Thursday, August 22, 2019

A Passionflower and a Lantern


A few more garden milestones...

First, our passionflower vine -- the one I almost killed -- has shown that it is truly forgiving. It's blooming again, and it has lots of other flowers on the way.


We're down to one last cinnabar moth caterpillar. I don't know if he's behind all the others developmentally, or if the others were simply eaten and he's the last survivor. At any rate, he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to go anywhere. He's still hanging out on the ragwort, munching away at the leaves. (Could be a she, admittedly.)


And remember our Chinese lantern plant? Well, it finally produced a lantern! We only have one -- for some reason our plant sets lots of blooms, and then 99 percent of the flowers fail to turn into seed pods. Maybe they're not being fertilized. This one somehow managed to do the job, so at least we're not completely lanternless.

Remember how I spent hours on Tuesday deleting the records of hundreds of departed students and parents from the library circulation system? (Seriously -- hours and HOURS.) Well, yesterday morning I discovered that all those deleted records were back again. They had been faithfully restored to the system by the overnight backup -- which isn't supposed to happen when people are no longer current students or family members. I went to the tech department and said, in effect, "What the HELL?!" Turns out the system was backing itself up with an old student list! ARGH!

So now I have to delete all those people all over again. Sisyphus, anyone?

14 comments:

e said...

I am so sorry...Your Lantern is lovely, though.

Yorkshire Pudding said...

Will you have to delete the old records EVERY day a la "Groundhog Day"? After a few weeks even booking the computer chargers in and out will appear heavenly. I guess a librarian's gotta do what a librarian's gotta do.

jenny_o said...

Ack! Has the tech department changed the student list now? Sure hope so. Sisyphus indeed.

Chinese lanterns are so cool looking. They are great for dried arrangements, which you probably know already.

37paddington said...

Well, that’s frustrating! Fortunately, unlike Sisyphus, you can climb this mountain sitting down, rolling a rock made of bits and bytes instead of hard earth. I hope it’s mindless enough the second time around that you can daydream. Lovely lantern.

Colette said...

We sometimes see passion flower in the wild at some of the Florida State Parks. It is always a thrill to see them. Good luck with the Chinese Lantern. I'm a bit surprised it hasn't taken off. I suspect it still will.

ellen abbott said...

oh man, I hate to have to redo a job that took hours. I feel for you especially since I just finished that sort of task. the passion flower is beautiful and yay for the the lantern.

The Bug said...

I don't know how many times I've had to redo a long tedious task, but I could probably have a couple of vacation days with those hours. There was the time I accidentally deleted an ENTIRE DONOR DATABASE & had to reenter it from paper records. That was back in the old days when you had to insert a floppy disk to load the program on the computer & then take that out & insert the data disk. Fun times!

Red said...

Don't you hate it when technology cancels your work because it thinks it knows better?

My life so far said...

I've done that to myself more than once and I can't even blame a system, it was my own fault.

The computer is frustrating but the flowers are lovely.

Anonymous said...

Computers can be such a bummer sometimes. But beautiful Passion flowers and Chinese Lanterns are the perfect balance to tech glitches.

Sharon said...

Being on the tech side myself, I feel your pain. That truly is a very messy error. I'd hate to think what would happen at my work if that happened. Fortunately, my job has nothing to do with that.
I love that passion flower. I just saw several of them when I was in California. I've always thought they were the strangest looking blooms. I wonder why they evolved that way.

Edna B said...

Your passion flower is beautiful and that Lantern is so pretty. Now that you have one lantern, maybe next year you'll get lots more. My DIL has them in her garden and they are so pretty. Sorry about your computer problem. I don't envy you having to do it all over again. You have a great day, hugs, Edna B.

Sue said...

I planted some Chinese Lanterns 10 or so years ago and they have spread like crazy! If I didn't love them so much I'd say they were invasive. They always remind me of my Grandmother, who loved gardening.

Beth Reed said...

Oh I would have been beyond upset. I would have been ranting like a lunatic. All that work to have to be done all over again. It is enough to make you want to cry. I know I would.

My friend Edna sent me a copy of the Summer edition of The Old Farmers Almanac and it had an article that talked of the condition of the soil and what kind it might need. I found calcium to be in a lot of the solutions.
Well I am an old country girl and once a month or so I would mix up a few gallons of Epsom Salts water and my flowers were gorgeous.
My mother in law took long rusty nails (a ten penny nails I think) and inserted them into the ground with her roses and Oh she had the most beautiful I had ever seen.

Steve I am sorry to hear about the blood but it is very reassuring that the doctors didn't feel overly concerned. I would think if they were they would not wait up to two weeks to have you scheduled for another procedure.
Sending you as many good thoughts as possible. Let us know how it turns out.