The garden in winter

I took a trip to the garden yesterday. It was mild weather, with temperatures hovering around the freezing point. We've had some snow during the past few weeks, so I wanted to see how the greenhouse was doing. I don't want too much snow to accumulate on the top of the greenhouse, because I'm not sure how much weight the polycarbonate panels can tolerate. So I did sweep the snow off the top of the greenhouse. But my worrying about the snow accumulation was also a great excuse to be in my garden again. And the garden has a special beauty in winter. It's peaceful in a different way than in the summertime. There was no one else there except for me; I could tell because there were no other footprints in the snow besides mine. But there were a lot of birds, chirping happily in the bare trees. I guess they manage to find the food they need to survive; I did hang up a couple of seed balls for them a few weeks ago, and they were gone yesterday, so I assume that the birds ate them. I take care of the birds during the winter. As I've written about before, the pigeons, magpies, sparrows, and sometimes even the seagulls pay us daily visits when it's cold and miserable out. They always get seeds and some bread from us each day.

I'll most likely be taking another trip to the garden on Tuesday in order to brush more snow off the top of the greenhouse. The weather people are predicting about ten inches of snow for Oslo, starting tomorrow and continuing into Tuesday. And then it's supposed to get cold again. We've had a lot of snow this winter, much more than I can remember from previous years. I don't mind it so much this year, because it's pretty and creates a peace that is nice to experience. Walking outdoors at night is also a nice experience--pretty and quiet. So winter has its charms.

I'm including some photos of the garden in winter in this post. Enjoy.......

Peaceful winter scenes

I took a lot of photos during the month of December because there were a lot of cold clear days and nights, and that always makes for crisp clear photos. We've also had some snowfalls that end up making the nighttime brighter--amazing how the snow creates light in the darkness. In any case, I find these winter scenes very peaceful and I wanted to share them with you.

taken on New Year's Eve right after midnight

a lovely winter morning sky with smoke curling upwards toward the clouds

Full moon from early December 2017

The Last Gasps of the Dinosaurs

I was planning to write another post about Trump and his minions a couple of days ago, but in the meantime, Bannon turned around and APOLOGIZED for his inflammatory comments about Trump and his family. So now I’ve got to comment on this. I mean, who writes this stuff? It’s better over-the-top drama than most of what you’ll find in the theater these days, better than the worst soap opera out there. It’s bromance, folks—bromance between Trump and Bannon. They’ve had a tiff and they’ll be making up soon. Bannon has already held out the olive branch. Now Trump just needs to take it. Because you understand what happened here. Bannon, like a jilted lover, decided to take a little revenge on Trump, to make him pay for how he badly he treated him. We’re talking pride here—the old male dinosaur wounded pride. Remember the old expression ‘Hell has no fury like a woman scorned’? Methinks this expression can now be applied to men too; in fact, it always could be, because men can be amazingly vengeful when they want to be. Bannon’s fury has now abated. He got what he wanted—the attention he seeks, all eyes on him. His fifteen extra minutes of fame. And in addition, the entire country is about to make Michael Wolff a millionaire many times over. Maybe Wolff will cut him in on some of the profits. I’m guessing Trump and Bannon will kiss and make up, and then we’ll be subject to more of Trump’s tweets talking about what a great guy Bannon is. And that the media reports of his having said that Bannon had ‘lost his mind’ are more evidence of fake news. Wait and see.

It’s just that I, like so many other Americans, want to be spared this farcical circus. I literally cringe every time I see either one of them on TV. I cringe when I realize this is what we present to the world. The lack of intelligence, civility, logic, rationality, and strategic thinking is glaring. GLARING. As in, sun-blinding. You can’t find the shadows, can’t find cover, can’t find a safe place to protect yourself from it. You can’t escape them and the old dinosaur chaos they represent. Everywhere you turn, the old dinosaurs are there, lumbering and lurching forward, crushing everything in their path on their way to oblivion. Because that’s where they’re headed. I just wish they'd get there already. I’m hoping that #Metoo is the huge comet that takes out most of them. It’s already a societal force to be reckoned with, having destroyed a good number of the old dinosaurs’ careers. Will we miss them? The answer is a resounding NO.

The last gasps of the dinosaurs. I feel sorry for the real ones, but not for these old men. They’ve ruined lives, careers, dreams, ambitions. They ruin people. They use them up and spit them out. But they’re sinking into the mire that will trap them for posterity. I can hear them gasping for breath—the bloated, overfed, pompous, arrogant, infamous, small-brained creatures—and they deserve all of the vengeance that society will wreak upon them. I just hope that the non-dinosaurs will be spared. It would be terrible to have to share posterity with them mired in the same mud.

Is this any way to run a country?

Is this any way to run an airline a country? You bet it is……

My apologies to National Airlines for re-imagining their slogan from many years ago, but for some reason it popped into my mind today after reading yet another article about someone else Trump has criticized publicly and turned his back on. This time it was Steve Bannon, of all people. I mean, this is serious, folks. These two were once as thick as thieves. Steve Bannon’s alt-right supporters voted for Trump because Bannon told them to. Bannon himself served as chief strategist in Trump’s administration, a role that gave him a direct line to Trump. Trump cannot turn around now and say that Bannon’s influence on his decision-making was negligible during his first half year in office and during his campaign. But he is doing just that. Turning his back on Bannon and saying that he 'lost his mind after he was fired', after Bannon said the following in the new book Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff:

"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government (Russia) inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor -- with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad s***, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."

Wow! Bannon finally admitted what all ethical individuals know already. But it was good to see that he is finally coming around to the ethical way of thinking. Who knows? Maybe there’s hope for him yet. Time will tell.

But watching Trump lurch from one chaotic mess to another, destroying everything in his path—people, institutions, laws, agencies, etc.—only makes one wonder what the hell this man is thinking. Implosions, explosions, tantrums, endless conflicts, pissing contests with other world leaders (some of them as unstable as he is)--all in the space of just one year in office. One of my friends said today it's like a Greek tragedy. But it’s a Greek tragedy in many acts that are unfolding as we go along. That’s the scary part. We don’t know how this tragedy will end. Will Trump be impeached or brought down? Will he bring down the country or involve it in a nuclear war? It’s hard to know. I would hope that his supporters understand the stakes involved when supporting their boss’ penchant for upping the ante regarding a nuclear conflict. If you’d like to know more about how a nuclear bomb kills people, you can read about it here: http://www.atomicarchive.com/Effects/effects5.shtml  I call it game over.

How many people can Trump alienate (afford to alienate) before enough is enough? Before there are no more supporters/friends/allies/family members/ lackeys/boot-lickers/brainwashed individuals etc. left to alienate? More importantly, is there any serious governing going on at all? Is this chaos his political strategy for how to run the country? A diversionary tactic to distract us all from what is really going on (enriching himself and his family at the expense of the country?). Because I have to say I really just don't get it. Is this any way to run a country? I’m betting that Trump thinks it is. He thinks he’s doing a bang-up job of running the country. There are many ways to define a bang-up job. I’m going for the literal interpretation, because the only images that comes to mind are collisions, damage and destruction. He's like a wrecking ball. I wonder what will be left when the dust settles.