St. Patrick's Day edition, and a happy one to all of you out there of Irish descent or other related proclivities and/or sympathies.
This week was okay. I have not been in a lot of emotional or physical pain this week, and any week in which I am not in a lot of emotional or physical pain is at least an okay week, because that means I can function at least moderately effectively.
I haven't paid much attention to this blog this week. Nothing personal, I just have been busy with my life. No matter how crazy-making the world gets, one must have something that is outside that crazy...inside it? Many people still call AFK (away from keyboard) "the real world;" it often seems to me that the real world is to a great extent enacting itself within the Tubes. But, it's all real.
I have paid a fair amount of attention to news about Japan and their ongoing "not-a-meltdown," also that bit about the White House thinking it neat to sic Homeland Security on "streaming," not to mention all that vague stuff about counterfeit drugs. I also read a fair number of comments about that on the fine news-sharing site Reddit, but still came away thinking that all of this is less likely about counterfeiting or copyright than it is about this being really good news for Homeland Security.
Oh, and then there is this from the Guardian; "Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media. Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda." Well, now there's a good Saint Paddy's day article.
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
Your military dollars at work. I look forward to full employment where we will all have the option of being paid bullies or used victims.
Now, back to me. I'm much more upbeat than all of that. Even though my pomegranate died.
Another one:
I don't think any of our pomegranates in this region are going to come back from the roots, but I am always the upbeat gardener, the one who refuses to give in, even when they tell me "Give up, I tell you; that's dead." That's what they told me about the rooted fig cutting many years back, before it finally started up from the roots in late May, and became the fine fig tree that is now very most likely frozen clear down the ground at this point.
Figs are more primitive than pomegranates. The palm trees all look dead, but the locals here have some kind of fetish here for palm trees, some of them at least. I saw a couple of pallets of huge fan palms in equally huge black plastic pots, just yesterday, all ready for some new doomed effort, in the parking lot of a local flooring enterprise. I should have photographed them, but I'm still just on the verge of remembering to start taking my modest little digital camera everywhere I go.
Time for another happy photo. Forsythia! I loves me some forsythia. This baby is maybe seven years old, and she gets bigger and stronger every year. A little sub-zero temp week was nothing to her.
I was happy to see my somewhat neglected but naturalized grape hyacinths come up, a little happier every year:
Next, here's one of my Sophora secundaflora with the forsythia in the background.
That's the "mescal bean tree" or the "Texas mountain laurel." It handled the cold well, though I'm not sure about the flowering spikes, which she produces the year before, when she does.
My S. secundaflora is still just a girl, only maybe seven years old. (note: to me most plants are female in gender, it's kind of how sailors feel about ships). She didn't do too much for the first few years after I grew her from seed, but then she started getting going faster, and I was happy to see that she's handled this cold weather well. I think this species would be more in trouble when it gets too hot, but that would have to mean over maybe 110 for some prolonged period of time. That's my guess, anyway.
And last but not least, the Sophora davidii, the dwarf pagoda tree. This is a species from China.
Today:
Flowering, a few years ago, the first year it flowered.
I grew this from seed. It's budding out now. Yay, brave plant!
There is a large pagoda tree too, that is grown in China. I don't have the species off the top of my head.