Spring!

[VT100]

I am starting to see signs of spring. My first crocuses popped up a week ago. Seed racks are turning up at grocery and hardware stored. And today: bees! I know everyone doesn't seem the world like I do, but for me, these are encouraging signs of spring. What are your signs?

[VT100]

I am going to have to start using Fussbudget. quality word!

[serenity]

thanks ng!!!

[Evangeline]

I've been giggling over "fussbudget scrapbooker" off and on all day. :D

And the river project does sound really exciting NG! We hear so much doom and gloom about the poor ol' environment, it is so good to hear about something being reclaimed and revitalized.

[naturegeek]

I didn't take photos this last time, but here is the website for the Eastern Sierra Watershed Project, which is the group I volunteer for: http://www.esice-eswp.org/. They don't have pictures of it after water was returned, but here is the channel as it was before water:

Three years later there is 100 cfs of water, cattails galore, and returning wildlife. Soon there should be cottonwood and willows sprouting! So exciting. Now if they could just keep the cattle out...

I'll see if I have photos of the river I took last November (I didn't take any this time).

[serenity]

gangbusters, good one ng,

and flummox, well knitting is a flummoxer to me, lol, and i'm not much of a sewer as well--how's that for word usage VT???

your revived river sounds pretty ng, are there pics???

deb, not sure i get used to scapbooker as a insult,lol, but fussbudget is an old standby. XD

[VT100]

Nice tying!

[naturegeek]

"Fussbudget Scrapbookers" - HAAHAHAHAA!! That's funny.

I have been volunteering doing outdoor eduction all week on the Owens River with 7th graders - we have been doing plant transects and also collecting wildlife presence data (tracking, scat, etc) to correlate with a humongous restoration project, where they re-watered the Lower Owens River (called the LORP, or Lower Owens River Project) - a river that had been dry for 90 years because LA Department of Water and Power diverted the water. It is a stretch of river that is 62 miles long! Anyway, this relates to both the above (sort of) and spring - really!

The river has had water back in it for only a short time - this is the third year of data collection with water (they started five years before the water came back, so they have a good baseline. The plants are definitely changing, but some in not good ways, as there is a really nasty invasive that is coming in like gangbusters, and in just three years of data collection, you can see its presence go from 0 to almost 50% on some of the transects (that are 50 feet long). But the cattails - omg - they are so prolific, and I caught a toad! And the head of the program and two students saw what they think may have been a River Otter!!! Or maybe a Mink, but some sort of Mustelid (that family) swimming across the river and humping up the bank to look at them, then turn and jump back in the river. Red-winged Blackbirds, and all the little rodents - Kangaroo Rats, Deer Mice, Desert Woodrats, and rabbits - Black-tailed Jackrabbits and Western Cottontails, and Coyote and Bobcat - and ducks and coots - all coming back!! And we had elk tracks and scat, too! So, even though the plants are barely starting to show green, Spring really is returning to the Lower Owens River and it's wonderful to see.

And, oh yeah... the "fussbudget scrapbooker" part comes from some of the other volunteers - they really aren't fussbudgets, though. Or scrapbookers, for that matter! Ha. But there are all these women of all ages who are really into quilting, and all the way down to our study site and all the way back they talk of nothing but quilting! They sound like they may have some amazing quilts, and they have clubs and meetings and do neat projects, like sew cloth books for underprivileged kids and the like. But I am so bored! I don't sew (yet - I do hope to learn, just to be able to make stuff for the house, mainly) and I'm not that interested in quilting (I suppose I could be someday, and I may try it, but now, it's just someone else's hobby and obsession that I know nothing about), and I think a lot of quilts are rather fussbudgety, anyway - ha. I am not, nor have I ever been, a girly girl! So I never learned to sew, never wore pink, never liked fussy clothes, don't own heels (and have owned maybe one pair in my life that I can recall - found at a vintage clothing store!). Quilting definitely falls into my category of those girly things that I can't be interested in because I'm too macho or whatever you'd call a girl who wouldn't wear pink - ha. I am pretty sure that in a few years I may have the opportunity to eat my words, since it seems like one of those things that when you try it, it becomes an obsession. We'll see!

So, there, I did it! Tied in "Spring" with "Fussbudget Scrapbookers" (sort of)! HA! :)

[Deb S]

Let's find some pundits to flummox today!

[Deb S]

Yipee YI KIYAY!!! Before I forget, I was driving to work yesterday, having uncharitable thoughts about a group of people and, I'm embarrassed to say, I thought to myself, "bunch of fussbudget scrapbookers." Yah. I'm an ahole. But WHAT a vocabulary! Hahahahaha. I credit my grandmother for much of these words. Fussbudget was definitely one of hers. When she was in her cups and the anger was flowing, her most scathing insult was "stuffed shirt." I miss my Mamo. And the chron order of the royal houses flummoxes the crap outta me too! And I think I must read Michiko Kikatani.

[VT100]

Word of the Day for Saturday, April 4, 2009
flummox \FLUM-uhks\, transitive verb:

To confuse; to perplex.

And when a poll's results happen to upset the conventional wisdom, orconfound the experts, or flummox the pundits, then that's a poll toremember.
-- Michael Kagay, "Unexpected Results Make for Memorable Polls", New York Times, March 23, 2000
The chronological order of the Stuart, Hanover, Lancaster and TudorBritish royal houses had me flummoxed.
-- Sara Ivry, "Game Show Wannabe: I Coulda Been a Millionaire", New York Times, February 27, 2000
Flummoxed by the surreality of history and the mind-bogglingchanges unleashed by the 60's, many writers in that era became minimalists,withdrawing, turtlelike, inside their own homes and heads.
-- Michiko Kakutani, "New Wave of Writers Reinvents Literature", New York Times, April 22, 2000
The origin of flummox is unknown.

Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation