer into being fat-shamed and clumsy-shamed, as well as supposedly envious.

I've already spent enough of my life feeling like that. I grew up being everything that wasn't attractive. I practically failed in gym class if it were possible. I never could do pull-ups, managed a few sit-ups, never climbed a rope.  My first time on a trampoline in class a forward drop turned into my head going down between the bungee cords and my legs continuing over and off the apparatus. Our teacher was terrified I'd have broken my neck, scolded me soundly thinking I had done it on purpose, and barely got around until that moment to scold the very distracted "spotters" and teach them their proper duty of preventing exactly what I had accidentally done. 

Dance? In school it meant square dancing, easy enough to do as soon as you understood the calls, but basically a brisk walk with turns, trying not to hit the other people who hadn't quite figured it out yet. Besides, it was something our parents might have done but our generation just wasn't into. Things like the jitterbug were appearing, and nobody gave lessons on that. Not in my experience anyway. I did manage the twist, privately and with nowhere to use it.  No, it didn't slim my belly.

After school I didn't do anything resembling dancing until about age thirty, where I learned one could sign up for lessons in beledi, better know as belly dancing. Most people's reaction to the name is it's all about sex. When danced in a bar by prostitutes, that's likely. But for the serious dancer it's about getting the body ready for childbirth by strengthening the pertinent muscles. It's also about sensuous beauty, which is not about an invitation to sex... unless for that specific special someone.

 Its basis is all about isolation of movements. Think the head slide for example. You stand straight (not still but that's part of choreography once you master isolation) while your head, also perfectly vertically straight instead of tilting back and forth, slides back and forth over your shoulders. It has to be practiced in a mirror, like most of the moves, which the classroom we were taught in had along one wall. We also had an excellent instructor, with six weeks of lessons followed by performances by the class and/or individuals. Those recitals were open to family and friends... for those not too shy to invite them. Costumes were made for them, while leotards and a veil were for class. The group performance was choreographed by the instructor, with moves we'd more or less mastered. Individual performances we choreographed ourselves, even picking our own music. I retain the flexible spine I developed, but knees and shoulders now prevent the more athletic moves. I had gotten to the point where, first time in my life, while on my knees I could do a back bend and come up out of it again without rolling over onto my side to stand from. I was strong and graceful for a few years. But there are few opportunities outside of a class to continue that, and once a single mom, no budget for classes. So that, and years of life later, I'm back to not being strong or graceful.

It is this experience I bring with me to judging the appeal of Guillermo on Dancing With The Stars. I'd never heard of nor seen him either, until Colbert was forced off late night TV. (For those worrying about him, he's involved in some project (movie?) about the Lord Of The Rings universe, something he's long been fascinated by and expert in.)

I looked for replacement late night humor programming and settled on Jimmy Kimmel. I never watch the interviews of famous people, on either program. I need a few laughs before I sleep. Here of course I became aware of Guillermo, announcer and sometimes comic relief. If you're not familiar, he's short and pudgy, always smiling a lot. Not what one typically thinks of as the ideal dancer, stereotyped by being slender and athletic, what passes for glamorous.  Contestants are "stars" and he doesn't fit the standard bill. Apparently he's not a particularly experienced dancer either. Like most of the world, he likely danced for fun in social settings, if at all.

His partner is a star, also somebody I'd never heard of until I started watching Jimmy Kimmel's show and the talk turned to the dancing contest. Her name? I can't remember. The two of them started on the contest for fun, making do with putting on a performance to entertain us, even if that entertainment was laughter. The judges hated them. The online audience loved them, or possibly just hated the judges' attitudes. Their votes after the show have kept the pair from being eliminated despite the judges' rankings. Each week the same. Dance moves could be as funny as Guillermo rolling on the floor or even falling splat on it. His partner is beautiful, graceful, dramatic. Did I mention she is currently 5 months pregnant? They are there to have fun. Guillermo has been working hard at becoming a better dancer. The audience loves it! 

The judges scores keep going lower. From what I see on Kimmel's show, the judges keep getting more acerbic every week. This pair is dancing their way into the world's heart. I'm not sure which combination of motives they have for putting the pair through. Do they hate the judges? Do they see the standards imposed as a putdown on every average person as never good enough? Are they just rebelling at being told what to value? Do they simply need some humor in trying times? There are certainly enough needs for humor that doesn't put average people down as worthless. Times are tense. People need a break. 

Give them a voice - or a vote - and find out just how loud they roar!

Hopefully in more ways than one!

Fall Cleaning

 I know, it's spring cleaning that's supposed to be the tradition. But that's indoor cleaning, and frankly, I always figured the regular cleaning, if kept up, pretty much eliminated the need for it. The only spring cleaning I've done for decades has been going through all the paperwork I save throughout the year before I file income taxes. Sometime around mid April a whole lot of paper gets into the recycling bin.

Fall cleanup around here is the outdoors kind. Most of it never needed to be done, but where we live these days, the management is fussy. Take the six old, wide hosta clumps around the outside. At the old place those always just stayed put, not clumps but long rows serving as garden borders. The flowers are ordinary until you shoot them from ground level.

The first hard frost always  killed them, and what was left just kind of turned into hosta soup that filtered its nutrients into the ground to nourish the roots the following year. Here, I'm required to cut them back, with the presumption that all the pieces go in the garbage.

 OK, I cut and pick them up, but just two of the clumps fill a large box or a huge garbage bag. So when I have something filled, scrunched down over and over into as small a size as possible though heavy, it gets transported over to my son's yard. That hole in the ground left when the fish pond was emptied and its liner removed got repurposed as a compost pit. A really BIG compost pit. A tiny handful of pulled weeds aren't worth the bother and hitch a ride in the weekly garbage truck. The boxes and bags get emptied into the compost pit, ready to be filled again as often as necessary. 

The long abandoned raspberry patch has been put back into use for raspberries again, which get turned into jellies and given out as presents in December. Well-composted refuse keeps them well nourished and productive. Not all the dead plants or plant parts go to his house. On a good note, there is no actual tree in this yard, and the handful of leaves which blow in are left in place for the weekly mowing to chop. 

 But the 28 foot patch of asiatic lilies, once they turn brown, are supposed to get cut back and removed before winter. They get pretty woody, though not too woody to decompose somewhat over winter. Ignored stems look like grey twigs the next summer and simply get in the way of any weed control. But once they feed their bulbs and die back, they're cut to the ground. They are gathered, broken/bent and packed into containers to go to the compost pit. It will take them longer to break down, but it will happen. For one thing, all the weeds suddenly revealed by the tall flowers getting cleared are still tender and full of water,  ready to spread seeds, easily pulled where reachable and packed along for the trip.

Earlier this week I started that long process. The lilies went first, while I had the most energy, enough for half the bed, but since we've not actually had a frost yet, only the ones that turned brown on their own were taken. That resulting selective cutting made the job more "interesting". There was a lot of bending over from outside the bed between plants with the clippers, avoiding stepping on others still feeding their bulbs. Eyes needed to also be protected from stalk tips, slowing the process even more. Only closer stalks to the front are gone through. They've all grown dense enough this last year that there's not room for feet, so it's all reaching in, grabbing, cutting, and removing. There's a chair I mostly work from for the close stalks, since these old legs haven't gotten this use for a long time. I haven't gotten a long handled pruner - yet - so with a raised bed it's all legs for the heavy stuff (meaning me of course), the up/down from the chair. The shoulders have gotten lots of light exercise earlier in the year, thus were well  equipped for their part of the task.. How do I know for sure? For the last couple days those legs have been reminding me they've been abused... every time I stand up. Shoulders to fingertips just feel normal.

At least the hostas are where I can sit next to them while cutting and collecting. There are still four mounds to go, but the three containers are back now ready to load up again. Those will be the easy exercise. Just grab a handful, clip through green stems and leave those 3 to 4 inches long. The balance of the asiatic lilies will wait till either we get a frost or they dry out on their own. Since I'll be finishing the bed then, effectively clear cutting, I can set the chair on one end since it fits within the width, and work my way steadily down, taking everything. It will be much easier. Maybe next year I'll wait for a good frost and do it all that way, easy peasy.

After that, of course, is the big job: cutting the huge flower heads off both huge hydrangeas and shaping the branches a bit. They were a bit slow changing color this year, only now in full glory.  I wonder if we'll have a few nice days left the end of this month... after my legs recover. That will need to be done regardless. The way those heavy flower heads bend over, the ground under them has grown full of weeds that can't be seen, or if seen with much trouble, can't be reached to pull them out when pulling could do any good. I'm talking early in the season before they spread more seeds all over.