Wind

A howl over the roof, a groan, a bang, a shudder,
the front door rattles, did the knob turn a bit?
a light flickers, but maybe just the flicker of an eye,
surely it is the wind, or Fred Wong's ghost. Yikes!



Some people, some really crazy people, might have worried that it would not be howling windy today. I suppose some reasonably sane people might have too.

Perhaps people who are kite hobbyists, for instance. Or sailors and maybe guys to lazy to rake yards full of leaves, hunters hoping to sneak up on unsuspecting prey and likely the weather guy, who always enjoys a break from the usual weather. They all would have good reason to worry about calm conditions. Beyond them, the list is short, maybe you can think of others.

For the rest of us today was a pain in the behind. I don't know how hard the wind is blowing, but it's pretty hard and I don't care for it. Maybe Fred Wong's ghost has a hand in this wind business, I just don't know.

I was out for a walk this evening and I took a couple of pictures. The top one is prickly pear cactus with the setting sun behind it. I wanted to see what would happen if I pointed my little Canon at the sun. That's the answer, not much.

The other photo is of three fishhook barrel cactus growing under a creosote bush. It reminded me of the three musketeers. Ah, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Donatello,and Raphael...no wait, that's the Ninja Turtles. You know who I mean though.

It is very common for desert plants to grow beneath another plant. Someone once asked the teacher in a class I was taking how the plants knew to grow under another plant? Uh, they have really big plant brains? Actually, they are simply more likely to have survived the elements and foragers than plants in the open.

Creosote bushes are uniquely adapted to the southwestern desert. They thrive on poor rocky soil and produce shallow roots to absorb what moisture falls. They can also send out a tap root when they must, to get water from deep under the ground. The plant also has a resin-coated leaf that both retains water and tastes bad to would-be foragers.

The creosote bush is the most drought tolerant plant in North America and can survive two years with no water. It is thought that the bush exudes a chemical that discourages other plants from growing nearby. The bush also produces genetic clones of itself, meaning that it maybe the oldest plant around, because no matter how much it dies, it still is around as copies of itself.

Each successive clone of an original plant is slightly fuzzier than the previous version...no wait, that was Michael Keaton in Multiplicity. The creosote bushes all look okay.

Anyway, at the moment it sounds like a freight train is rolling over my house because of the wind. I am afraid to look out because I might see a ghostly train being driven by a toothless, grinning idiot ghost.





Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor