It is officially Spring now, and all kinds of green sprouts and buds are popping up, and certain trees are flowering. The daffodils are up, too, and I've already seen the first dandelion. I think they are like cockroaches and will survive a nuclear explosion. I'm anxious to see what of everything we planted last year comes back, and I'm really excited about our cherry tree - can't wait to see blossoms! We had our first round of thunderstorms for the season night before last, and yesterday afternoon we had our first 'dangerous thunderstorm warning' - a quick-moving storm that dropped some grape-size hail and buckets of rain. Today is more of the same - lots of thunderstorms and rain.
So now that we finally got some rain, we're not as dry as we were and hopefully the county will stop burning up. At least for a while, anyway. Intelligence-challenged folk have been out playing with fire during the dry and windy conditions causing most of the chaos. There's a reason that the weather service puts out fire weather warnings and tells you not to do any burning. So you have those brilliant people who decide to burn off their fields in a supposedly "controlled burn" only, it gets out of control. Then you have your true idiots who think it's fun to set huge round hay bales on fire. Those things burn forever. This behavior is found everywhere, of course, because stupidity is rampant.
In Southern California there are Santa Ana Winds, when the wind blows the other direction out from the deserts and dries everything out (even more) making it a perfect environment for firebugs and accidents. I say accidents, but come on: smart people who use their heads don't build ANY kind of fire outdoors while a hot wind is blowing 40 miles an hour. Can you really call that level of stupidity an accident when there's all kinds of warnings on the news, radio and alerts pushed to smart phones? Why do they think there is such a HUGE fine for getting caught throwing a lit cigarette out the window in California? Oh - silly me: they DON'T think!
Here is a shot of the front page of the local newspaper the other day. I've mentioned this before on this blog somewhere, but I really feel that they should set up some kind of system of fines and compensation to the county for the enormous strain on our resources their lack of foresight causes. And notice it says "typcial number" - that means it isn't just me that has noticed the trend. Before the rain depending on what was burning, it either smelled like someone had a smoker going or someone was burning trash. The one smells kind of yummy and makes you want some barbeque; the other, not so much.
So I promised some photos of my lunch 'bento' lunchbox and here they are. The one tray has cauliflower, carrots and strawberries, and the other tray has leftover pork loin and yellow and orange sweet peppers. The strawberries are in my new silicon baking cups, and you can see the eating utensils on top of the lower tier lid which nestle under the top tier, and an elastic band to keep things together. There's also my infuser water bottle with cut up lemons. My next appliance is a spiralizer so I can make 'noodles' out of vegetables, but first, I need to get either some very small containers for sauces to put in my lunchbox, or some kind of other container or bottle that will hold sauces and dressings, etc. Hmmm...I might need a bag to put it all in, too...
It's thundering and hailing small pea-sized hail right now. I hope my outside kitties are safe and dry. I don't really know what Percy thinks about thunder and lightning. The other night I could hear him making these funny 'chirping' sounds - something between a purr and a meow, maybe - and alternating with something that kind of sounded like a yodel. Not being a cat owner prior to this, I have no idea what these sounds mean. When he is in his crate, he has learned to pull the sheet covering it open and closed kind of like curtains. When he doesn't want to be seen he pulls it closed. When I got up and checked on him, he was in there with his curtain closed making his little chirp-yodels so I put his stuffed parrot in there with him for company. He's really growing fast and I sure miss the sweet baby stage, because we are currently in the petulant toddler stage, I think. Everything must be stalked and attacked. But I like how he wiggles his backside just before he pounces :)
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