From loyal morning correspondent & photographer Ozark Hillbilly:
… of an Ozark Spring. Got my first tick of the year yesterday so it’s time I sent you this.
And no Ozark Spring is complete without Redbuds [top pic] and Dogwoods [last pic].
***********
Darned few dogwoods left in this part of New England, unfortunately — anthracnose blight killed most of our landcape specimens. We planted a multigraft cherry tree to replace the dying front-yard dogwood when we bought this place twenty years ago, and the Spousal Unit (who grew up in the Cherry Capital) loves it, but it won’t flower for several weeks yet…
What’s going on in your garden (planning) this week?
The good…
The bad…
The ugly…
Dogwoods:
Felonious Monk
It’s cold, dark, and snowing here. ‘Tis the teasing of Spring. Bah humbug. Then we are supposed to be getting 60 mph winds all day. Geesh.
ETA: Oh, yeah. Good morning, all.
Steeplejack
Very windy and suddenly cold in NoVA overnight (35° now), which is probably what kept me energized and awake. Heard a minor crashing sound in the kitchen and had to go look; it was a small votive holder blown off the windowsill onto the counter. End of story.
ETA: Listening to Ronny Jordan, “After Hours.” Probably going to bed after this.
raven
It’s chilly here now but it’s going to be gorgeous today and tomorrow for our trip to Augusta National. Ozark’s pix remind me of the dogwood out front. Every year we think it’s going to die and it just keeps blooming.
There’s a 15 minute doc called “A Day in the Death of Donny BB” on TMC about a junkie in NYC in 69. Nasty shit.
bystander
Miserably cold, rainy morning in the Poconos. The daffs are mostly up so hope this isn’t too tough on them. I warned them not to be fooled by global warming rumors but they went ahead and blossomed.
Great pics, OH. As a native Missourian, I sometimes wonder if kids in the state still have to learn how to draw a dogwood. But I’m sure that got chucked out before cursive writing was tossed on the trash heap.
bystander
@raven: The Death of Donnie B right before Naughty Marietta? Art house pairing, if ever I’ve seen it.
StellaB
Cold here in San Diego. Still too cold to leave the tomatoes outside overnight. I put them out to sunbathe in the morning and haul them back in at night. They would survive, if I planted them, but they won’t grow until it warms up. They’re like puppies though and I’ll be happy when they’re finally in their forever homes.
Steeplejack
@bystander:
The most epic “art house pairing” I ever saw was in college, when some (probably drug-crazed) nitwit ran Night of the Living Dead with Children of Paradise. What. the. fuck.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Looks like a Tiger-less Masters this year?
Happy Opening Day everyone, gonna be a tough year for the Cards I’m thinking, what with the spring they’ve had.
Phylllis
Our azaleas are on the wane. They really are glorious when in full bloom, but last such a short time you have to remind yourself to appreciate them.
JPL
Beautiful pictures. I have several dogwoods, most of the wild variety. It’s the time of the year when I look out my back window and see white. Most of the year, I see spindly trees.
@raven: Have fun.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Yea, I read that. I would have liked to have seen him hit the little ball but it ain’t to be.
raven
@Phylllis: Our white are but the pink are rockin.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: You still get Rory at least.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I’d like to ask Vaughn Taylor about fishing!
PurpleGirl
Not quite sunrise in NYC. It’s chilly with very gusty winds. Stuff on my terrace is being blown around — I should have bungee-corded some things down yesterday. We should be getting some rain and it might snow. The day should start out cloudy with more sun this afternoon. Probably a good day to stay home.
The pictures are nice. I’m waiting for our cherry trees to bloom. They last such a short time but are so beautiful.
TheMightyTrowel
It’s been a lovely weekend here warm early autumn. Dug up a chunk of the garden today to make a garlic patch. Yay!
raven
@TheMightyTrowel: I sent some t-shirts to Sydney yesterday. $22 shipping for 2 shirts!
eta Actually Kingsford.
Mary G
My front yard has been dug up for almost a year for replacement of the main line. I finally got it together and the plumbers will be here tomorrow to do the work.
raven
@Mary G: My sis in Hawthorne just had that done.
Mustang Bobby
Close to 90 F here yesterday; we’re expecting a cool front to come through and bring some rain, then drop the temps into the low to mid 80’s. Summer’s on the way along with the oppressive humidity and the daily rains.
No sign of a bloom from any of the orchids yet.
PurpleGirl
@raven: I assume you sent by the US Post Office. Just think what they would have cost to go FedEx or UPS — definitely more expensive. (I was the collation editor for an APA with members in Australia, Canada and the the UK; not only was the mailing more expensive when not using the USPS but when the mailings got to the destination countries the delivery time increased greatly. No matter what people complain about US rates, they are still cheaper then those in other countries.)
JPL
@PurpleGirl: Unfortunately, it’s difficult to convince some, that republican plans hurt them. Privatize this, means more money for the top and less for the minions.
Phylllis
@raven: Very nice. Hope you have a great time at Augusta.
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl: People love to complain about the USPS but considering everything the do, it is amazing how much people take for granted. I once worked for a freight forwarding company (mostly overnight) and the USPS was the cheapest, most reliable way to get anything from here to there 90% of the time.
Raven
@PurpleGirl: Yes, that seemed to be the best option. One the other hand I got the $$$ in about 1 minute on PayPal
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I worked the loading dock for 6 months at the Champaign SCF. I’m sooo glad I got fired.
Viva BrisVegas
@raven:
Thanks for that, we were running out.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, for about 50 cents, they’ll come to your house, pick a letter up, and take it to Montana.
That picture up top is gorgeous.
Supposed to hit 70 here today after being cold and very windy yesterday.
rikyrah
Good Morning ?, Everyone ?.
Gvg
Spring is nearly over in north Florida. Nephew has the first pool birthday party of the season today. Plenty of dogwoods, we never really had the anthracnose never really took hold here. I am told it’s too warm here. In my youth Florida social life centered on swimming. Looks like that hasn’t changed.
Phylllis
So I’ll be in the ATL mid-week for a conference-any restaurant suggestions? Wondering if Ted’s Montana Grill is worth checking out.
Raven
@Gvg: and booze is legal again on PCB!
Raven
@Phylllis: Try Empire State South in midtown
http://www.empirestatesouth.com/
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Seems like everybody I know who has done it hates/hated working at the USPS. ;-)
@Iowa Old Lady:
In 2 days.
RedDirtGirl
@PurpleGirl: Snow, in the city? Say it ain’t so!
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: Two of my Nam vet buddies stayed there for 25+ years. They were able to do a lot of different things because of the money but I’m glad I went the direction I did.
Raven
@Phylllis: Where are you going to be? Will you have a car?
JPL
@Phylllis: It’s an okay chain restaurant. My son’s rehearsal dinner is going to be at JCT kitchen. It’s owned by Ford Fry and although I haven’t eaten there, it’s suppose to be good.
currants
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks for the beautiful photos, OzarkHillbilly. Lovely! Here in MA, we have lots of blossoms but as a few commenters noted, we also have pretty intense snow right now (MA). The (high) wind is starting too, and we’ll get more snow tomorrow, so it’s going to be some kind of mean 24-36 hours here. The migrant waterfowl out in the pond are looking alarmed/acting oddly–no wonder.
OH, and thanks also for the garden gate DIY info a few weeks ago (nothing in Lowes or HD that is close to the size need without being too weirdly incongruous).
Phylllis
@Raven: Sheraton downtown. And will have a car.
Immanentize
Good morning. Thank you OHB — I said it last week but the two things I miss most about Spring in Texas are redbuds and mountain laurels (and their smell like grape soda). Here north of Boston we have about 2 inches of snow. No plows yet, I am sure my town wants to save the cash. It will melt off the roads by noon….
JPL
@Phylllis: I might add that Atlanta has several good restaurants and it depends on what you want.
currants
@rikyrah: Good morning! (I often see your “good morning!” on threads around here: it always makes me smile but I’ve never said either thank you or good morning in return, so this morning I am correcting that error.)
MomSense
Lovely photos, Ozark.
It’s supposed to snow today and tomorrow and the next day.
Central Planning
@OzarkHillbilly:
I work for a company that does significant shipping with some of those companies. The corporate rate is much cheaper than the published/individual rate. I’m thinking about setting up an account with them just to see if that gives me better rates than walking in to the local store.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: The one buddy I know who made a career out of it was able to retire early with a good pension, paid off house, etc etc. His last few years there tho, he was so consumed with anger at everything about, and everyone on his job that I was seriously concerned he’d go “postal”. I could not figure it out, but from what I hear of how he has cut himself off from friends and family since last I saw him, it would seem to be a mental issue with him.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Good morning!
PurpleGirl
I just went out on the terrace to bungee cord the plastic chairs to the railing. I also brought in the pillow from one of the iron chairs because the wind ripped it off the chair — tore the velcro tabs apart. It’s cold and the wind is strong. I’ll add to the bungee cords later when the wind dies down a bit. It was even hard to open the door to get back in the apartment.
currants
ALSO: what happened to the tree in the middle? Lightning strike? I’m guessing not because I see no scorching, but I can’t really see enough detail to hazard an informed guess.
ETA and just that quickly we get thunder snow and our power goes out. It’s back on now, and I’ve got my fingers crossed for the rest of the day. (Who am I kidding? I could make a fire and spend the day in front of it with a book or two very happily.)
currants
@PurpleGirl: Good idea, I think–the high wind warning we have extends all the way to Baltimore, so I’m sure you’re in the same warning area.
Phylllis
@JPL:I’m pretty adventurous & do prefer local places.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@PurpleGirl:
And most FedEx and UPS packages are delivered by USPS. It is just too expensive to get to every house in the US so the private companies pay the Postal Service to do it for them. It is a very odd business.
PurpleGirl
@currants: I’ve been checking the Nation Weather Service website for their predictions. The City has had all apartment owners and construction sites on notice to keep any cranes tied down. (Last fall a crane came down and killed a man and the City issued new regulations and orders for high wind conditions.)
greennotGreen
@Phylllis: There are at least a few excellent Thai restaurants in Atlanta. Top Spice on Piedmont and Monroe is good, but there’s also Thai Cuisine on Cheshire Bridge Road that’s a hole in the wall with no parking farther down that’s even better. I also enjoyed Himalayan Spice on Clairmont which is Nepalese and Indian, but it’s much farther out. The others are near Atlanta Botanical Garden where I occasionally volunteer.
OzarkHillbilly
@currants: Yes, a lightening strike last year, about 300′ from our house. BOOM! Badda boom, BIG badda boom.
We have a # of lightening struck trees on our place (seems to be the county lightening rod) and the 2nd close hit in the 6 years we’ve been here. That blown off part is 20-25′ feet from the ground up and it blew a foot diameter, foot deep hole in the ground at the base. I found splinters of wood 6′-8′ in length up to 150′ away from the tree.
I’ve got video of a funnel trying to form directly over my house from a couple years ago, it came together a few miles east of me and touched down in Jefferson Co. So far this has been an unusually quiet spring. I know it can’t last.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Raven:
It is one of the last places an American can get a job with a fully funded pension AND 401k matching. Pay used to be low but 20 years of attacking wages in the US now makes government rates look good; the benefits are outstanding both in cost and in quality.
I know a woman who is a local postmaster & she seriously says she has union grievances and/or EEO complains filed on her once a week on average. A small set of the union workers seem to have decided they just want to make a lot of trouble & are constantly looking for an excuse. I also know that on both the delivery side and on their office/IT side a lot of unqualified people have made it to management positions. Petty dictators, clueless fence turtles, really the sort of thing you can find in any large business but magnified because there are something like 600,000 employees.
The “Postal Reform Act of 2006” forced USPS to pay more than $5 billion a year for 10 years into their retirement fund. Imagine any American corporation being able to do that & still stay in business – through 2008 & 09 recession with only a couple of loans to cover their lose. But USPS retirement is fully funded for the next 70 years. People not yet born will work there & their pension is already fully funded today. It was a thinly veiled attempt by the GOP to bankrupt USPS and it failed.
WereBear
And conservatives complain about regulations! So I tell them that the reason for each one was suffering and death.
Because assholes like them will also never anticipate a problem.
The USPS has always been a haven for returning servicemen. This might mean some untreated PTSD among its employees.
Love the dogwood!
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Beautiful pictures. I assume they were taken before the latest frost. Do you think the flowers will survive?
debbie
@Phylllis:
Only the earliest azaleas have bloomed here. I’m hoping the recent frost won’t hurt the ones that haven’t bloomed yet.
Patricia Kayden
Last night, the wind was unnaturally heavy and loud. Felt like one of those Egyptian plagues. Part of my neighbor’s fence fell down which means one of our dogs (who loves to escape) has to be tied up out there.
Ozark’s garden looks lovely.
Bill E Pilgrim
This is how it’s written in the excerpt in the Google News feed. It seems to have been corrected in The Hill itself, though you can see people snarking about it in the comments.
The mind reels with sarcastic remarks.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear:
Dead iron workers or carpenters are not a problem for them. Plenty more where they came from.
@debbie: All those pics were from the last couple years. This years pics are still in the camera and being added to. Living on top of a ridge I don’t have many problems with frost, and wild things like Dogwood, Redbud, and Serviceberry are hardier too. We’ve had several in the area since things started blooming but only one affected us up here. Even then it didn’t hurt my cherries or peaches at all. :-)
delphinium
Beautiful pictures! Cold, wind, and snow here currently but thankfully supposed to return to Spring by mid-week.
WereBear
Tristan has been a wildcat all morning, chasing the other cats and racing from the top of one cat tree to the other.
Finally heard the small plane which must have convinced him the biggest fly in the world was headed his way.
A little calmer around here.
JPL
@greennotGreen: There are two pretty good Thai restaurants near me.
I like this one.. link
jeffreyw
We’ve reached peak crab apple.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
OH MY! if you are not watching CBS Sunday Morning you just missed Megan Kelly throwing major shade over Bill Reilly. She smacked him so damn hard but so sweetly. It was a very fine stiletto to the heart.
Charles Rose asked her about Drumpf attacking her on BillO’s show & Bill not defending her:
“I think Bill did the best he could”
Even Rose caught it and asked her if that wasn’t “damning with faint praise” and she just smiled sweetly and repeated it
WereBear
@jeffreyw: Love that one. Desktop wallpaper until we have real blooms.
The daffs stuck their heads out last week, and got some snow dumped on them. None of us know what to expect.
dlm
@bystander: My Dad and stepmother lived in Pocono Summit. After my stepmom died, I closed up my house and moved up there to take care of my Dad. He passed last March.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Our redbuds in NoVA are blooming too, probably very close to peak. A large bumble bee was busy on one yesterday. Our dogwoods are not at peak yet.
I was surprised to see a male cardinal eating some redbud blooms yesterday and seemingly making a great feast of it. He was right next to a feeder full of shelled sunflower seeds (I used whole black-oil sunflower seeds for years, but got tired of cleaning up the mountains of hulls) and seemed to like the blooms better.
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
@Phylllis: Nuevo Laredo Cantina is out-of-the-way sort of midtown but I think it’s great.
ThresherK
Wonderful photos, except for the tick.
I’m like The Tick Whisperer: They squick me out, but I have this preternatural ability to find them, with hardly any searching in an animal’s fur, going back to when we had dogs in my childhood. Getting the tick off? That was Dad’s job.
The last plowable snowstorm of winter (I hope) that we’re getting in my neck of the woods.
Already plowed, already melting, seems to have come at the right time of day (and right day of the week).
raven
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
My buddy as the head of the local PW union, badly wounded and his tracker dog killed in Cambodia. Great guy but he took no fucking shit from anyone at the PO.
ThresherK
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Does that matter? I don’t “does your opinion of it matter” (you’re a person I trust and love).
But just on the whole subject. I checked out of CBS SUnday MOrning, a show I otherwise really enjoy, when I found out that Charlie Rose was interviewing Megyn Kelly. I thought it would be another “stoppable force” interview of someone who really needs to be interviewed well.
Is there anything in the piece that suggests that CBS gets it yet?
jeffreyw
@WereBear: Thanks. Here’s another – it’s also peak plum, peach, and cherry.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@raven:
Nor should he – there are plenty of shit sprinklers there. Sadly, not all of them are in management, the union members have their own share. Anyone who has worked for a living has worked with shit sprinklers, spewing out shit in a wide pattern, its an order of magnitude worse when there are 600k people in the company.
WereBear
@jeffreyw: The trifecta!
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly:
When is Leeloo not in trouble?
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@ThresherK:
It was better than I expected, but to quote Chuckie, that is damning with faint praise. I was impressed with Kelly, she admitted that Fox is in bed with the GOP, she put the knife into BO and in general showed herself to be above average. But of course it was an inch deep and “comfortable” Rose never really pressed her as hard as she pressed Drumpf.
But then I no longer expect that sort of questioning from the media, certainly not on the kumbia fest that is Sunday Morning. When I was a kid there were these experts known as ‘sino-analysts’ they read the tea leafs of info leaking out of China and tried to divine what that meant. That is sort of what people have to do when reading or watching what passes for news at the dawn of the 21st century,
Phylllis
@raven: That looks worth the hassle of driving in Atlanta.
ThresherK
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): Yeah, as I figured, but thanks for the rundown anyway.
My wife is considering knee replacement surgery; when I get home I’ll have to find out if Osgood talked much about his.
WaterGirl
Happy photos for a Sunday morning. Love the redbud in particular. I planted a redbud last summer so I haven’t seen it flower yet. Lots of buds, so I was pretty excited. Hope they didn’t get damaged in the last 2 days of frost, and we have a few 25 degree lows coming up this week. Not to mention the high winds! Lost 2 more fence posts and 2 more sections of fence. Sounds like it’s been windy like this everywhere.
I planted so many things last year trying to finally take back the yard after the tree destroyed so much in 2013. Trying to be hopeful, but so many perennials have come up so early this year that I worry that I’ll lose it all in the frost.
Germy
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor):
What’s easy to forget is that (off camera) they’re all friends. They travel in the same social circles, eat at the same restaurants and dinner parties. They’re putting on a show for us, pretending to be “hard hitting” but it’s all theater.
Even Jorge Ramos, who was kicked out of the Trump presser. I read a magazine profile of him, and at one point he’s sitting in a green room somewhere and Anne Coulter is there. They give each other a fist bump. Good buddies.
And yet their “fans” hate the other side with a passion.
It’s professional wrestling.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@ThresherK:
So far not but there is 20 minutes left. I have known a couple people who have had knees done & they have been very happy with them. If you have choices in your area check out the doctors, they are not all the same.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
Bernie threw Jane under the bus to Jake Tapper for not releasing their tax returns. Leadery! #FeeltheFraud
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Ahhh…. Another 5th Element fan.
I luv that flick, just too much fun.
Germy
@OzarkHillbilly: Milla Jovovich was amazing playing Joan of Arc, although the film itself was uneven. I loved her performance in the 5th Element.
As Joan of Arc, she gets hit by an arrow and falls backwards onto a crowd. Soundtrack goes quiet, like a silent film.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Germy:
It is a small world for them & it is difficult to confront someone you know you will have drinks with at the next party and who who know on a personal level and see some good qualities (I’m sure if you had met Eichmann and a dinner party he was a charming person with what appear to be human qualities.) You see this between politicians and the beltway boys. That is yet another reason why you have to look for signs around the edges, read tea leafs and in general look for unstated things in news these days.
A classic example. The NYT ran a story about Rush going deaf and getting the implant. At the end of the story was a paragraph about how oxy abuse can cause deafness. To most people it probably was odd but unrelated. I read that & knew Rush was a junkie. Reading tea leafs
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: I do too. We have a dvd of it and watch it regularly as a comfort movie. The whole family uses a lot of the quotes in our regular lives like: “Weddings are one floor down” when we want to express our utter disinterest.
Germy
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): It speaks volumes who they cover for and who they don’t cover for.
They sweep Rush’s drug use and weird sex vacation under the rug. Others don’t get a free pass, though.
ThresherK
@Germy: Like a silent movie about who?
I see what you did there. Nicely played.
Monala
Beautiful and sunny in the Pacific Northwest. I don’t miss New England weather at all. :)
My USPS story: the only blizzard we’ve had since we’ve lived here occurred our first year here, just before Christmas of 2008. Because snowplows are few, only the main streets were plowed. So on Christmas eve, my daughter and I were outside making a snowman. Street is solid white, no cars anywhere. Suddenly we hear a vehicle coming toward us. It was the USPS truck, coming to deliver two packages for my daughter from each of her grandmothers. I thought of the old saying about how neither snow nor rain will keep postal workers from their appointed rounds.
Christmas day my sister calls to wish us Merry Christmas. She asks if we received her package. When we said no, she said, “FedEx sucks! I paid extra for them to deliver on Christmas eve!”
Local news reports that neither FedEx nor UPS were making any deliveries due to the blizzard. When I called FedEx about the missing package, I was told that we had to pick it up at their main distribution office. So that Saturday, I spent a couple of hours standing in line at FedEx with hundreds of other people, even though by then all the snow had melted.
Germy
@Monala: I love my post office and my letter carriers are great. I always hear RWNJs bitching about the incompetent government and praising the wonderful private sector. My experience tells me otherwise.
I have issues with my cell phone. I’m reluctant to deal with the provider over it because I know it will be an irritating clusterfuck. Same with my internet provider. A clusterfuck. I had a fed ex guy break the latch on my gate. Tossed the package and snuck away.
But my post office personnel are competent and pleasant to deal with.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize:
HA! My wife and I do the same thing. The only movie that beats it for quotability is Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Monala:
There are a lot of things wrong with USPS but their dedication to that motto is intense and personal. They do not get nearly enough credit.
raven
@Phylllis: Inside the perimeter isn’t bad. If you take Marietta Street past the CNN bldg and then Howell Mill where it splits from Marietta all the way to Collier Rd, then turn left on Collier until it dead ends into Chattahoochee Avenue it’s just a half a block right across from the old Pepsi Plant. It’s a funky industrial area.
currants
@OzarkHillbilly: Wow, that’s impressive, and fascinating. I might well find it terrifying up close at the time, but still, that kind of natural event is really interesting. [ETA: the smell of the thing that’s been struck is also unforgettable: singed wood, earth …]
Power’s back on for now! (Only 2 hours out hardly even counts.)
WereBear
@Germy: Milla Jovovich does not get enough credit for being as good as she is. Part of it is working in genre.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@WereBear: Agreed. I haven’t seen much of her film work (maybe snippets over the years), but there are some catchy tunes on her first CD.
Cheers,
Scott.
currants
@OzarkHillbilly: well…The Princess Bride has a few lines I hear with astonishing frequency (given how old that movie now is)!
dimmsdale
I have a real soft spot in my heart for the Post Office, but then I worked as a letter carrier back in college…ran into the mixture of incompetents and lazyboneses others have alluded to, but on balance the local carriers had a sense of responsibility to their customers that was in line with that old “rain, sleet, snow” motto. I can well remember tromping through 2-foot snow drifts from house to house, my fat stack of 1st class in one hand, my flat mail in the other, and a big heavy bag over my shoulder, and at least you felt like you were doing something real for people.
Apropos of the gardening theme, anybody got a preferred house-plant fertilizer/pepper-upper? My garden these days is 2 north-facing windowsills. Probably should just repot everything in fresh soil and be done with it, but for maintenance in between pottings, any suggestions? I can grow chives, African violets, sweet woodruff, bulbs (although they never flower, too shady). got a 50-year old begonia from another time in another state.
happy gardening, all.
No One You Know
Up here in the North Left corner the hyacinths are in force, early tulips are breaking forth, and the tree peonies are in bud, but it’s the Siberian Bugwort that steals the show. (Or would, if I could paste this morning.) Picture tiny hot-blue flowers very like forget-me-nots blanketing the ground.
J R in WV
Redbuds are great right here in SW WVa. The wind last night didn’t seem to do much damage locally, although some folks lost their power. One weather guy said there wouldn’t be as much of that because the ground was really hard and dry; if it was wetter lots of trees would come down, and I guess he was right.
Redbud blossoms are edible by people, and are said to be good in a salad. The seed pods are also said to be good in a stir fry when very new and green. I haven’t tried either, but pass along what I have heard. I am a cook, but not of redbuds. The dogwoods are all wild here on our place, so all white, and doing OK despite the blight you guys talk about.
We had for many years a terrible invasive plant called multi-flora rose, which in sunny spots grows into huge green balls, with beautiful rich white blossoms in spring, that smell great. They are extremely thorny, and impenetrable. It took serious work to get to the root and cut them out, and it took cutting over and over to slow them down. Industrial poisons would work, but had to be strong and intense.
But then a waving blight came to them, and now they seem to be struggling to survive, it’s a plant virus, and they wilt from it. It is spread by aphids, so you could go get some infected foliage and bring it home, if you weren’t caught doing it. I never did that, but it came on its own. I guess if I was a rose grower I would be less enthusiastic about it, but I like the edges of the woods not being 100% impassable thorns. Deer and livestock couldn’t get into those rosebushes.
They were introduced by the Agriculture people as “living fences”, which they were, until they spread all over the whole pastures.
We have pretty good spring flowering going on, violets of various strains, the trees, maples bloom so attractively in shades of red. The tiny leaves starting to come out are different shades of green, some trees bloom in pale yellow and orange, it’s as pretty and colorful as the fall color, just more pastel and less saturated.
J R in WV
@ThresherK:
Mrs J had her first knee replacement March 15th. Strongly suggest you ask doctors who they would get to do their knees, her surgeon did my shoulder replacements last year and was recommended by our family doctor who has practiced locally for nearly 40 years as the best shoulder/knee guy around.
Will go now to help Mrs J with her PT exercised.
redshirt
That tick photo seriously triggers me.
I’m not afraid of much, but I’m afraid of ticks. I am in the environment all the time and before I got my system down, I’d find them on me all the time. They can be so sneaky.
My “system” works great now – I wear skin tight running pants and a long, tight long sleeved shirt underneath work pants and a work shirt, with long socks over the running pants. So, my exposure areas are only my neck and maybe my wrists. I just bought some new work gloves that have a long wrist section so that should take care of that part.
I’ve spent years now clearing the woods around my house and it seems to have reduced the nearby ticks. But they’re still out there.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Phylllis:
I second the recommendation for Nuevo Laredo. Awesome Tex-Mex.
Also recommend Jalisco at Peachtree Battle and El Torero on North Druid Hills Road.
currants
@No One You Know: Can’t find an image–can you give me a Latin name? (Google asks if I mean “mugwort” which I don’t think I do, and then it gives me sites for herbalists and black cohosh, but I really just want to see what they look like!)
Ruckus
@Germy:
Have the same experience. Not all the clerks have good days every day but they could be like the amazon delivery person, yes, works for amazon logistics. Called to be let into my security building and I went down to let him in but he was no where to be found. He delivered the package to an address completely different, about 2 1/2 miles from me, to a house, not an apartment. The house where he delivered the package was my city councilman’s house and he delivered it to me. Amazon was completely unaware of any of this and even after I complained and informed them, I’ve received nothing acknowledging the “mistake.”
Yeah I’ll take the PO over badly managed private delivery services.
Anne Laurie
@bystander:
Back in my (Bronx) childhood, Catholics still told their kids the medieval legend about dogwoods: Christ’s cross was made from the wood, so ever since then the trees have been spindly & twisted in response. And they flower for Easter, but every petal bears the mark of a nail (that brown spot at the outer edge).
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Ruckus: @Ruckus: Here, Amazon’s delivery service is subbed out to Dynamex. Remember that name; you’ll have lots of opportunities to curse it.
Dynamex is Uber for packages. Literally. Most if not all of the Dynamex drivers have jumped ship from Uber. From what I’ve seen so far, I’m guessing they couldn’t have found their Uber fares without help, either.
I made it clear the last time I complained about the delivery that they can forget me ever trying their Prime Now service. They took three days to get me something that I paid extra to get next day; do I really think they will have their act together enough to make it within two hours?