Ouch!

Yeah. I fell again. I have GOT to quit doing this. Especially since this time, I hurt my arm. I can scarcely use it. My fingers work, and it bends and such (though it's owie), and I can even press it down on the arm rest or keyboard shelf, but the muscles are strained so I have no grip strength, and can't even exert enough pressure to fasten my seatbelt. (And when I type, after a while, it starts to ache from the muscle movement up near the elbow.) So, yeah. Need to stop this.

I've had offers to trade rain in Sweden (and maybe France) for some of our heat. I would be happy to do this--if I could just figure out how. We could really use the rain.

The city and tree experts have finally decided that very few of the 109-year-old live oaks down the median of Broadway (one of the few streets to have a historic designation) survived last fall's hurricane. They poured water to them after the salt hurricane surge went down, and waited to see if they'd put out new leaves this spring...but most of them didn't. People are all up in arms, insisting the trees are just dormant, and that they'll come back if we just wait. But if they haven't come back by now, it's pretty much "dead" certain that they won't. So now, all those trees have to come down so new trees can be planted. There are also palm trees in the medians. The palms survived the salt water, but not the oaks. I think they're planning a variety of trees to replace the dead ones, magnolias among them.

The magnolias in our yard survived the storm. They don't look real hot, but they have leaves, and they have even bloomed--even the one in the front yard where the storm surge came up to the door. The Norfolk Island pine in the back is doing just fine--though it did lose some leaves. The airplane/spider plants and ferns and sago palms and other shrubs all recovered nicely too. The only plants that died were these pink polka-dot plants that were on the front row of the flower beds--that looked kind of scraggly anyway. I really ought to replace them with something. But my elbow's too hurty today. (whine, moan, whimper, complain--yeah, I'm pathetic.)(But I can still type!)

Anyway, that's what the mention of rain makes me think of. All the trees that died partly because, after Ike, it didn't rain...

Hurricane season has arrived again. Y'all keep us in your thoughts/prayers that all the big ones go somewhere else this year...