Another Plant Rescue Adventure

 

I got sunburned today just going out for walks on my breaks. It wasn't quite the weather we had on Monday, but it was certainly beautiful. Travalon went for a walk on the boardwalk up in DeForest. He took some pictures.

He saw several deer, including a buck that he didn't get a picture of. It was on the path in front of him, but it ran away too quickly.

Astute readers may remember that this is the area where we saw a ton of deer facing off against four cranes this summer. There were two blond deer that day - I wonder if they're still around?

At lunch I took a rosary walk, since my neighbor was busy, and as I walked out on the dock I noticed two large cordylines in pots, one on either side of the boardwalk out to the dock. They were in good shape, but tonight the temperature is supposed to get into the low 20's, so after Night Prayer when I suddenly remembered the poor tropical plants stuck out in the cold, I went to rescue them. Because Travalon is the best husband ever, he followed me, and he took one pot while I tried to lift the other one. He managed to carry the one pot back to our garage, then he came back with the car to get the second one. Now they are sitting in our garage, which isn't heated, but at least it will keep them from freezing completely. I hope... The pots must belong to our condo association, so at some point I have to get lighter pots big enough for these huge plants so I can stuff them into the plant room somewhere. And then they will probably slowly die from the lack of light...

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Late-Breaking Peas

 

I hadn't been going to my garden plot too often lately, since everything appeared to be dead, but I do still take stuff to the compost heap, and so I noticed something odd a couple of weeks ago: three little pea plants had sprouted. Why now? I planted them way back in May or June, and maybe it wasn't cool enough for them at the time, but I never would have guessed they would wait till October to sprout - I just assumed they were worthless seeds. I brought them some water, since the water is turned off at the gardens now, and otherwise they seemed fine because of the summery weather we had through Monday. I was going to dig them up and bring them into the house Monday evening, but I got a phone call, and of course there's only a half-hour of light tops by the time I get off of work, so forget it. Yesterday was pouring rain most of the day, but it did let up enough for me to go rescue the little pea plants before my adoration hour. Now they look sad and bedraggled, so they will probably die a slow death from being transplanted and not getting enough light. Maybe I should have let them freeze last night - it would have been quicker and maybe more humane.

Today was very cold, but very sunny. Travalon went to Governor's Island, and he said there are two little hut things that have appeared on it. He provided photographic proof, too.

I didn't take a picture of my pea plants. Maybe if they start to look a little happier, I will. I also have a daisy-like plant and a geranium with really pretty tri-colored leaves that are also quite bedraggled. They were in a planter by our driveway, and the condo president said we should take them out on one of our walks. My neighbor pulled out the seemingly dead ornamental sweet potato plant, and we were surprised to find a bunch of sweet potatoes in the roots. Travalon chopped them up and fried them, and they were delicious! They had a more delicate flavor than a regular sweet potato, and they weren't orange inside but looked more like a regular potato. I meant to get the other two plants once the summery weather was over, but apparently our condo president got impatient and tore them out on Monday, so they were sitting out with their roots bare for several hours before my neighbor and I found them. I put them in a pot, and we'll see if they make it. The geranium with the really cool leaves looks better than the daisy thing. Maybe I should just leave all these outdoor plants to freeze and meet their natural end, instead of prolonging their suffering inside where they don't get enough light. Of course, if they all recover, then I'll think it was worth the effort to save them!

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Donny the Dictator

 

As Colbert says, Trump continues to put the "dic" in dictator, refusing to concede after losing the election. The Republicans are backing him up on this too, and saying four years ago the Democrats refused to accept the results of the election. Which is odd, because I was there, and I seem to remember Hillary conceding quite quickly, and Obama handing over the keys without any issues. But then, consistency is not a common quality in many Republicans, it would seem:

Trump supporters: How dare you say we are all racists just because we voted for Trump?

Also Trump supporters: If you voted for Biden, you definitely support chopping babies up in the womb!

Seriously, there is a priest in a nearby town who posted on social media: "It's not left versus right, it's children of darkness versus children of light." Seems like quite a stretch for a man of the cloth to condemn more than half the population of this country. Who could have predicted people that unreasonable would refuse to accept the results of the election? Ah well, I am officially part of the "evil" people, and frankly I'm fine with that. From what I can see, the "holy" people are so vile, that if they are the population of Heaven, then Hell is looking pretty damn good!!

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Running (More Like Ambling) for the Board

 

Maybe it's the Irish in me, but if there's two things I love (beside plants, birds, and anything that glows under black lights), it's being Catholic and being politically active. My great-grandfather was in Tammany Hall, or so I've been told, and I got the political bug a few years ago when nobody was running in my district for Staff Congress at work. I LOVED it... and then I changed districts and suddenly had to run against someone, and then I realized how incumbents feel. Fortunately I have beaten all my opponents. Now I'm Chair of the Bylaws Committee too, and I'm a total Robert's Rules of Order nerd. But I realized being political is still less interesting to me than being Catholic when the East Side Club asked me to run for their board, because they meet once a month on Tuesday evenings, right during my Date Night with Jesus. I reluctantly threw my hat in the ring, and then they sent a long questionnaire for me to fill out about why I was running ("because you begged me to?") and requesting a headshot. Now who has one of those sitting around?? I was so annoyed that I was going to send one from my high school graduation or college graduation, but I couldn't find them. I said I'd be happy to email a jpeg to them, but they didn't respond. Then there was a meeting on Thursday night over Zoom to meet the candidates, which I forgot about because of the Packers game. (Oh yeah, I love football too.) Oops! Imagine my relief when I got the ballot in the mail today, and there are ten people running for three positions. Oh, and all of them provided a headshot except for me. I think it's safe to say that I'm not going to be elected to the board of the East Side Club, unless something goes terribly wrong. In which case Travalon did say he could cover my adoration hour once a month.

As promised, here are a couple of pictures Travalon took yesterday on the boardwalk by Lake Waubesa.

Today he went to the Token Creek Conservancy after doing Door Dash during the lunch hour.

On the way home, he saw the sun setting behind Mount Wank.

And here he is wearing his Hong Kong Phooey T-shirt, but for some reason the printing is backwards in his selfie.

This is the promised footage of the woodpecker in our neighborhood. 

Soon I hope to do something with Travalon's woodpecker footage. His view of the bird is much clearer, but in his video you can't hear it knocking on the wood as clearly.

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My Teenage Political Musings

 

Today Travalon and I took a hike on the boardwalk on Lake Waubesa to enjoy the beautiful weather, then we went to dinner at the Nau-Ti-Gal with our neighbor and sat outside. This unseasonably beautiful weather is supposed to continue through tomorrow, and then we'll get back to cold and dreary. Sorry, I have no photos of the boardwalk (although I thought Travalon took some), so enjoy a couple of photos of pretty bushes with autumn foliage in our neighborhood. The second one is the viburnum bush that has such fragrant blossoms in May. 

Our neighbor says blueberries are the perfect bush: fragrant bell-shaped white flowers in the spring, delicious indigo berries in the summer, and bright red foliage in the fall. She is from Maine originally, where they have lots of blueberries. I have never been to Maine, nor indeed any of New England, either Carolina, Oklahoma, or Texas. And I don't count Idaho, because that was at night on the train while I was asleep. Travalon has been to every state, and he was supposed to write a short blurb about each one, but he  hasn't yet, so here are my impressions of a few states:

Alabama: Montgomery has a lovely capitol building like we do, and I lost a fight with a luna moth there. Birmingham has a terrifying statue - not to look at, but to go up. When the elevator in the pedestal opened onto the balcony around it, I took one look at the floor that was grating you could see through, went, "Oh, HELL, no!" and got back on the elevator. When that guy in the middle of nowhere asked, "Y'all gone vote for Trump agin?" I wanted to say, "No, I can't wait to vote against him again!" but I should have said, "Bless your heart!" which is Southern for F--k you.

Alaska: Everything is so, so, so big. The Kenai Peninsula is like a magic fairyland, with the mist curling around the mountains. Fireweed honey ice cream is amazing. The taiga is cute little Christmas trees on a bed of springy moss. And, we have the same birthday!

Arizona: Really beautiful, if you're into deserts. Which I am. I love cacti.

Arkansas: Everything is closed on Sunday except churches, so I snuck into Johnny Cash's boyhood church to powder my nose.

Speaking of countrywide things, I feel like this election was decided for me when I was a teenager. That was when I came to hate Trump because he was so greedy and lustful. Joe Biden was running in the primaries against Dukakis, and I was too young to vote, but I liked him after reading an article that started: "He was born the oldest of four children in a working-class Irish Catholic family." I thought, "Hey, he's just like me! I'm the oldest, I'm not rich, and I'm Irish Cathopalian!" But when Ma Hat asked why I liked him in particular, I was all embarrassed because my reasons seemed so shallow, not having anything to do with his policies. Now I look at him as a deeply empathetic man who has suffered unimaginable loss: his wife, his baby daughter, and his grown son. Who better to empathize with people suffering from the pandemic? Trump never seemed to give a rat's patootie about anyone else suffering from it. Just because he survived with the most elite medical care that none of the rest of us have access to, we shouldn't be afraid of it. OK, weirdo. So glad you'll be vacating the White House in a couple of months!

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Return to Mecan Springs

 

This morning Travalon and I drove to Mecan Springs, which we had not been to since the early spring, and as we were heading there, we heard the news that Biden will be our new president. Now I don't think Biden will be any savior, but I think he is a decent man who will try hard to help everyone. I certainly don't think Trump is any savior either, unlike this guy:

I realized we had never been to Mecan Springs when there were leaves on the trees, but maybe we wouldn't have been able to see the springs with all that foliage blocking them. Here are a couple of shots looking down from the front.

And here are some shots as we hiked along the trail, which is a section of the Ice Age Trail:

Can you believe I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt in November? It was so warm today!

Here is a little round pool caused by one of the springs.

Then we went down to the boat launch on the other side of the glacial basin. 

We drove on to Adams County, stopping at Ship Rock.

And this is Roche-a-Cri, viewed from the winter parking lot. The park is mostly closed for the winter.

We came across a bird party when we stopped at an antiques store that had a big "OPEN" flag in front of it, but when we pulled in, there was a "Closed" sign in the window.

We continued on to the Adams County Castle Rock Park. (As you may remember, we camped at the Juneau County Castle Rock Park for Labor Day Weekend 2019.) We had to pay $5 to get in, but it was worth the price of admission to sit by the lake and watch the sunset.

What a beautiful ending to a beautiful day! Then we went home and watched the newly elected vice president and president give speeches, and I was crying. Finally, a woman is vice president! And the speeches were so moving. A breath of fresh air after the last four years!

Famous Hat

Election Musings

 

That game last night was just what I needed! The Packers were dominant the whole time, except at the very end when they were up 34-3 with five minutes left, and they put in their bench warmers and let the 49ers have some mercy points. And it even got done by 10:30, so I could get to bed at a reasonable time. Of course, the Night Prayer crowd are going to wonder about me, because Wednesday night I couldn't stay up that late after two and half hours of sleep the night before, and then last night - sorry, Packers are on! - and of course tonight I'll be talking to Tiffy. Though I am starting to wonder if they would be a hostile crowd right now.

I'm speaking, of course, of the election. It seems like there are two worldviews in this country: half of us see a decent, caring man who would try to be a president for everyone versus a sociopath would-be dictator who would punish anyone who didn't vote for him, with rabid, racist followers who consider him the Savior and want to institute Christian Sharia law; and  the other half of us see a deeply Christian president who will save this country from its sins versus a feeble, senile old man who will be controlled by the Far Left and throw all religious people into concentration camps. (Or so I assume, since this is very far from my worldview.) I don't know how we reconcile the competing storylines of an incumbent who is the only hope for our country versus the incumbent who will be so empowered by a second electoral win that he will immediately seize complete control. I would just hope that whoever gets the most votes is declared the winner, and the loser will concede graciously. This election was observed by international observers, so it seems like there would be very little room for a lot of fraud. Also, if the Democrats were really going to steal the Presidential election, wouldn't they also win the Senate, which is in some ways a far greater prize? It fascinates me how these people who think Democrats are pure evil and in control of everything also think they are totally stupid and incompetent. Then again, these are the same people who have to either holler, "Stop counting the votes!" or "Keep counting the votes!" depending on which state they are in, because of course it's totally corrupt to count absentee ballots unless your guy is behind, because then maybe he could catch up. There's no consistency except "If we're not winning, someone is cheating!" And if voting absentee is so wrong, then they should throw out a vote in Florida for Donald Trump, cast via absentee ballot by... Donald Trump.

And don't even get me started on abortion. The number of abortions go way down under Democratic presidents and go way up under Republican ones, so if people cared about saving lives, they know which way they should vote. The whole judge thing is so cynical, because these judges are never going to overturn Roe v. Wade - the Republicans would hate that, because they would lose a whole bunch of single-issue voters. That was a cover for installing a bunch of pro-business, anti-labor, anti-environmental judges who will rule in favor of the rich and powerful against the rest of us.

On a completely different note, here are some more rosaries. I got these in LaCrosse, mostly at an antiques store, but the light blue one second from the left is from the Guadalupe Shrine.

And this is a wooly bear we saw at Horicon Marsh. As you can see, it predicts an average winter, since it has a normal ratio of brown to black. I've been told this is an old wives' tale, but I'll be darned if there weren't all-brown wooly bears before unseasonably warm winters, and an all-black one before a bitterly cold one.

Today I also made a video of a woodpecker in our neighborhood. I haven't uploaded it from my phone yet, but Blogspot should let me post it, since it's short. Eventually I'll do something with the much better woodpecker footage that Travalon shot so that you all can see it.

Famous Hat