FIREWEED

PATCH OF FIREWEED ALONG BETZOLD ROAD...

...FLOWER SPIKE

SUMMER GARDEN...

...DITTO

Saturday, 8:30 AM.  67 degrees F at the ferry dock, 63 on the back porch.  Wind NW, gusty.  The sky is clear, the humidity 82%.  The barometer is falling some, now at 29.99",  We should have nice weather through Tuesday, then unsettled conditions thereafter for several days.

  The perennial garden has shifted into late summer mode and is quite pretty now, if a bit unkempt (which is the way I like it).

  Fireweed, AKA giant willow herb, Epilobium angustifolium, in the Evening Primrose Family (Onagraceae) is a very beautiful and obvious perennial plant, growing in large stands, usually where there has been disturbance of the habitat due to fire, flooding, grading, etc. The species name describes the narrowness of the leaf, in Latin. 

   Fireweed is native to most of the North American continent except the Southeastern U.S. but is probably more prevalent northward, and particularly so in Alaska.

   Close up the flower spike perhaps does not look like much, but both the flowers and the seed pods are a deep magenta and together are very eye-catching.  The seeds are cottony, and are blown far and wide by the wind, like cottonwood or milkweed seeds.

OFF THE CUFF

   Hostages on a jet parked on  the Tehran airport tarmac, not to be released until an unmarked airplane arrives from the West, loaded with $400,000,000 in currency.  They leave as the arriving jet is being unloaded.  But it's not a ransom that has occurred, because the State Department and the President say it isn't.

   If it walks like a duck, has feathers and quacks, it's a duck.

   But, as Hillary would say, "What difference does it make?" 

   Well, we have been lied to so much that it probably doesn't make much difference, it's just another lie.

   But if we didn't pay ransom for hostages held by Iran or anyone else, no one would need to lie.

   But how would we then get our hostages released? Like hostages have always gone home, through an exchange of hostages.  But we don't hold any Iranian hostages.

   Then get some!  Diplomats, businessmen, tourists. 

   You get yours when we get ours.