Attack of the Pot-Scrubbers

This cold has laid me low. It really took hold yesterday and I felt terrible. It feels like someone has scoured the inside of my nose and throat with a plastic pot scrubber. I tried to take Olga on her afternoon walk to the cemetery but I had to cut it short and come home, I felt so fatigued. My temperature was slightly elevated -- 99.6º, not really enough to be called a fever -- but I took another Covid test just in case and it was negative. So whatever it is, it's definitely not that.

On Saturday, when I felt a little better, I did some minor work in the garden, pulling weeds, cutting down the cardoon and some old globe thistles, and propping up some leaning Michaelmas daisies, which get very top-heavy when they flower. Of course I took a few more photos of things that are still blooming, like the few sunflowers that survived the squirrel offensive (top)...

...and our yellow dahlia, which I moved from the patio out to the lawn so we could see it better. The other dahlias have passed their peak, but this new one is still going strong.

The beautyberries look like brightly colored pharmaceuticals (no doubt psychedelics)...

...and though the zinnias, like the dahlias, are past their prime, they still have a few nice flowers.

This is a penstemon, which we planted a couple of years ago, and to be honest I thought it was long dead. My weeding revealed it deep in a flower bed, lanky and sun-starved but blooming. Persistent little devil! We used to have two of them, but I'm sure the other one is gone.

I finished a Newbery book, "Crispin and the Cross of Lead," which I really liked. And I watched a fantastic old English horror movie from the '60s called "Island of Terror," starring Peter Cushing, in which a village on a remote island is terrorized by silica-based life forms created (of course) by a wayward scientist in his laboratory. They looked like giant starfish (or maybe plastic pot scrubbers) with a single tentacle, so obviously made of latex that the attack scenes were completely laughable -- especially when the poles controlling the tentacles were visible! But terrible effects are all part of the charm of old horror movies.

When I was a kid our local TV station used to broadcast an old horror movie every Saturday afternoon, on a weekly show called "Creature Feature." I wrote about it here. "Island of Terror" would have been the perfect "Creature Feature" movie, and in fact I'd bet money that it aired there at some point.

Today, fortunately, Olga's dog walker is back on duty, so I won't have to manage the dog. (Dave would do it in a pinch, but to get him to walk her I have to overcome his belief that she doesn't need a daily walk. That's an extra psychological task that I find it easier to avoid.) We also have a guy coming over to do our annual gas inspection. I'm going to let Dave deal with him so as not to give him the plague.