May 2, 2017

At the Bloodroot Café...

P1130362

... you can talk about whatever you like.

(And please consider doing your shopping through The Althouse Amazon Portal.)

26 comments:

tim in vermont said...

Damn it! I gotta get back north already.

Original Mike said...

I planted a couple of bloodroot plants 20 years ago. I now have it all over the garden. I believe it was Meade who taught us that ants are responsible for spreading it around. Thank you ants!

Original Mike said...

Mulvaney's doing a great presentation during the White House press briefing on the budget extension.

TestTube said...

OK, here is what I want to talk about:

http://nypost.com/2017/05/01/fbi-translator-married-isis-terrorist-she-was-supposed-to-investigate-report/

The gist of it is, this FBI translator fell in love with some scumbag, and ruined her career/marriage/life to hook up with the guy.

Why does this happen?

There seems to be more to it than "She's a nut" because if so, she was a carefully vetted nut with a long history of non-nuttiness. Plus, this is beyond run-of-the-mill nuttiness.

Nor am I willing to accept "They are all like that". Because I know a lot of accomplished, stable women, and only a very few of them have done something even remotely like this, and exactly 0% have gone THAT far off the rails.

So I know a few cases where some smart, good-looking, hard-working, otherwise-sane woman did develop the hots for a bad boy. But in those cases, it was still semi-rational. That is, there were red flags, but the woman had enough going for her that she could, at least theoretically, compensate for the bad boy's faults. "C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell, and all that.

Or else the faults didn't manifest themselves until it was too late.

Neither of which is the case here, where the train went off the rails so far that it jumped on a totally different set of rails. Rails that turned out to actually be high-voltage transmission lines. That led to an explosives factory. That just happened to have an orphanage touring the facilities that day.

Thoughts?

Original Mike said...

Hillary this morning, perhaps the most explicitly yet: "I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey's letter ... and Russian Wikileaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off."


Ann Althouse said...

Comey's letter just said they was another source of evidence but had nothing about what it was or why it should be significant. I don't see why that would have much effect on any actual voter (except maybe to stimulate thinking about the email problem that had been in play all along throughout the election season).

Ann Althouse said...

She needs to just go away for a while.

David Baker said...

"Thoughts?"

Love transcends everything. And there's nothing rational about it.

To each other, what they were before meant nothing. Everything irrecoverably reduced to now.

Original Mike said...

"She needs to just go away for a while."

She appears to be doing the opposite.

Christy said...

I never managed to keep bloodroot going. After bloom the foliage disappears and the plant always succumbed to my constant fiddling with the garden layout. (I aspire to garden design, but can only claim layouts.) IOW I always forgot and must have dug it out.

Mulvaney was a rock star today.

rehajm said...

I was at a Trump resort this weekend. A guy in the pro shop wanted merchandise without Trump's name on it. He was directed to a small corner in the back.

Original Mike said...

"I never managed to keep bloodroot going. After bloom the foliage disappears and the plant always succumbed to my constant fiddling with the garden layout.

The leaf stem is very fragile. Break it off and the plant can't store energy for next year.

"Mulvaney was a rock star today."

Wasn't he, though? I wish I could have saved that presentation to address the people who will inevitably moan that Paul Ryan and the GOPe sold us out.

David Baker said...

""Mulvaney was a rock star today."

But was it enough.

Remember, we voted for a lion, not a lamb to the slaughter.

Basil Duke said...

The largest fresh water fish I've caught was a 5.5-pound largemouth bass. Hauled the brute out of a Central Illinois farm pond 20 years ago. The two guys with me both caught lunkheads of equal or greater weight. THAT was a great day. (We also caught about two dozen crappie and blue gill.) My son was only six or seven when he caught a two-pound largemouth out of another pond in the same county - and he landed it all by himself, with no help from dad. I don't know who was happier - my son or me. That was another great day. Now that I'm nearing my dotage phase, I should fish more often.

David Baker said...

And now, after the fact, Trump is roaring for a government shutdown.

David Baker said...

...In other words, roar like a lion, but act as a lamb.

Rick.T. said...

Original Mike said...
"I planted a couple of bloodroot plants 20 years ago."

Ordinarily I don't particularly care for double flowered plants, but this one is a beauty worthy of a star spot in the garden:

https://www.plantdelights.com/products/sanguinaria-canadensis-multiplex

It's not likely to be fertile. Sorry ants! Jeffersonia (twinleaf) is also propagated naturally by ants. The process is called myrmecochory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myrmecochory

tim in vermont said...

"Thoughts?"

"Never trust a female." - Oh Brother Where Art Thou"

urbane legend said...

In the discussion about Mo Brooks, Kevin said...
9 out of 10 cancers caused by "lifestyle."

And that's the perfect result, as it puts 90% of cancer patients in the "bad" category while leaving 10% for those who know they are good but fell victim to random acts of God.


If God is active in the day to day operation of the cosmos, there can be no such thing as a random act of God.

Rusty said...

Just throwin this out there.
Apparently your butt muscles have a lot to do with how you walk.
Also apparently I havent used that particular bunch of muscles for quite awhile.
Yeah.
My butt hurts.
Anybody want to kiss it?
Make it better?

Original Mike said...

Blogger Rick Turley said..."Jeffersonia (twinleaf) is also propagated naturally by ants."

I don't think it is. I also planted Jeffersonia 20 years ago, in the same place as I planted the Bloodroot. Twinleaf was available for a couple of years at the UW Arboretum Friends sale, and then it disappeared ( for years I watched for more but there wasn't any). The twinleaf is healthy and has moderately expanded out from the one spot I planted it, but the Bloodroot is now everywhere; side yards, backyard and front.

David Baker said...

Rush interviews VP Pence:

RUSH: "If I’m the Democrats, $21 billion, 15 billion for defense that was not originally authorized, that’s a small price to pay for continuing to fund refugee resettlement, continuing to fund Planned Parenthood, continuing to fund sanctuary cities, continuing to fund the EPA, and not build the wall. The Democrats clearly think this is a big win, and they’re confident they can block Trump’s agenda after this spending bill for the rest of Trump’s term. There isn’t anything of the president’s agenda in this budget, and people are beginning to ask, when’s that gonna happen? If you’re gonna shut it down in September, why not now?"

PENCE: "Blah, uh, blah blah blah, blah blah, bl, uh, blah..."

RUSH: "Okay, but why then is the president now suggesting a budget shutdown in September or October? If it’s no good now, why is it good then? You guys were sent there to drain the swamp. There’s a clear Trump agenda that just isn’t seeable. It’s not visible in this budget, and some people are getting concerned that there’s more concern for bipartisanship and crossing the aisle, working with Democrats, than there is in draining the swamp and actually peeling away all of the roughage that is preventing actually moving forward here on so many of these issues that affect people domestically..."

[Pence; Hey, don't blame me, I'm only the vice president.]

Original Mike said...

"...and people are beginning to ask, when’s that gonna happen? If you’re gonna shut it down in September, why not now?"

Easy answer: Now, over a pissant extension, or in the next few months over the entire budget?

Etienne said...

Clinton: “I was on the way to winning until..."

OK, how about this in response: "What difference, at this point, does it make?"

She spent over 10 billion dollars from the treasury. What more does she need to do to the country before she is satisfied her job is done?

Rick.T. said...

Original Mike said...

Blogger Rick Turley said..."Jeffersonia (twinleaf) is also propagated naturally by ants."

"I don't think it is. I also planted Jeffersonia 20 years ago, in the same place as I planted the Bloodroot. Twinleaf was available for a couple of years at the UW Arboretum Friends sale, and then it disappeared ( for years I watched for more but there wasn't any). The twinleaf is healthy and has moderately expanded out from the one spot I planted it, but the Bloodroot is now everywhere; side yards, backyard and front."

From a reliable source:

"The capsule lid pops up once the seeds are ripe. The seeds, having jagged, fleshy outgrowths called elaiosomes, are adapted for attracting ants and facilitating ant dispersal. Ants carry the seeds back to their nests to feed their larvae the oil-rich elaiosomes, leaving the seeds proper unaffected and ready to germinate in the warm, moist soil of the nests."

http://vnps.org/wildflowers-of-the-year/1999-american-twinleaf-jeffersonia-diphylla/

Could be that your ants are particular or more likely the twinleaf didn't find your property to its liking. Happens. Had more than one wildflower failure myself and I have some mature, natural woods which theoretically should have been ideal. It keeps the gardening game interesting.



Original Mike said...

Thanks for the links, Rick. My Twinleaf is robust and has grown out from its initial planting, but not shown up in new places in the yard. Dramatically different than the Bloodroot behavior.