I am ashamed of myself! I assumed that because my washer failed to work when I shamelessly overloaded it, it was “broken.” It had worked to finish spinning out the partial load that had been in it when it “failed to finish,” but because the things were still overly wet, I assumed it would not work on a full load if I asked it to work from start to finish. So for all this time, I have been washing out undies and socks by hand and drying them in the bathrooms. Everything else was going into a hamper. I had filled one and was working on almost filling a 2nd.
So today I asked myself why I had not given it a try on the “mini” setting, where the load it is asked to spin out is very light. Myself had no good answer 
I had good luck of another sort this week. When I was doing the last weeding and cleaning in the carport a week or so ago, I ran across a bag of dahlia tubers that I had bought for LAST YEAR, and had failed to plant. Bless their little hearts, they had not rotted or dried out and had sent up some shoots that were turning green inside the bag. I think I had planted some like that in the past and the green parts had died. So this year, I put them in some flat bowl like containers and barely covered the tubers and allowed the stalks to remain above the ground. I wanted to see if they would grow.
Bless their little hearts, they did. Some of them are about a foot tall already and I am going to plant them and brace them with tall tomato cages since they will have shallow root systems. I will have to dig them this fall and replant them next spring. When they are planted at their usual 8”, they can be left in the ground here, but at less than a couple of inches, the frosting of our winters would kill them if left in the ground. But this will give me a chance to see which tubers will produce pretty flowers and strong bushes.
At any rate, both of my “planters” (dishpans) were full of lovely green plants but last night I noticed that some leaves had been EATEN! There was a snail or slug in the container! I watered them and did a complete search under the rims of the containers and in the soil around the bushes, as well as the undersides of the leaves. No trace of the little montster, so I put some small lids in the soil and planned to fill them with beer at bedtime, but forgot to do that. This morning, one of them had no further damage, but one of them had more SERIOUS eating showing. So this afternoon, Sir Pokester and Mom went to Home Depot and got some Sluggo. It is a non-toxic granule that turns to fertilizer when it is melted by the rain, but in the meantime is not poisonous to the birds who may eat the snails or slugs who have consumed it. I sprinkled it heavily around the base of all the plants. If something is hiding in the soil by the edge of the dirt, when it comes out both snails and slugs like this stuff (supposedly) and it causes their bodies to just dehydrate and they die.
If it will stop raining, I will get them into the ground. I forgot to buy the tomato cages today when I got the Sluggo. That means another trip tomorrow, and Poco loves that. He is getting to be a lot more company than he used to be. He used to just sleep on his bed, but now he comes into the kitchen when I am working and when I am in the bedroom, if he sees me changing clothes he comes to stay by my feet and yaps when he thinks I am about ready to go to be sure I remember to take him along. I have to be careful or I will either step on him or trip over him while he is dancing about!
I have been intending to take pictures of the roadsides full of yellow Scotch Broom while it is in full bloom, and it has been blooming almost all month long. I realized this afternoon that I had left my cell phone at home, so I wasn’t able to get a cool shot at about 7 p.m. The days are so much longer right now—the longest day of the year is in late-middle June—and that pretty light that comes in the late afternoon most of the year now comes at about 7:30. We had an overcast day much of today, but by early evening (by the clock) the day looked like late afternoon and the light was coming through the Scotch Broom up by Home Depot. So tomorrow I want to get some pictures.
Our high school was so poor that for our graduation in 1951, all we had to decorate our stage was big containers of Scotch Broom with crepe paper bows. We thought they looked good. 
Speaking of Alaska—the Copper River Salmon are in the stores now. It is $22.50 a pound at Safeway, but it you have their club card, it is $9.99, and a pound is enough for several meals. I found a package the other day that was just right for 2 meals and had one today. I will get to have the other one tomorrow. I also have several ears of corn shucked and in the veggie drawer in the fridge, so I need to microwave those before they get slimy. Safeway has this program for the computer where they give you some special offers that you can put on your list and load it on your card, and when you buy it in the store, the special price rings up. I got some gorgeous berries today and actually had berries and cream for dinner.
I am not a basketball fan ordinarily, but Kevin Calabro is a basketball announcer from Seattle who used to call the games for the Seattle Super Sonics before they were stolen out of here by the jerk who took them to Oklahoma City. It is ironic to me that Oklahoma is having all of these disasters. When bad things happen to people on either coast, the crazies in the Republican Party always say that the disasters are God’s way of punishing Liberals for things they have done that are against God’s will. Here all this horrible stuff is happening to the states of the “Great Heartland” (such a misnomer!) and I am naughty enough to think that it is Karma coming back on the man who bought our team and who is in a position of power to block the really rich men who wanted to rescue the team from Sacramento, California.
Sacramento’s team was losing money hand over fist. The city had refused to build a new stadium that they owners said they had to have to profit, and no one with money would come forward to buy the team, so they opened it to any bidder. Then as soon as we had this really neat guy who lived in this area but made his money in the finance business in California who wanted to buy the team, the mayor of Sacramento (a former basketball player himself) got his butt in gear.
Our man’s first name is Chris—can’t think of his last name, as usual. Anyway, had paid the current owners millions of dollars as a down payment—had gone through all the planning at the city and state levels here, had designed a new stadium and even bought the land for it--even had several more really rich guys to back him up (as partners), but as soon as they applied to the NBA to buy the club and move it, Sacramento finally got their act going. The crook who stole our team was the chair of the committee that decided whether or not the NBA would allow the move, and the rat shot us down.
Anyway, Kevin Calabro is a brilliant man when it comes to calling a basketball game. His descriptions and enthusiasm are so contagious that me makes me like the game in spite of myself, so I try to listen any time I know he is doing a national game. He has been covering the play-off games between the Miami Heat and the Pacers from somewhere in Indiana. (As I said, I am not a basketball fan, so I don’t know what city they are in.) Kevin called them the Indiana Pacers, so they represent their whole state, and they have a lot of very enthusiastic fans who all wear yellow tee shirts to the games. The crowd was very happy and noisy today because they won. The teams are now tied and they play the 7th game in South Beach to decide who will face the San Antonio Spurs, which is Ros’s team.
After dinner, I put a last load of fleece throws in the dryer and we went to the back bedroom and jammied up. Well, *I* did. Pokeyman just hopped up on the bed and started hunting for his spiral toy. I am watching the Hallmark Movie channel and he is sleeping. I am hungry, but it is 2 a.m. and I can’t eat at this hour, so I guess I should shut off the light and watch till the end of this movie and then see if I can sleep.
Interestingly, I wasted several minutes searching the TV Guide and clicking the channel remote to find the Sunday night programs I thought were on. I won’t tell you how long it took me to find out that this isn’t Sunday. LOL So I will see my Sunday shows tomorrow when they are all ON. Which makes me think of my memory, and that makes me remember what I did last night.
AARP sends out a newsletter that I subscribe to, and yesterday it had a link to the medicines that old people may take that have an effect on memory. I had always blamed my anti-depressant, Effexor, as being one of my demons. Wrong! It said that of all the meds for either depression or anxiety, this is the ONLY one that has no effect on either long or short term memory. However, two others that I take DO play a serious part. The Beta blocker I take needs to be replaced with a Calcium blocker and I am going to ask Dr. Gretch about that in July. And I also have to find a new antihistamine. Benadryl hurts memory retention, and it have been taking that for 20 years or more. I felt satisfied after having read that article. Finally did something good for myself.
Interestingly enough, I took several of their Trivia tests on a variety of subjects from health to politics. I got mostly 70s and 80s on them except for the test on the Democratic party. Most of the questions were of historic basis and I have not studied where the party began—only what they believe and do now. So I scored the lowest score I have ever gotten on any test in MY LIFE--20%! At that, I quit and went to sleep! Which I shall attempt to do now. I will send the link for this to Ros in Texas, Rosie in Canada and Patty in Bremerton. I think Rich and JD will get a notification in their e-mail. If not, they won’t have missed anything. None of you care about sports, so you can skip all of that anyway.
I hope you are all having sweet dreams!
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