Monday, May 17, 2010

Random Thoughts

The heat has arrived and we're all wilting.  My hanging basket of nemesia and a pretty purple trailing vine whose name escapes me keeled over within the space of an afternoon and was unable to be revived.  There was nothing to save so I started over again with CT's extra flowers (she chose them, Dad paid for them, and these didn't fit in their beds).  I've never planted portulaca before.  I've never had any luck with lobelia.  They were both a part of CT's donation, though, so into the coir liner they went.  This time, I'm putting the coir inside a plastic pot, hoping for greater structural integrity than is usually afforded by the coir alone. 

There's nothing worth photographing yet, but at least they are not dead.
*****
The Cavs are out of the playoffs and TBG is adrift.  He should have been watching LeBron this afternoon instead of napping through the Celtics/Orlando game.  For a while, he was very proud to be from Cleveland.....
*****
I was part of a Facebook quest to have a million people express their displeasure with SB1070, Arizona's ill-conceived attempt to secure our border with Mexico.  The notifications were less strident than most of their ilk, and infrequent enough to be ignored easily.  Then they decided to boycott my state and I figured out how to un-join them.

It's true that without tourists my favorite spots will be quieter, but without tourism Arizona's economy will just shrivel up and die.  I  just can't be a part of that.  Come to Tucson.  Our police chief says his minions are overworked and underpaid as it is without doing the job the Feds have assigned to the Border Patrol and ICE.  We're a multi-ethnic community which generally gets along quite well.  The fact that we are 65 miles from the border means that our shopping centers are filled with Sonoran license plates.  This bill is a mis-guided attempt to protect the Arizonans who ranch and farm and live and hike and fish and birdwatch along the beautiful lands along the border.  They are over-run with vandals and vagrants and varmints of the 2-legged kind, and these intruders are carrying weapons and drugs as often as they are carrying dreams of a better life. 

SB1070 is just a ham-fisted way of attacking the problem.   To those of you who have commented that this would be a wake-up call to Washington, I'm still waiting.....
*****
G'ma and I took a picnic up to Mt. Lemmon on Friday.  It was 30 degrees cooler at 8000' and the pine trees smelled like Lake George and the cabin we went to summer after summer.  There were squirrels and blue skies and the road was a marvel of engineering

Catalina Highway  
We were smiling all the way up and all through the picnic and all the way down and G'ma never felt sleepy and she remembered the saguaros were saguaros and I was reminded why I nag at her to get up and go with me.  I don't always have to win, but, always and forever,  I will continue to encourage.