The sex life of squash

The squash blossom on the left is a female; the one on the right, male. Also there is a swelling at the base of the female stem.Females turn into squash fruit; males last week turned into stuffed squash blossoms For some reason, I have an 8: 1 male to female sex ratio

The blossoms waiting to be stuffed after I remove the stamens

Dishes I have: From fancy bone porcelain, vintage majorca Wedgewood, hand painted Mexican pottery, hand made art fair porcelain, various glass plates, IKEA kids plates. What do we use most? cheapo white Corelle. The rest are for company although with Covid, my guests outside get fancy Chinese New Year paper plates   Anyway last week a Corelle plate spontaneously exploded surprising me   This apparently has been seen before

An intense Miss Hannah Same blue eyes as my son

Her big sister Allie

Nasturtium blossoms which I used to garnish my Mexican stuffed fried squash blossoms. Just because a flower is edible doesn't make it taste good

We had a Mom's group surrounded by big trees and screech owls. Ate my first fake burger

My sunflower patch

Maya caught her first fish, a sunfish. I caught them as a kid always surprised how much they could fight for weighing 4 ounces

I wanted to make something special for the Moms. I did make red pesto spaghetti squash (lots of spaghetti squash ripening here)  I had made stuffed blossoms years ago purchasing them fresh in a San Diego Farmer's market. I think they were zucchini blossoms and the seller told me what to do as there was no internet in those days. Who knows what blossoms I used this time? They all look the same, pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, winter squash and summer squash. I have them all. And I get mainly useless males though I am not hurting for squash so a few females had formed.

After another wretchedly hot week in which I attempted to bike until my tire became flat and would not hold air for more than an hour, it is finally cool. Also I have been riding with only a front brake and one chain wheel worth of gears. Time to go to the busy shop as all sorts of people are riding bikes now. New bikes can not be bought. They agreed to do the brake and tire. For the other stuff I have to come back in a few weeks. I picked it up two days later. Imagine my dismay to find the tire was flat when I wanted to do my long Sunday ride. Well maybe the air accidentally was let out of it. It held air until  was five miles away. I suspect they never changed the inner tube (they did charge me) and just figured I didn't know how to fill a tire and filled it. It does hold air for a little while. But it put me in a really bad mood. Are they going to deny they did this? Was it just an honest mistake?They don't open until Tuesday. I am so disappointed. In them. In humanity. In our country. Plus I felt sick from maybe drinking too much the night before or maybe I am not used to artificial meat. Aside from the five miles of riding and a half mile of walking until Steve could rescue me, it was the first day in months that I didn"t do my daily quota of exercise. Instead I sat around feeling sorry for myself.

I do feel better today. My poison ivy is finally clearing up after two weeks made longer because I wore the same contaminated clothes I was wearing when I was exposed. I can tolerate it during the day but at night, it burns and itches. I had been taking benedryl to stop the itching and make me drowsy. No new blisters, just dry irritated skin from all the blisters. And the insurance finally agreed to pay for my mammogram after 3 phone calls. Still need to find a new company. The one we use advertises heavily bragging that they accept 98% of the hospitals in the US. Just not the biggest one in our county apparently. The old company we used is looking better. They at least paid for things.

Poison Ivy

 

Steve's cousin's son took this of Coney Island half mile from where Steve grew up 

The lake I bike by in the morning. Couldn't capture the intense purples and pinks

As Naomi is now working, Maya is up north with her dad. Her step mom did this

After visiting a skateboard park where Allieskirts around teenage boys, we went out to eat with Josh and the girls

Daniel turned 11. From a preemie to this.He wanted a Hamilton schemed treasure hunt. We provided some Hamiltons

 check my milkweed for Monarch larva. Might have seen an egg but no caterpillars despite lots of adults flitting about

My niece in Colorado

Maya taking a break from going fishing

My friend's dinnerplate hibiscus. I have the same kind but as mine is less than a month old, I am lucky to get two blossoms a day

I think e was some fogging of my lens. It was fine later I had planted a hundred glads

Cleome, dill and orange cosmos

almost all my sunflowers are in bloom now

For his birthday Shanna took Daniel to a Marvel exhibit

My road in the morning. Pre-covid, it would be too busy to go on at this time

Black swallowtail. I had been feeding a larva for a week when it suddenly died. A blue swallowtail has been hanging around. Alas no photos

I am a mass of painful weeping sores. Usually they don't appear until 3 days after exposure but these popped up within 18 hours. I am careful. I always wear gloves that are rubber on the palm side but I was pulling up 4 foot tall catnip putting it in a pile until I amassed enough to put in a bag. When I picked it up I saw the poison ivy it had been resting on. My gloves only extend a few inches beyond my wrist. It is possible the catnip touched my bare arms. Now I know it definitely did. I wouldn't think the catnip was heavy enough to bruise the ivy but it must have. I can ignore it during the day but at night, it is difficult to despite the Benadryl and steroids'.

And I hate my new insurance. So, so annoying. I have a zipcode that suggests I live in a different county than I do. They keep sending me all this Wayne county crap. I call them up (a long multi step process entering my ID in 3 times) and tell them to send the stuff for my actual county. One person, who doesn't even live in my state was trying to prove that I lived in Wayne county. Or they tell me they know I live in Washtenaw county but send me yet again another Wayne directory. What providers you use are county specific so they didn't pay for my mammogram even though if I just had Medicare, it would be covered. Eventually I will get this straightened out but it is time consuming.

But aside from that. this week was fun. We even had some cool days so I could run in comfort though it is back to 90 degrees and no rain. We had a Mom's night outside last weekend. Another night I called my friend who I had tried to ride a bike with from Pittsburgh to DC but rain stopped us halfway. He had moved to Nevada right after that but came back to Michigan a few weeks ago. Although he lives a 100 miles away, he was right by my house when I happened to call. So he came over.

Saw my grandson on his birthday and then saw my granddaughter with her scooter go up and down ramps at the skateboard park.

Lots of time gardening. Now it is just watering and weed patrol

The marshmallow test

 

dinner plate hibiscus. I had bought it a few weeks ago. At first the buds indicated it would be white, irritating as I already have 5 white hibiscuses but fortunately it was pink

I went to an estate sale of a local artist. While I didn't buy any of her original art, I did buy parts of her collections

Miss Hannah

Steve's almost 96 year old mother. We had a Zoom session with her which she hated and was trying to escape it but when her daughter visited (through a window the next day, she was more engaged.

This doll sort of looks like Naomi

A katydid

My moon flower has quadrupled in size. All will die down but I've been told it will reseed

Our house early in the morning. Now all the front gardens are encircled by the almost 100 glads I planted

Lots of vegetables I've been harvesting. Aside from these, eggplants, peppers, chard and various lettuces

Columbine

The nearby lake at dawn

immature Cooper's hawk honing his skills at my bird feeder He is a teenager but huge, the biggest accipitor

He missed on his first pass though he caused a panic. He is hiding in a tree here waiting for the birds to return. He missed the second time too but the next day I saw him probably being successful

infinity mirror to amuse grandkids

Maya at her Dad's

There is a test administered to 4 year olds called the marshmallow test. A child is presented with a marshmallow and told he could eat it now but if he is able to wait 10 minutes, he will get two marshmallows. Then the child is left ten minutes or so alone with the marshmallow. Some find the marshmallow too tempting but others wait for the bigger pay off.  It turns out they have tracked theses kids. Guess which ones are more successful in life?

I suspect the ones who can't wait turn into Trump lovers.

So his latest desperate hare brained scheme is to stop payroll deductions for Social security and medicare. A win-win situation because the worker will get a fatter paycheck and the company doesn't have to contribute its share. More money now! But when these workers need social security and medicare, there will be nothing for them. And are these the responsible people saving up for their retirement on their own? No way But these people lack executive functioning and just want instant gratification, damn the consequences.

Can Trump get away with this? Hopefully not. And I don't think they are chiseling his ugly mug on Mt. Rushmore either as he has requested.

Covid continues to spread no thanks to incredibly poor leadership. Our neck of the woods isn't so bad but we are surrounded by covidiots. None of my grandchildren will go to school this fall in person. NYC public schools surprisingly are opening. My sister in law worked for a private school which was going to have in person classes. She quit.

We had a blissful week of cool weather so I was able to run semi comfortably. This week it is back to being hot and humid so I have been bicycling early in the morning. I am gardening alot. Flowers and vegetables galore. I have been seeing friends and family. I got out my old ice cream maker and made fresh peach gelato. I spent some time going to an estate sale of a local artist and bought lots of art glass along with the folk dolls pictured.

The days are getting shorter which is sad. I leave in the early morning in pink skies. Nice sunsets and sunrises. I was out late for me the other night with a friend. We still have fireflies and I saw a few bats. Cicadas and crickets were making their calls.