Blooms

The patio smells divine, the seeds that Alex and Ben gave me for Mothers' Day back in March have grown and bloomed.

I brought back two leaflets from the mountain yesterday, one on bears, the other on cougars. Not the middle-aged sex-mad women, the mountain lions. The leaflets offer conflicting advice.
To avoid bears, don't take your dog on a walk in the mountains, because dogs can lead bears to you.
To avoid cougars, do take your dog on a walk in the mountains, because dogs can scare cougars away.

I put my leaflets down on the desk and crunched a yellowjacket wasp with my wrist. It retaliated by injecting me with venom. Fortunately, my first aid does extend to reaching for the First Aid box and cracking one of the little vials of anti-sting. This is amazing stuff, my wrist really caned and came up in a big, red welt. Five minutes after the anti-sting, all back to normal..

Tomorrow I have to go on a real First Aid course. I haven't done this since I was in the Girl Guides, we tend to go in for division of labour in Britain, so long as someone has First Aid, you're ok. Here, everyone seems to be expected to do some kind of certificate in it. Unfortunately what this leads to are courses that are the equivalent of common sense.

Yesterday, when I was driving to the supermarket, we were stopped at traffic lights. Coming across the intersection was a car being driven by a man with his small daughter sitting on his lap. The tot's hands were on the steering wheel and the man's weren't.

Further on, and I'm sure in an unrelated incident, an old lady was lying in the middle of the road. She was surrounded by people helping. Now this was a genuine multi-cultural event. The lady was white, but her rescuers were Asian and Chinese. The stupid city doesn't need to invent things when things like that just do happen naturally.

In the supermarket, I noticed that the signs at the end of one of the aisles promised 'tin vegetables, tin fruit, tin meat'. Presumably these can only be eaten by tin men.
I also assume the signs were made up by someone with a tin brain.