A Hard Thinking Face

I was going through the pictures in the camera and came up with this one from Sunday. My brother-in-law...Sisters husband...thought he should make a face when I aimed the camera at him...silly boy...he should have known a face like that belonged on my BLOG! Looks like he is thinking hard, though, doesn't it? "Scott, what is the square root of an inverse bilateral retrification bilineated by the reverse lateral of a spectral prime ocillation?" or maybe it was, "Scott, what would you do with your time if you did not have kids?" We enjoyed our time down there and had t leave way too soon. Thanks for a fun time!

Well, today I ate three donuts and watched a couple videos for work. One was on blood borne pathogens that must have been made in the 1980s and one on Asbestos from roughly the same era (the movies, not the donuts).

Then I was going to do more weed whacking. I am telling you it looks like all I will do all summer…it’s a bit monotonous. The boss drove by just then and told me and the other guy we needed to take a van and go to Selah to help load some boxes. We got there. The guy who was already there (an administrator who looked reluctant to break a sweat) suddenly began to get phone calls. Those calls kept him mysteriously busy and away from the hard labor. Yippee.

When we got back we went to the end of the year barbeque for the maintenance department. It was fun. Had a little water fight with a few kids…and adults. One of them was one of my students…a kindergartner named Skylin. She sneaked up behind me and began squirting the rear of my jeans…by now she was past her quiet ways and well into rambunctious summer kid. I threatened her with a time out the next time I subbed for her, she just laughed and told me, "Mr. Huffman, school is out!"

I got home after work and Cora showed soon after. I asked her to accompany me over to her mom’s so I could drop off the Nile Letters. She did, and we went over. One of the newer kids is a student I have taught before. He kept calling me Mr. Huffman…the rest of the daycare kids call me Jim. I told him that since it was summer and we were not in school, he could call me Jim. His expression was interesting to watch as he processed the information. A few minutes later, he asked me what he should call me in the fall...well, seemed like a logical question.

So, we had pot stickers and egg rolls for dinner…not quite enough.

Oh, see how much my Palm has grown since I posted Sunday Morning? BLOG.

Hope Sprouts Eternal...Well, Palms Do, Apparently...

I enjoy having plants. My thumb is somewhat tarnished, I would not say it is completely green, but it’s greenish. I have raised a few things from seed. When we came back from Disney World about 9 years ago, I brought some seeds on the flight back with me. Some cacti from Salt Lake City and some palms from Florida. My cacti worked nicely. I still have 8 or 9 from that batch. I also managed to get a Sago palm; it took almost 6 months to sprout. It reached about 9 inches tall and stopped growing. I took it to California with us. I figured it would grow better, but it eventually died, probably due to my mismanagement. I brought 4 palms home back from California. They were some that I had transplanted…dug up from the base of a local palm. Of the four, one survives today.

I have tried planting other seeds recently, by recently, I mean within the past year-and-a-half. I happened upon some American Chestnuts, apparently there is a stand here in Washington State that is still healthy, I am not sure that the department in charge of trying to bring the poor species back is aware of them, but I have been told that is what these chestnuts are. I planted them instead of eating them. Nothing. So, I was cleaning out my desk in the back room and stumbled upon some olive pits I brought back from CA. No guarantee they were fertile, but I planted them anyway…in the same pot as the chestnut, no use wasting soil, and maybe the chestnut WILL eventually sprout. No luck with the olives. So another item came from my desk. Some more palm seeds…these I have collected myself from several different species…in the pot they went. Then I planted some other seeds I found, these were the leftovers from our Florida trip, nine years ago. I planted the last bunch back in January? Since then it has sat in the kitchen window. I took a leaf that had come from an African Violet and thought perhaps it would sprout anew from the leaf. It stayed green and until the other day, when I was dripping some water on the base of the leaf and noticed a shoot. I picked up the leaf, it appeared to still be alive, but I tossed it in favor of what was now sprouting from my pot. The question now: what the hell is it? I suspect palms, but am unsure of the species it would be…probably Washingtonia filifera, that is the Californian Fan Palm. It’s the one that grows everywhere down there. Since that is the species I had the most seeds for, it is my assumption that I had the best chance of getting sprouts from them.

What do you think?

Below is a picture of a palm at Mare Island, with an Australian pine behind it...I don't remember the exact species

Here also, for your viewing pleasure, is a picture of my last California dug palm the way it is this morning.

My coffee plant.

Some seedling cacti! This is a barrel cactus.

These are Saguaros!