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| Sunday's Gumbo Project |
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!
After a series of (abnormally) warm and sunny days, we caught 0.19" of rain late yesterday and awaken to a cool (47°F), cloudy, and blustery morning. Online weather shows 3-4 mph breezes with gusts to 10, but it seems that it's much windier than the anemometers on rooftops are showing.
All in all, a good day to stay indoors. The plan: laundry and cooking crepes. At some point I'll dash over to the UPS to drop off an Amazon return and then swing by the dry cleaners to pick up some items. Almost certainly there will be some Ingress along the way.
Despite last night's showers, there's still plenty of pollen in the air, at least so my itchy eyes tell me. The last numbers I saw for juniper were 1100 on Wednesday, 1800 on Thursday, and 800 Friday morning. I'm taking the full complement of allergy meds these days.
In other news, the Grey Lady published an article today that revealed how DHS is subpoenaing social media providers (Google, Meta, etc.) for information on hundreds if not thousands of user accounts. These accounts are those that allegedly are critical of DHS, provide ICE tracking and alert services, or are otherwise considered a threat to DHS. They are administrative subpoenas, not backed up by judicial orders.
Already there has been successful push-back, but the threat to our 1st Amendment rights is real. One wonders what web-scraping tools this administration is using to assess their targets?
In yet more distressing news, this time environmental, TCF revoked the Clean Air Act Endangerment Finding. Apparently, the lawsuits are already flying. First thoughts on this run towards awful-horrible, but upon reflection, companies like auto manufacturers are not going to stop building cars that are fuel-efficient or not put catalytic converters on them, because the next administration will immediately reverse this ill-advised policy.
I for one am hoping my 10-year old Prius lasts 3 more until the automotive landscape tilts back to EVs and a robust network of charging stations. Then I can buy a decent all-electric plug-in for what will likely be my last car.
Yesterday Theresa Crimmins, Director of USA-NPN, visited the BioPark. In the morning she spoke to a group of about 60 guests from the Think Trees urgan forestry conference about what phenology can tell us. In particular, she emphasized how 12+ years of data from BioPark Nature's Notebook "tribe" has become a valuable resource.
Not only were all six of us there from the team, Matt Peterson, the Northside Assistant Director, was in attendance, too. This was a particularly good occasion for us to show the value of citizen science at the Botanic Garden.
Afterwards, we took Theresa, her son Zack, and a gaggle of others out to the CWG. We walked our observation loop and stopped to discuss most plants. Matt got an earful about the damage done by vehicles and tree thieves. But the day was warm (too warm for February) and sun kind. All in all, it was a very pleasant time outdoors.
That's not to say that yesterday's astronomical pollen count didn't catch up with me after my Claritin wore off. Today the forecast is for evening rain. Let's hope it knocks back the pollen count and maybe even give us a good bit of snow in the mountains. Our snowpack is awful this winter and wildfire season will not be fun.
After a late start, I'm watching Olympic curling this morning. Mixed doubles, Sweden vs Canada. Sweden just won.
Then spent much of the afternoon watching figure skating: free dance and pairs free skate. Lovely stuff with some crazy high scores.
There's been a bit of household chores amongst the edges of Olympics watching. Still not able to lift >10 lbs, so I'm limited to using a 1/2 gal. water can for the sunroom plants, have to carry grocery bags one at a time, can't properly pull up the bedspread when making the bed, that sort of stuff.
Made a quick grocery run to get a few items for dinner tonight and for tomorrow's Swedish cardamom bread / cinnamon roll bake. It takes a good 3½ hrs, so I'll want to start early.
Meanwhile, in the sunroom some things are thinking that it's spring. The lipstick plant (Aeschynanthus, above) is blooming prolifically. The Hibiscus that we severely cut back is budding out. Plectanthrus is blooming strongly. We've kept the fungus gnats, scale, and mealybugs in check. Looks like we'll be coming out of winter in good shape.
Archie is on travel this week, out at the Tonopah Test Range until Friday late. It's another Thursday without D&D. That means my entire day is wide open. I took a pass on the BioPark volunteers meeting. Watered the plants in the sunroom. Listened to two short webinars from the Center for Plant Conservation's Rare Plant Academy. Threw together a batch of banana bread.*
It's been another unseasonably warm day with bright sunshine and light breezes. I knocked off a couple laps around the neighborhood to keep my step-count up as my surgery heals.
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* Joy of Cooking, 1971 ed. (It includes lemon zest; later versions don't.)
I had thought all the birthday celebrations were over. After all, surgery on the 22nd kinda put the kibosh on anything more on the 26th than eating Debbie's cake and opening gifts from her and Caro. I have even cashed in my free birthday chocolate éclair at Flying Star. But this morning Baldo delivered a package from Jane, bless her heart.
Inside the bag were 3 boxes, small, medium, and larger. First, I discovered a small bottle of green ink. That's a hint that there might be a pen or brush involved. Sure enough, the larger "box" was a beautiful leather-bound journal. And of course, the middle-sized box contain a wonderful fountain pen.
