I spent the entire day cleaning, organizing, hitting the grocery store and working to make the house livable.
I am pleased to report that Steve, in under nine hours, was able to completely ruin his entire coat by applying a fresh layer of pine sap and detritus. I found out this morning when I woke up and he was lying on my shoulder next to his head and he was stuck to me. And yes I know olive oil removes it but why? He’ll just do it again tomorrow. I’ll go get him a fresh lion cut next week.
In other news, check out how big my trees are in the backyard.
This was my back yard in 2018 during the flooding before I leveled the back yard and put the willow tree in.
So seven years growth for the maple, apple trees, and willow. Pretty impressive.
I will talk about politics tomorrow, I have too much other shit to do, including updating every god damned thing on this computer.
Before I leave, I did want to publicly express my condolences to Tom. I fucking loved that cat with that ginormous schnozz, although I am sure no where near as much as the two of them loved each other. Rip, Tikka.
What a fucking cat he was. That guy was Tunchesque, and I can think of no higher compliment.
Medium Cool – Bad Lodging! aka Dives Where You Felt Lucky To Get Out of There Unscathed
Baud
From that angle, the willow doesn’t look too close to the house at all.
Spanky
@Baud: No, the maple is too close to the house.
columbusqueen
Tom, I am so sorry about Tikka. He was indeed a most magnificent beast & will be missed.
Dorothy A. Winsor
You’ve really done good work on that house, Cole
WaterGirl
Steve must have been happy to be home, reclaiming everything by rolling around in it.
zhena gogolia
Nice post. I like it.
NotMax
Don’t want to waste good olive oil? Hand sanitizer works a treat.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: I’m surprised the willow didn’t eat the house while Cole was in Arizona.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Oops
Madeleine
With all those trees providing all that shade, how will you have a garden? Beautiful trees, lovely cool shade.
sab
@Madeleine: In West Virginia summers shade is good. In West Virginia winters there are no leaves.
prostratedragon
Nice shady hangout for summer.
MCat
So glad you got home safe.
MCat
Tom, I am also sad about Tikka. Such a lovely soulful kitty. I have been through that kind of grief too. So hard.
Darkrose
The Sac Gay Men’s Chorus held auditions for solos in “Considering Matthew Shepard” today, and I’m happy to report that I’ll be doing Recitation V, a short spoken paragraph describing the arrest, trial, and sentencing of the murderers. Having lots of experience delivering factual information to an audience helped.
It’s such an amazing piece of music, and I’m glad we’re doing it with the UC Davis choruses. The undergrads and probably some grad students weren’t alive when this happened. The UCD choral director has started a discussion group because with everything going on now, it’s hitting the students hard.
The Pale Scot
I’m thinking that’s a shitload of leaves to be moving to the front of the house during the fall.
The Pale Scot
@Darkrose:
Very cool
RaflW
We planted a multi-stem river birch in the back yard (or front yard if your the BF – he says the lake shore is the ‘front’ and, well, I can’t really say he’s wrong, we just see it differently as the driveway and front door is the opposite side) of the cabin at the lake in Sept of 2022.
I’m really hoping for a growth spurt this year. Summer of ’23 was dry and we worked hard just to keep it happy, and summer of ’24 it built a bit of fullness but didn’t get a whole lot taller. Fingers crossed for this year, it should be well rooted now.
And last fall’s double (tiered) rain garden + 100s of sqft of prairie plantings should be greening up when we get back to the cabin later this week. Excited (and anxious, there was some squirrel damage when there a few weeks ago, but the installer does do some re-planting the first growing season).
kwAwk
Some of my thoughts for the today. As a person who grew up in the rust belt in the ’80s I’m struggling to stomach the pundits and Trumptards who are bitching about how young people today don’t really want all of these factory jobs Trump is promising to bring back.
There is a reason every sad sack movie and novel starts with the premise: Papa used to work at the mill until it closed down. He died a broken man. Everyone in town either committed suicide, became a drunk or is just a little bit weird inside.
Since Reagan, Conservatives and Republicans have been rat fucking manufacturing, wrecking cities and towns, people, schools systems and that whole way of life. Anybody who complained about it was called a communist/socialist, lazy, spoiled, entitled and about every other name in the book. They broke the unions. Gutted pensions. Enacted tiered pay scales where younger workers made significantly less in money and benefits.
Manufacturing’s reputation is in the gutter. It is not considered by much on anyone to be a viable life plan. Even plants and mills that were profitable weren’t spared the wrath of Wall St. They just have to be not profitable enough.
If Trump wants to use the Republican Party as a tool to bring back manufacturing and American jobs, maybe he ought to level with people about who it really was that destroyed it all in the first place. Hint: Not the Democrats. Younger people who don’t know better might need to hear this.
RandomMonster
Perhaps the house is too close to both and should be moved out into the street.
I just blew your minds.
mrmoshpotato
@RandomMonster: 🤯
Omnes Omnibus
@Spanky: The maple is too close to the willow which is too close to the house.*
*The willow being too close to house is canon.
prostratedragon
It’s Mae West month on TCM:
Lily
@RaflW: It all sounds beautiful.
I planted a river birch clump (and a few paper ones) in front some years ago. It’s been very interesting to watch its surface develop. And its girth grew faster and much bigger than the paper ones.
rikyrah
Glad that you made it home safely, Cole🤗
rikyrah
Looking forward to the May the 4th videos from Disneyland on TikTok🤗
Greg Ferguson
O, I am so sorry to hear this. Tikka was a noble SOB (as Tom acknowledged, frequently), but so handsome in a dark-alley way. I hope he leads a Gang on the Other Side 👍✊🔥🤠
206inKY
Extraordinary work on the trees!
Martin
So the forked Signal app that the WH is using because it stores transcripts of conversations, the Israeli developer was hacked and customer data stolen, so anyones guess whether some rando got even more US secrets.
Gloria DryGarden
@Martin: oh, Jeepers.
Dammit. (my first words were less polite)
Gloria DryGarden
Whenever Bupalos shows up, I wrote a few haiku and poems, collaborating with another poet over on blue sky, using an important powerful thing he said, that moved me.
now that I’m lower carb, I’m so glad I don’t have pie; it was such a coherent concise comment. Glad I didn’t miss it.
I often sleep all morning…I might miss him when he shows up..
JoyceH
@kwAwk: There was a lovely poll on manufacturing recently. When asked if America would be better off if there were more factory jobs, eighty percent said yes. When asked if they personally would want to work in a factory, twenty-five percent said yes. So basically the majority of Americans think we need more factories for other people to work in.
Baud
@JoyceH:
“People would be better off if they have more servants to help with things.”
“I don’t want to be someone’s servant.”
Gloria DryGarden
@Baud: when the economic model requires servants,
there are layers of class, economic disparities,
and this precludes everybody being able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps ( myth)
Years ago my sister and I discussed that we were both servants, and could lose our clients at any time. She was a violin teacher, I was a massage therapist. We were disposable, unnecessary. I remember losing client to nail salons, when people chose getting their nails done as their self care luxury. I’d certainly rather have a massage. But it stung. She would have students, families drop her, when they needed to do something else with their money.
it hurts to feel one has little value. And how do all those immigrants feel, picking our food, burning under a hot sun, scared for their lives?
Geminid
I ran into an article CNN put up yesterday, about next year’s midterm elections. The title:
Republicans are trying hard to recruit Georgia Governor Brian Kemp to run against Senator Jon Ossoff next year. Senators Thune, Daines and Ricketts in particular are encouraging Kemp to join their club. And now Donald Trump is saying nice things about Kemp after slagging him for years.
Kemp is easily Ossoff’s strongest potential opponent. In 2022, Kemp shrugged off a primary challenge from Trump-endorsed David Perdue, and went on to defeat the formidable Stacey Abrams by five points.
The 38 year-old Ossoff will have a tough fight on his hands if Kemp runs. Senator Ossoff is a very hardworking politician though, and I think it would be a tough fight for Kemp also.
So why are Republicans ramping “up impeachment talk in midterm battles?” It’s a base motivation play. A lot of hard-core Trumpers have no particular party loyalty, and Republicans worry about them sitting out the midterms. Speaker Johnson and company think impeachment could be the shiny object that will lure listless Trumpers to the polls.
Alabama Blue Dot
I had a volunteer black willow pop up in my garden in 2023 (I guess a bird dropped it there). It is now 15 feet tall. I love it.