Geopost
Cactus Farmer
A few years back, when I was in 3rd or 4th Grade, my brother and I went to visit David and Jesse Lenat at their Cactus Farm. While we were exploring the green houses, their dad, Richard, gave us each a cactus to take home.
Mine lived in a small pot near the window through the rest of grade school and high school and then my mom cared for it through college. It grew into a little cluster of pencil thin green, spiky pads over the years.
After I graduated, moved to California, and got an apartment in SF; I was home for Christmas one year and took one of the pads wrapped in tissue to California. It grew well there and now produces big, bright yellow flowers every year.
This Christmas, I stuffed two tiny buds into glass bottles and brought them to Iraq and planted in the yard with one of the cat’s help (paw in the background).
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Lightning Strikes in Basra
Cool storm last night.
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54C
New experience today – 129+F Wikipedia says the highest temperature recorded in Basra was 52C. Now the car was driving over a sunlit road, so it was recording a higher temperature than you would see over shaded ground, but it is only May.
Summer is going to be fun.
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beepocalypse
Arriving in Italy we found our apartment had been squatted in by a swarm of hornets, probably through the chimney. It appeared they’d recently had a massive party and most, but not all had died.
We started a fire to clear the chimney and dispose of the corpses, which given how gigantic they were, was a lot of burning. By a lot, I mean dustpans full of hornets, some still crawling, at a time.
They could have been European Hornets, but the largest were closer to 5cm or so, fairly large even for European Hornets.
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Rebuilding is Complete
I wish to thank everyone for their support in this brief moment of crisis.
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Only in NY
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Yard Berries are Fruiting
The urban blackberries and raspberries are starting to fruit.
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