5/21/11 ON SECOND THOUGHT, MAYBE CALIFORNIA

WILL IT RAIN?

PASQUE FLOWERS

RHODODENDRON 'PJM'

Saturday, 7:45 AM.  Wind NNW, calm.  The sky is overcast, the barometer predicts rain, and it feels like rain, perhaps by afternoon.  We need rain badly but it could hold off until I go to the recycle center and mow the lawn.  And before those tasks, I will present a landscape plan to the Bayfield on the Lake Condominiums Board.
    Korean rhododendrons are perfectly  hardy here, and the one pictured, ‘PJM’ makes a great show in bloom and has attractive evergreen foliage as well.  Also in bloom now is the Pasque flower, Anemome pulsatilla, native to Midwest prairies and dry hillsides.
    Well, President Obama dropped a figurative bomb on the Israelis the other day, by suggesting that they give up strategic territory legitimately won in the 1967 war, which was started by the Arabs, with whom they have been at loggerheads for a thousand years.  All in the name of peace, of course.  It may just as well have been a literal bomb dropped on our only Mideast ally.
     I am waiting now for the Mexicans to insist we give up Texas, won at San Jacinto in the 1836 Texas war of independence.  Or Arizona, New Mexico and California, purchased with gold after we won the Mexican war of 1848 (ever hear of anything like that before?)  And, of course, Spain might like Florida back, from which old Andy Jackson unceremoniously routed them after the War of 1812, and France really has a claim on most of the US west of the Mississippi, sold to Thomas Jefferson for a pittance when they were really quite broke from waging war with all of Europe; and that of course brings up Alaska, sold to us by a Czarist regime badly in need of funds to keep its peasants in line.  Maybe they will all get together and petition the UN to vote on their claims, and what would the outcome of that be? Would we ever agree to give up these, our lands, bought with American blood and gold?  Fat chance! 
    Well, on second thought, maybe California.