It's a new day

Considering the events of the past five days, I think today’s earworm has to be the incomparable Nina Simone singing “Feeling Good”.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Cake!

In case you’re in need of some happiness, here’s a woodpecker enjoying a suet seed cake.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Horticulture

It started some time in May, when I bought the dwarf Meyer lemon tree. I didn’t really want a Meyer, but that’s all the garden center had. I got to the microscopic lemon stage, but then someone—my money was on some toerag with a bushy tail—knocked them off.

Well, then I recalled how much I enjoy limes, so I went to a different garden center about a month ago and bought a dwarf lime. No blossoms, but the leaves actually smelled like limes.

After the incipient Meyer lemons disappeared, I went back to that second garden center and bought a dwarf Ponderosa lemon tree. It was covered with blossoms, so I was hopeful. There were also microscopic lemons.

Then I watched one day as Scooter, the chipmunk, hopped up to the Meyer tree, rampaged around the branches, moved on to the lime and then to the Ponderosa. He was the culprit, the little hooligan. I opened the door to yell at him.

But I knew I needed to do more, so I now have the Ponderosa encased in a net bag. He’s tried twice to get up under it.

I may need to make another trip to the garden center.

(But, listen—I do not have a citrus problem. I can stop whenever I want.)

 

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Touching grass

Righty-ho, then—dunno about you, but I need to look away from the screen and breathe. So here are a couple of cloud formations.

Nothing spectacular; just nature being gorgeous.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: hearing it

I gotta say—after the past week, I was feeling like there’s not much for me to be grateful for. Republicans fucking terrify me, Democrats just screwed the pooch and my hip problem just doesn’t seem to want to resolve itself. I thought I was going to have to reach for something like, “I thought I’d run out of ricotta because I couldn’t find it in the fridge, but then remembered that I last bought it at Trader Joe’s, and it was a blue container, not a red one.”

But then I recall a chat with a friend on Friday, who cut through my bullshit and suggested that instead of focusing on a project, I should come to grips with the much larger one—purpose. Which, of course, is a shit-ton more challenging, but also is at the base of all my miasma.

Rats.

So today—again—I’m grateful for the support and insights of friends, who will say things out loud when you need to hear them but can’t shape your mouth around them.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

God's gonna trouble

After several days of shenanigans at the RNC—sanitary pad on the ear and a vulture capitalist VP pick among them—I’m feeling the need for something cleansing. Something pure. Something Eva.

So I’ve chosen her acoustic take on “Wade in the Water”.

“Wade in the Water” is a jubilee song, an African American spiritual originating in slavery and collected and sung by the Fisk University Jubilee Singers in the early years of the 20^th Century. A lot of those songs were about getting through terrible times by holding out hope for deliverance and salvation.

Not sure, but the first time I heard it might have been Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of Sweet Honey in the Rock, singing it in a class she taught at American University. And here’s that amazing group singing it, if you’re interested.

At times like these, I turn to music and art to help me through, because it’s frankly overwhelming. Eva Cassidy’s warm, powerful and steady voice is what I need today.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Passing plagues

This is meant to be an apocalyptic year for cicadas—two separate broods are emerging from years of subterranean hibernation and singing the song of their people to large swathes of the United States. (I reported on Brood X three years ago, as they passed through the People’s Republic.)

But those swathes are largely in the Midwest, so I think we won’t have many here.

So far, one of my friends shared a photo of a cicada shell in her yard, and this guy flopped in my path one morning a couple of weeks ago and gave up the ghost.

I have to say that I’m not really sorry—we have enough to contend with this summer, what with the election and the monster heat dome.

Enjoy the music, Ohio. You owe us for Vance.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Definitely brass

Saw this splendid parking job in the lot outside my physical therapy clinic.

I mean—it takes brass ones to do this, even if you have a new Volvo SUV.

So I went around to see what I could learn from the license plate. And lo—not only is it Texas, but expired over a month.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Cool, cool

Okay, ordinarily I’d include this vanity plate in a post with several others, because that’s my style. But the entire rear end of this car is plastered with so many, uh, interesting stickers that I thought it merits its own post.

The plate itself is probably an elision of “qué chulo”, meaning “how cool”.

Sometimes I really wish I could see the owners of these cars.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Beejoy

I do not know what these purple flowers are, but the bees are absolutely crazy about them.

B

Every time I go to a physical therapy appointment I’m filled with joy by them. So that’s my gratitude for today.

 

 ©2024 Bas Bleu