Playing the in Plants and North Patio Beach

North Patio Beach...

Open for the Season!

(...okay...the closest ocean is 1500 miles away...but besides that...)

A perfect day to peruse gardening magazines and order a few more Hostas...drink sweet tea and get some color!

So glad the endless rain has stopped.

 My poor herb basket was swimming...got to drill more holes.

Everything has been loving the warm wet weather with pop-outs of sunshine. Almost tropical outside.

The Patio Garden and Border Beginning.

"Found the Catnip!"

 

Sofi was so happy that her new harness arrived. She can enjoy Outside time too, now!

She had outgrown her old one.

Good week, this.

Early on enjoyed Doughnuts and Coffee (here) with Brenda my quarantine buddy. Visions of future shopping trips dancing in our heads if The Rona ever ends....and planning her 66th Birthday Brunch :)

Saw Chris and chatted. He aced his finals, and starts the next eight weeks on  Monday! Relieved to have a week off between things. He and Tina doing well.
He and Don and I are planning a patio get together!
They are off hiking, soon.

James and Nicole and Thor (...who is one of the puppies...but HUGE now...) over this week for a patio picnic (...even watermelon...thanks guys!!!) and brought me the indoor Peace Lily and a huge pot of Ivy. So beautiful! Catching up over cars/plants/grandkids and life.

Lennon called Wednesday and we had our political/Covid/omg these Florida people weekly chat. He is doing well and promises to spray Lysol in the mouth of anyone who tries to cough on HIM.
Work is going well, and grandma is still Covid-Free.

John and I plotting and planning our mid-June Adventure. Including a trek to the nursery. He found me a couple of bags of black mulch for my borders...so they will look nice again.
We start and end the day together online.

And sent me this from an impromptu fishing trip the other day...

Still hasn't caught a thing on that rubber frog lure that I bought him a while back...very realistic looking...thought the bass would lose their little minds.

Well...it SURE caught me, anyway!

 And we have all embraced the New Normal pretty well.

Watching The Rona numbers slip back up...back to 25,000 new cases daily in the US and nearly 1,500 deaths per day.

A change over even the past week.

The numbers look like this now

My County: 136 cases with 7 dead.

My State:  34,211 cases with 1,958 dead.

The US:  1,803,551 cases with 104,976 dead

The World:  6,088,991 cases with 368,673 dead.


Six million infected. 

Sometimes it is overwhelming.

Then, in Minneapolis four officers piled on George Floyd during an arrest over 20.00 with one officer kneeling on his neck...until he was dead....despite him being handcuffed and down.

Yeah...

WTF?

And a second case of

"I Can't Breath"

The entire rioting that has followed could have been completely averted had these four been arrested immediately

(...face it...if you or I and a group of 3 of our friends had someone restrained and then sat on their neck until they were DEAD...our asses would definitely be in jail...)

but they didn't.

(...okay, yesterday they finally arrested one....)

Never mind that the entire horrific incident was caught on video...so we watched him die...

And major cities around the nation are now rioting and burning.

Most of them are young.

Black and white and many shades in between.

Protesting the absolute injustice and senselessness of Floyd's death.

(and granted...some that just jump in because they just want to watch the world burn)

And before you start in with

"Well, THAT is no way to protest!!!"

try to remember

From taking a knee to BLM...this has been happening for a long long time...people are being killed and it seems you aren't happy with ANY form of protesting.

So sit down and STFU.

And my absolute horror when I saw the thousands packed in the streets...most without masks and realized

The Rona is still out there...

We are doomed. 

We are going to be in Quarantine forever..........

And where is our so-called POTUS through all of this???

A plague that has killed over a 100,000 American citizens, the Economy and
Stock-market tanking, 4 law enforcement officers killing a man in the street on video, riots and burnings in our major cities...

He is engaged in a pissing match with Twitter over 2 tweets being fact checked and one being removed for TOS violation.

I couldn't even make this shit up, okay???

Cuomo and Biden seem to have taken on the voice of calm and reason...helping steer the nation right now...so I am thankful for that.

Even President Obama has spoken out.

And Trump?

Well in 156 days we can dump him and his Administration, so there is that.

That is my HAPPY THOUGHT.

Try to have a Wonderful Weekend!

                         "I think the world has gone crazy, Mom!'
                                                                                         ~Gadget

Virtual Islands: Solovetski

Solovetski Islands

off the coastline of Russia 

in the

White Sea.

Hauntingly beautiful monastery

World Heritage Site

or 

Horrifying reminder of 

Stalin's Gulag

It's Complicated.

An archipelago of six islands

total square acreage 

a little more

that 116 square miles.

Only Solovetski

is inhabited.

The largest island

at 95 square

miles.

Let's take a look!

Built in the 15th Century, by the end of the 1600's this monastery was one of the wealthiest religious centers held by Russia.

It was also a fortress and stood through 4 wars.

Among the amazing features of the island and opulence of the monastery are The Stone Labyrinths which remain to this day.

 

Not just one..or two..or even three of them-

 But 35.

Their significance and use unknown.

One way in and out with the mouth headed toward the sea.

Video of Labyrinths

https://www.wondermondo.com/stone-labyrinths-of-bolshoi-zayatsky-island/

 
Video of  Monastery

https://youtu.be/-sGV8gLGrEI


Rebuilt from an earlier fire, the monastery is now a World Heritage Site.

Beneath the beautiful new exterior is the horrifying history of 1923 - 1939 when Stalin decided (...because of the remoteness...) to take over the monastery and use it as the prototype for his Gulags.

From the beautiful peacefulness of a monastery to the tortures and deaths of his camps.

Most of the monks murdered during the takeover. The surviving few sent to work camps. Many of those literally worked to death.

They converted the monastery to what they called a "special" camp.
Officers for his other camps were brought and trained here.

Although hundreds of thousands arrived at the camp less that 3000 survived. Some were worked to death digging the Baltic-White Sea Canal. Others committed suicide or were tortured to death.

The island installed a semi-permanent memorial/museum devoted to the Gulag after it closed in 1939, but all traces of it were removed by 2017.

Portrait of a Gulag

https://youtu.be/9Xnh3D1WyyI


So now we have seen both sides of Solovetski.

And it it time to travel on.

Next time:

St.Peter and Saint Paul Rocks

Virtual Islands: Ile Aux Aigrettes

Ile aux Aigrettes has to be the best riches to rags (and back to riches) story I've come across in a while.

The name means Island of Egrets.

Off the coast of Mauritius it is tiny. An islet. Only 65 acres. Round shaped and low lying with lush greenery that spills right into the warm tropical water. No beach to laze about on. But the history of this green speck is amazing.

Today it is a veritable Noah's Ark of wildlife and plant life from everywhere, it seems.  Now a Nature Preserve and Research Center for Conservation...its story quite convoluted.

Before it was plundered by man (only 400 years ago) it was lush, green and filled with wildlife. Some of which existed nowhere else on Earth.

Then the ships came.

Forests felled for lumber.

Tortoises and Birds harvested for fresh meat.

First settled by the Dutch...most of the interior cleared for farming...then abandoned by 1710.

Five years later the French would claim to island and continue the ecological devastation.

Once the Europeans settled the island they introduced a misma of their own wildlife and plants.

They cleared much of the island and planted it with sugarcane.

The animals brought over preyed on the native animals and many species went extinct.

One of the last colonies of Dodos in the world went extinct on this island...taken as a food source both by humans and animals.

About 3 feet tall weighing around 30 pounds and flightless, their very name now used to exemplify extinction.

During WWII the British used it as a military base.

It is hard to imagine after slashing, burning, logging, sugar-cane farming, introduction of invasive species and decimation and extinction of the original that the tiny island could ever bounce back...

But it has!

An eco-tourism/research/conservation site. Many of the invasive plants have been removed and replaced by the indigenous. Wildlife breeding programmes on the mainland help bolster the wildlife numbers...in some instances even keeping species from becoming extinct, then reintroducing them to the island.

The past two decades have been phenomenal. 

 

Tour

https://youtu.be/VB7FeD2QKnU

Eco-tour

https://youtu.be/fRf6nkxaoSA


Next time we will explore: Solovetski
 

Virtual Islands: Great Skellig

Today's island rising majestically out of the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ireland. One of two islands referred to as The Skellocks.

From the 6th Century to the 12th Century Michael Skellig
(the larger of the two) was inhabited by a Christian Monastery. 

 Uninhabited today, it has been brought into the spotlight by the Star Wars franchise...who used it to film The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.

...see...you HAVE seen this island...

Rising 750 feet out of the sea...the ruins of the monastery are at the very top.

And you had to be pretty damned devout, I am thinking to tackle these to get there...

No out-of-shape monks at Michael Skelligs.
600+ stairs straight up. Twice a day.

A look at Little Skellig (the sister island) through a window...

The long winding footpath leading to the great stone stairs.

A topside view with the lighthouse

For many years the lighthouse was manned...but now it is automatic.

Tour of Skellig Island

https://youtu.be/g_0lk8BY0Vk

Skellig  Michael Monastery

https://youtu.be/t02NlH-_qqk

Next time:  Ile aux Aigrettes