Blue Star Fern (Phlebodium aureum) x2 & x4.

The Epstein Administration is not oblivious. They just don’t care and think they can keep getting away with it. So far it seems to be working out for them.

;)

Amaryllis blooming. In the first photo, 4 of the anthers have already unfurled & 2 (the purple ones) are just beginning to open. In the 2nd & 3rd photos, all 6 have done their little self-origami trick & are offering up their pollen. Photos 2 & 3 were taken a little under 2 hours after photo 1.

Apparently we will also be allowed to enjoy South African Nazi cuisine.

Ughh. I think I’m going to skip the Rubio speech and head straight for the woods this morning. Might just keep walking till Canada.

Mission accomplished, I think. Even we hate us.

And now the same people doing the deporting are trying to erase the history of abduction and enslavement.

Closer headshot of the same little friend.

This decidedly un-stinky stinkbug has been hanging out in my houseplants all winter. He makes an appearance from time to time and on his most recent visit I made him pose under the scope for a minute. Don’t worry; he’s safely back on the Abutilon now and got a drink of water for his troubles.

Lindsey Graham must be in there somewhere.

I know older Republicans who voted for this & will suffer as a direct result of the racist policies they enabled. It’s hard to empathize with people who have supported Trump & his cabinet of monstrosities, but plenty of people who didn’t will be hurt, too & this is just a sad situation all around.

Good grief, it’s beautiful, though. We have places almost that green here in the summer, but in the winter everything’s usually covered in snow and ice. Hence the excessive house-planting.

Following a bunch of British people on here because they seem to be the majority of the plant people and beginning to get the impression that England is a giant terrarium and I wish I lived there.

But the U.S. government is on Putin’s side, likely because he has video of our “president” raping children, so…

The Trump regime is driving both American citizens and allied countries to defensively arm themselves.

It’s simple: they both get off on killing puppies and he thinks she’d be extremely fuckable if she were just 50 years younger. So she stays.

Do we really have to call him a “suspected” pedophile? He’s been bragging about how he wants to fuck his own daughter since she was 16. Do we still need to pretend he might keep his hands off other people’s kids?

Roses are red
Trump’s a democracy arsonist
It’s better to be single on Valentine’s
Than in bed with a narcissist

It has the side benefit of slightly reduced chances of dropping your currently active phone down a rabbit hole or into a bog or whatnot.

Trump Administration Erases the Government’s Power to Fight Climate Change

I said the same thing a few days ago about the Trump regime’s sabotage of our progress on vaccines, but it’s hard to be angry enough or react strongly enough to these slower, longer-term harms amid the immediate brutality of ICE, attacks on Venezuela, enabling Israel’s crimes, etc. We still should.

Thank you! I’m currently using an iPhone 8+, which is my old phone, but has a better camera because when I upgraded to the iPhone 12, I was tight on funds and bought the strip-down model.

So cool. Do you use one of those add-on macro lenses or have you tried them? I’m considering trying one but I’m just recently obsessed with macro-photography and am a little lost looking at the options. Wondering if I’m better off just saving up for a phone with a better camera.

Yeah, that’s what I read (about the disk) and I was so confused! Lacewing eggs is a good guess and that would explain why I only found them on the one clump of lichen. Insect eggs didn’t even occur to me because it’s the dead of winter here, but they could be “shells” leftover from summer.

Thin hoar frost is lit by the sun when it gilds a dead poplar leaf and some branches.

Thick rime crystals coat the right side of the bare branches of a shrub. It is lit by the setting sun. The crystals are at least an inch long.

Fluffy rime coast the needles of a spruce tree on a foggy morning.

My annual post about the difference between hoar frost and rime.

Hoar: water vapour transforms directly into frost (deposition). Happens when it's clear and cold and the crystals are small.

Rime: water vapour in the ice forms ice. Happens when warm and foggy. Much longer and long-lived crystals

Yeah, I was amazed. They looked like feathers and were huge. Thanks for teaching me something new!

Can you tell which is which by just looking at them? These were on the surface of a frozen pond in Northern New England in the early morning a few Januaries ago. I assumed hoar frost, but didn’t really know what rime was and these were bigger crystals, so now I’m wondering…

I can’t quite get them into focus, but this beard lichen has tiny “flowers” on the tips (see last two photos). I imagine they release spores(?) but I never even noticed them before. They’re barely visible to the naked eye and just look like little hairs. The internet says they don’t exist. Anyone?

More lichens.

I’m lichen what I’m seein’ here.