"NO." A non-cooperation declaration. A method of self-defense.
METAPHORatorium
The river of life flows on - Mar's notes, photos, artwork, (640+ posts)
Saturday, July 8, 2023
Wednesday, October 19, 2022
Heat Pumps - a gentle, steady warmth
An air-to-air, ductless minisplit heat pump is a kind of sneaky device.
Pictured above at right, is the outside unit - a Fujitsu Halcyon Inverter installed a month ago. This heat pump installation is designed to heat the areas I actually live in - a core area of bedroom, kitchen, dining room, living room. And as it gets colder its proving its worth. I'm waiting for the first month's electric bill. (This time last year I was heating with electric space heaters instead of using the furnace.)
And I will be quite happy not to buy more #2 heating oil for a while. Instead of six tankfuls a season I'm hoping the full tank I have (delivered in MARCH when I didnt need it and when prices were skyhigh) will last a lot longer. I will not turn on the regular heat until it's really frigid outside, to keep the pipes in the unused rooms here from freezing....
Tuesday, January 5, 2021
poem: Goodbye 45
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
May, May, go away
Sunday, August 25, 2019
Praying Mantis in the Fleabane!
In August I planted a dwarf butterfly bush, a sterile cultivar called Pugster Blue Fragrant. While not a native plant, it cannot be invasive like its larger relatives. I got it locally at Halas Nursery and even there it was swarmed with pollinators: butterflies, moths and bees. It was pungent and had filled my car with its heavy sweetish smell on the ride home.
After all the digging and watering, I went in the house for some coffee. I looked back out the window and there was a black swallowtale on my new butterfly bush already! For the next few days, there were always one or two butterflies enjoying the flowers. But after a week I didn't see any. I figured they were enjoying a change of diet over in my neighbors cone flowers. I kept peeking about but no butterflies.
All summer I have been nurturing a few stands of wildflower weeds as a garden project. The weeds in question are four-foot tall forests of Daisy Fleabane and Queen Anne's Lace. While I was looking for the missing butterflies, I found three praying mantis
Nature is capricious and pragmatic. Next year I think I will let the Fleabane grow elsewhere in my yard - somewhere not in a direct line between the butterfly bush and the cone flowers down the road....
Saturday, June 29, 2019
Conversation Styles Differ
Hot Air |
Some other people (including me), need to breathe and have silences in a conversation. We need a meaningful deep pause to collect our thoughts and share or to respond to a speaker. If there are no silences then we will just let the speaker go on and on.
I am listening, but I might be four sentences behind your rapid speech, thinking that what you said doesn't make any sense, seems out of proportion, relies on circular reasoning or a 'straw-man' argument, or that there are facts you mentioned which were improvised out of thin air. Or that this is the 3rd time you said the same thing. Sometimes I see an assumption you have made about me which is upsetting.
But you are six or seven paragraphs ahead of me now, chatting on all by yourself, making more statements that make no sense. So I think - there are so many disparities in this that it's pointless to bring it up any of them - so I let you go on and on and on even though I am beginning to feel beleaguered, buried under all the words.
And you wont find out for weeks that that my ex-husband is dead, or that I locked myself out last night at midnight and had to climb in through the window. At some point I might seem to be getting tense. I might quite suddenly say - "let's change the subject." or "I have to go now." I might quite suddenly, vigorously object to the last thing you said -- but the arc of it is this:
You have created a lengthy machine gun attack of words, and I have finally responded by running into an underground bunker and closing the door.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
DRAWING: from a writing exercise
Originally posted (and in the present tense) on 8/15/2010