Monday Miscellany

It's getting harder and harder to find "pretty as a picture."

So much dry, hot weather has parched the fields and dirtied the landscape. 

According to my iphone ten-day forecast, nothing's going to change.  

More-of-the-same.

Early this morning, the outside landscape and air  seemed like it had all been encased in a yellow snow globe, just no snow. 

We do have a cloud cover this morning, and I did have to wear a sweatshirt to take the horses to pasture BUT today will turn into another scorcher with mid-90s. 

All that said, if one looks up close and personal, one will still see images filled with color, beauty and sometimes good stories. 

The great story to go along with the top photo is that most of its contents have been eaten. 

Willie and Debbie came over for a last-minute dinner date yesterday.

So, I went to the garden and picked a few more carrots.  I also sliced into the second of the two first cukes for Garden 2021.  

A portion of the fresh blueberries went into a fruit salad with pineapple, bananas and raspberries. 

Twas delectable, as was the last of the Costco key lime pie Debbie went home to retrieve for dessert. 

Nice to have a little garden bounty to top off another hot day in North Idaho. 

In other news, the picture where there's not much left of the greenhouse indicates significant progress achieved by Bill and his drill yesterday.  

We won't count the price of the one bee sting he incurred while dismantling the structure. 

Happily the bees are gone cuz the building has been carried off piece by piece.  

Maybe, if Bill takes the collection to the Colburn Mall, he can advertise "Bonus Bees for Free." 

Now, just the surface has to be prepared with sheeting and gravel.  Then sight should turn beautiful once the new structure arrives. 

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On a completely different subject, it took me two mornings during my first cup-of-coffee surfing time to read the story below, but it was really worth the read.  

One learns how easily conspiracy theories arise and maybe even the answer to why mysterious seed packets from China arrived in so many people's mail last year. 

I didn't receive any and only vaguely remember hearing of this phenomenon, but then I wasn't exactly hungry for yet another wild conspiracy. 

So, I was impressed with both the curiosity and with the research this journalist did to uncover the mystery behind the seeds.  

I'm still not sure that the writer arrived at the full, final, final answer, but it was a fascinating read.

Plus, I learned about "brushing," and this kind doesn't involve a horse. 

from the Better Business Bureau:

  

 Free boxloads of merchandise from Amazon or other companies, right on your doorstep! 

What could possibly be bad about getting the Santa treatment all year long? Plenty! Better Business Bureau (BBB) is warning consumers that there is a scary downside to this recent scam. 

You are not the one who hit the jackpot. A scam company is the real winner.

This scam is called brushing, and it has been popping up all over the country. 

Suddenly, boxes of unordered (by the recipient) merchandise from Amazon begin arriving. There is no return address, or sometimes it just appears to come from Amazon or another retailer, and the receiver has no idea who ordered the items. 

The items are varied. For example, in one case a humidifier, a hand warmer, a flashlight, a Bluetooth speaker and a computer vacuum cleaner arrived unordered. 

Often, the items received are lightweight and inexpensive to ship, such as ping pong balls, or more recently, face masks or seeds from China. 

Why would such merchandise be sent to you if you didn’t request it? The companies, usually foreign, third-party sellers that are sending the items are simply using your address that they discovered online.

Their intention is to make it appear as though you wrote a glowing online review of their merchandise, and that you are a verified buyer of that merchandise.

 They then post a fake, positive review to improve their products’ ratings, which means more sales for them. The payoff is highly profitable from their perspective.

 https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/unsolicited-seeds-china-brushing/619417/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Happily, any seeds I received last year came from Burpees or Co-Op, and they didn't grow anything weird IF they grew anything at all. 

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That's enough for today. 

Happy Monday.