Musings

Playing with portrait mode again, this time without the spotlight. I really like the yellow-green borders of new growth, although I usually dislike that color.

Found a vegetable garden in someone’s front yard, if you can call two squash plants (already blooming!), one pepper plant (with half-grown pepper), and two tomato plants a garden. It’ll soon keep a few elves in veg for a long weekend, and they won’t get tromped during Geezer Hour™ at the local groc store.

Posted at 7:48 PM | Comments Off on Greening and growing

I’ve been looking for one of these this spring. I call them flower balls (in my mind). I suppose they are an ornamental allium?

NOT a murder hornet enshrined.

Posted at 5:47 PM | Comments Off on Gems

I’m pretty darned sure that on this day in 1862, there were no musical cacti in the Puebla area. Not a one.

Our mayor gets it; our household follows the mayor. And not the creepy, misguided governor. As does Fontaine’s. [Yummy fried oyster baskets there, BTW…when they are open.]

Posted at 9:00 PM | Comments Off on Parsing details

Growing up a few miles from Oldsmobile central, and several counties away from Ford central (and others), car talk, uncapitalized, was almost as frequent a topic as the weather. I remember hearing four-door and two-door much more commonly than their equivalents, sedan and coupe. The latter sound waaaay too “uptown” and worldly for my neighborhood.

This lot used to be full of shade-making vegetation. I miss it. If the doors are from the house or the pool-house, why are they on the sidewalk?

Posted at 9:06 PM | Comments Off on Four-door

Backing up bee. You can’t tell, but I was there and the insect was in, then out, and this photo is from the exit.

No bees here. Don’t recognize this color pattern, but the flower shape and grouping do look familiar. Will ponder further.

This one has marigold “written” all over it. Even though the center is greenish, and the rest is yellow, not gold. This yellow is the always-color for the marigolds of my childhood.

Posted at 8:49 PM | Comments Off on Covid-free

This is the same magnolia flower as in yesterday’s post. Just 24 hours later. Not kidding.

I’m guessing this Georgia Peach™ won’t get ripe…catch the next Farm Report on this tree, mmm, perhaps next week?

Posted at 7:02 PM | Comments Off on Fast fade

Last month, I took a different tack with my exercise protocol. I decided that after an exercise pulse (into heart rate—HR—zone 5) my HR doesn’t drop fast/low enough. I think that’s a valid call. Of course, I have no idea how the specialists would recommend I achieve a better drop speed.

So, I developed a plan. I decided to spend a few days at a target rate of 110 beats per minute (very difficult to move that slowly), then 115 bpm (easier), and then 120 bpm. Now I’m more like 125 bpm. After two weeks, when I was in the 115/120 range (and utterly bored), I re-instituted my version of HIIT (high-intensity interval training) for maybe two days/week…jog or whatever until the HR goes into zone 5, keep going with nasal breathing until I can’t continue (pant pant), then slow down, let HR go back to 120, and mosey at that rate for a while, then begin the HIIT regime again.

I’ll probably continue with this pattern, see if the HR drop situation improves. I could need several more months to achieve that.

Hypothesis: May is magnolia month.

Posted at 7:32 PM | Comments Off on HIIT my style

Gwen Robbins Schug, in The Long View of Climate Change and Human Health on the American Anthropology Association website, writes:

Broadly speaking, bioarchaeology demonstrates that there are no grand narratives in human history. Small-scale societies are often resilient in the face of environmental change; mobility, flexibility, and adaptive diversity are a largely successful strategy for avoiding negative consequences…. Complex societies, in contrast, are often much more rigid and they are built on social inequality. When these large-scale societies overshoot—undergo rapid population growth and practice unsustainable agricultural overproduction in the context of rapid climate and environmental changes—those who are resilient and who survive the short-term crisis may experience other forms of suffering….

I’m not clear about the implied link between rigidity and social inequality, although I do see how inequality can be destabilizing, especially in times of food stress…short-term or long-term…. I am not commenting on how much this is now in some places in the USA and many places in the world.

Posted at 8:35 PM | Comments Off on In which she gets academic

Bench for the tired. Or tired bench.

Legal limit. Boundary issue.

A rose is a rose….

Posted at 6:32 PM | 3 Comments »

I was thinking centered as in the California hippie-dippie meaning.

Because these pictures aren’t…centered.

First: white clover. Second: clearly a rose, and I think a Cherokee rose. Third: lily.

Clematis, clematis, clematis. Got it.

Posted at 6:47 PM | Comments Off on Centered