THURSDAY DOINGS: Another long day in the books. This evening's fun included starting to dismantle the old oil-burning furnace. It has to go to make room for a new heat pump system that we ordered today. It will be headed our way via a truck from Texas. It will likely be a couple of weeks before it gets here. Not sure how long the install will take. Today, the kids worked on Japanese, CJ worked on history, and Annabelle tackled a couple of art projects. Can you guess what this Perler Bead project is going to be?
She also put the finishing touches on a couple of "Hawk" houses.
I think they're super cute!
And that's going to have to be a wrap for today. I got about 4 hours of sleep last night, all in a row. Hopefully tonight is another story.
SHORT REPORT: So, we did things today, I just did a poor job of documenting said things. CJ had Japanese class, Annabelle had a writing class. We worked together to make yummy Parmesan chicken wings in the air fryer. (This was our second go-round on those. Version 1.0 was *really* good, but Version 2.0 was even better. However a Version 3.0 is in the offing. We can do better.) Christian and I were both working from home today, but we four got together for a misty noontime walk. As we descended our driveway I spied some greenery I hadn't noticed before. "What's that?" I wondered aloud. No one in the family had any input, so I pulled out my phone with my newly-installed Google Lens app and took a quick shot. "Giant goldenrod, identified with #GoogleLens" was the almost instantaneous report. Turns out it's a member of the sunflower family. Interesting.
Per Wikipedia, "(Solidago gigantea) is a widespread species known from most of non-arctic North America east of the Rocky Mountains. It has been reported from every state and province from Alberta to Nova Scotia to Florida to Texas, and also from the state of Nuevo León in northeastern Mexico." So the giant goldenrod gets around, it seems. Meanwhile, the daisies, in all heights and sizes, are also coming on strong.
So there you have it, another garden blog from MPA. I suppose it will be kind of nice to have all of this on record, for posterity, regarding what's blooming where and when around the campus.
ALL GONE: This weekend we worked the 'to do' list, trying to get the place more orderly. One of the things we needed to do to make that happen was to close down our 'greenhouse' for 2020.
I wanted to move our surplus starts, and I thought a good way to do that would be to put them out on the street with a 'free' sign. But the problem with that for us is that we live on a dead end. However, I struck upon the idea of putting a 'free' box out by our communal mailbox.
We transplanted all of the starts into decent sized containers, boxed them up and carried them down to the mailbox.
We checked on them a couple of times. A good number of them disappeared on Saturday. We checked in with them Sunday morning and more were gone, but there were also some additions! Some neighbor had added some lettuce starts to the mix. has Sunday afternoon we went to check in with them and the whole box was gone! Success! Hopefully the starts are happy in their new home(s). And this experience makes me want to head up a neighborhood starts exchange for next year. Wouldn't that be cool?! BRUCE: Last night, we made it a point to watch a documentary about the life of Bruce Lee. Part of the ESPN 30 for 30 series, 'Be Water' intimately chronicles Lee’s life and extraordinary journey toward becoming an international superstar. Here's a trailer for the show.:
Lee lived in Seattle for most of his adult life. We visited his grave a few years ago.
Bruce is buried alongside his son Brandon, who was killed on a movie set ("The Crow") due to gross negligence. So sad.
ON HIGH:From low Earth orbit, we're one world. Also, from the International Space Station, you can see the freshly-painted road to the White House.
