Posts Are Piling Up While I'm Getting Other Things Done

The Amanitas are starting to pop out of the ground.  I've searched my blog here to find a post I did on the more mystical properties of the Amanita.  As I did that I found that four of the five  previous  posts with an Amanita were put up between August 6 and August 19.  One outlier was on July 15, 2016.  [The post with the most information - including the warnings of the dangers and the praises of the flights - is the first one you see in the link.  And there's one more that you need to click on "Next Posts" at the bottom to get to.  There are lots of mushrooms on those pages, plus other surprises.]

Here's one that's a little further along, with a budding one in the background.

These two little white mushrooms were poking up in the woodier area of our yard where I've been experimenting with a hugel.  This link will get you started on "hugelkulture".   I've been trying to solve two gardening issues at once:

• excess soil
• lots of trimmed branches

In hugel gardening (Hugel in German means hill), you take branches of various sizes and pile them up and then put soil on top of them.  You get a hill with lots of organic material and air pockets below.  Go to the link for details.  

The new steps in front exacerbated an old problem that began when I dug out soil along the garage so I could put in some insulation.  Dug up soil is not nearly as dense as soil that's been packed down for years.  Even after spreading some of the extra soil around the yard, I still had a garbage can full of dry sandy soil.  So now I've taken care of about 70% of the pile of branches and twigs and the garbage can full of dirt.  There's more dirt from where they dug to put in the new front steps - which expanded into areas I'd had plants before.  

Another interesting white mushroom.  In the past I would have spent an hour going through my mushroom field guide to tell you what these two mushrooms are called.  But this is a post about not having time to put up other posts.  It was only supposed to be a few picture - like throwing your back pack to the ground when you're being chased by a bear.  To keep you (and the bear) busy while I gain some ground. (Fortunately, despite being in a state full of bears, they aren't really interested in interacting with humans and so we've had relatively few encounters while on foot and usually they run as soon as they see us.)

I went to the Covenant House BBQ Thursday for lunch and to touch base.  I hadn't been to the new facility which is really nice.  I was a mentor for several young men there in the past.  But the last guy I mentored is still in my life and I decided he's enough.  And all this reminds me I want to follow up on the ADN's editorial about homelessness.  

After the BBQ I stopped by the election office to get forms to register voters, and the instruction booklet to remind me how to do it.  I became a registrar about four years ago when I was involved in a political campaign.  

I also voted early in our primary which is August 21.  There's a lot to write about that - particularly the governor's race.  I have posted a little on that with a video of Tom Begich explaining why his brother jumped into the race.  

Outside the election headquarters the flagpole had no flag.  I remember when raising and lowering the flag were like a ceremony every morning and evening.  It would be nice if we could listen to everyone else in the US and be heard by them in return so we could make the US a country we could all be proud of.  Where we'd all be proud of our flag again.  (I say this recognizing that we're in a time when those in power (who were in charge of the flag and what it represented) rode roughshod over much of the population - women, the poor, people of color, lgbtq folks, and everyone else who was other.  But I think many of those 'others' still believed that the United States was moving forward toward equality for all of them eventually.  And thus many of them also took the flag seriously.  (I could be wrong here.  I don't think the mainstream surveys ever asked questions like that - they took the answers for granted.)

Anyway, now that laws have given more people better tools to be treated fairly, those who had the power are feeling victimized.  Equality for them, apparently meant, that they still kept their special status and privilege.  

So here's my stalling post, since I've missed a couple of days already.  I've got Friday's Stand For Salmon post to put up and lots of other themes I want to pursue.  Hope you have a good Sunday.