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This summer's weather-hot-wet-hot-wet-has turned everything we've planted into thinking this area is now in the tropics. Such huge plants and early blooming.
These are those mushroom type things that grow around trees, just dinner plate sized
And, Spider plant perennial flowers are blooming at least a month early.
And you should see the eggplants we have ready to pick. They are so plentiful and big.
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Going back and forth from Clayton to Collinsville several times a week, I've come to depend on the KMOV traffic app. The main thing I check on that app before starting out is the Live Traffic link which brings up a St. Louis metro highway map. This map uses green on roadways which are moving and red for jams. The red varies in depth of color depending on how bad the jam is.
What I look for going west is how the approach to the Poplar Street Bridge is, when it's way backed up and slow moving I want to get over to the Musial Bridge. Going East I look at the area from Kingshighway to downtown and maybe even the east approach to the bridge.
The KMOV app is almost always correct. This makes me want to find a traffic app that works as well when we begin traveling east to DC and have to go through some bigger cities with the possibility of bad traffic.
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Watch or read the news right now and you'll see headlines or sub-headlines with reactionary verbs and adjectives.
People are shocked and appalled. They are in disbelief. There has been a big set-back. We are being targeted, let down, betrayed. This or that was a real smackdown, misguided and hypocritical. Something or other is bigoted and feckless.
And these are just in the headlines. Good luck with reading comments to the stories.
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A mattress on westbound 44 at 55 at downtown.
Mattresses 67
Ladders 57
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That's one way to look at all this rain we've had lately. But pretty soon we're going to be facing way too much rain. Last week we had torrential rain and last night and this morning, thunderstorms and lots of water. Here is our rain gauge right now, it looks bigger in the picture than it actually is and, I checked all 3 of our gauges and the amounts are the same.
Around here we keep gauges in various places.
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Behind our fence here at the seminary we have planted many bushes, shrubs, perennials, and annuals. But, the hill on which these things sit is virgin land, before we showed up nature just did what she wanted for generations. There are vines and more vines, weed trees, and all other manner of weeds some of which are quite pretty as they grow tall and end up with a flowered spike on their tops.
But all this we want to share with our own plants. It's an endless, thankless task. I've taken the weed whacker to it, pulled things out by hand, clipped and chopped. It looks tame for a week and then all that stuff comes back. We never get to the root source of anything.
Yesterday I uncovered some of the hostas we planted a couple of years ago. They were overwhelmed by tall weeds and euonymus vines. More to do here obviously but I was glad to at least make some progress.
Above is a section I started on at the bottom. The middle is just wild raspberry stems and more euonymus vines as well as vines I have no name for.
You can sort of see the difference in what has been cleared and what has not.
There is nothing which will eliminated the bad stuff and I don't like chemicals anyway, it takes the good with it. So we're going to try to keep knocking it back, pulling it out until it gives up.
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I like the Food Network magazine, it is filled with all kinds of interesting photos and articles about food. This is rather the opposite of the Food Network on television which seems to totally focus on cooking competition programs. The July/August issue is the summer food issue and one small thing caught my attention.
This was one of the food ideas for August. It describes using a carrot as a substitute for a hot dog. "Toss carrots with olive oil, cumin and chili powder, grill over medium-low heat. Serve on hot dog buns with jalapeno and avocado slices."
This sounds horrible. I'm sorry, just horrible. I would like to meet the person who would voluntarily eat this.
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The Belleville News-Democrat has a story which begins with the question: "Do You Like the Food at MidAmerica Airport? It Could Be Changing."
I'd be willing to bet most of us have never stepped foot into MidAmerica Airport in Mascoutah, much less eaten anything there. While the idea of an airport flying to various cities across the country is a dream as an alternative to Lambert, it never really took off in a great way. It may be that partnering with Scott Air Force Base in flights and vying for cargo type flights has been the main reason it has stayed viable. I don't know.
Now airport officials are asking for bids from food vendors which should include the current vendor, Roy-el on the Fly. This food service sells very basic items, snacks, drinks, pizzas and sandwiches.
It is so easy to get to and from MidAmerica, easy parking and walk up into the terminal. It's just surprising this place hasn't been able to tempt regular airlines into coming which would ease Lambert. But it hasn't. However, last month 15,223 passengers boarded planes — a 32 percent increase from 2017 which is good. All the while airport officials look to increase cargo flights.
Maybe that's the real issue. Do they know who they are and what they want to be? Cargo or passenger travel?
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Traffic was unusually bad for St. Louis morning rush drivers. It was a combination of lots of things. But the tally now stands at:
Mattresses 66
Ladders 55
Speaking of traffic, this tweet thread is great, or the stuff of nightmares, whichever you prefer. Columnist Jonah Goldberg had a flight to his home in DC and soon found out that getting out of the parking garage wasn't going to happen anytime soon.
"The line to exit DCA garage C goes for four floors, all the way up the ramp to the roof, giving new meaning to the circle of hell." The Reagan airport twitter person then posted this at 4:22- " Traffic is also barely moving at our garage exits. There is a large queue of vehicles with nowhere to go, until the gridlock subsides on the roads. (6/20 at 6pm)."
6 pm the gridlock in the garage might subside!
40 minutes after his last tweet, Jonah got to the ground level near the exits, but nothing moved because the surface streets were packed with cars.
This is why it is often better to drive out to the Baltimore airport, you spend time on the road, but not idling in District of Columbia streets and garages.
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KMOV News in St. Louis posted a story about NASA unveiling a plan to take on near Earth objects. This is the photo which accompanies the story.
This brings back memories of the nightmare my mother occasionally had during her childhood that of a meteor hurling toward earth and her. It must have been a very vivid dream and for some reason her nightmare image has stayed with me all my life. It may well be that she told it periodically. So when space stories occur in the news this passes through my mind. And, this photo must be very similar to what my mother's dream looked like.
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