Girl pussy willows
This is what the female pussy willows look like when they bloom. If you have allergies your eyes are probably watering at the sight of it. I read recently that, if you plant one of these, within a few months it would grow to be a yard high. I now feel obligated to try it. I found a sapling about 3 feet high next to my pussy willow tree. I have a lovely pussy willow tree, with three parts to it, but in the fall we had an early storm with a foot of heavy wet snow. The sap in the trees hadn't frozen yet so a lot of trees broke. The main trunk of my tree snapped. The males on the central trunk bravely bloomed anyway but I think I have to cut off the broken trunk anyway--bad to have so much heartwood exposed.

Rainy and cold today. I stayed for the board meeting last night, then went out to dinner with my friends Donna and Fred, who are on the board. We laughed a lot, especially about the previous director. I got home around 8 and the house was 59. I didn't want to start a fire so I dragged out a small ceramic electric heater and propped it up on the coffee table in front of me and huddled around it like a refugee. What a dork. Tess lay on my lap and cooked herself to medium rare. I finally got the living room up to 67 before going to bed. Tonight I will bring in firewood and kindling and get a nice warm fire going.

Ken's problem turned out to be fluid in his legs, caused by eating too much canned food with too much salt in it. I think this is quite funny because His Son Karl brought him all those cans of food and nagged and bullied him into eating them. Before that Ken was doing fine cooking for himself and eating the right amount of the right things. We don't like Karl, no we don't. Ken seemed very old and very frail yesterday. I don't want to be 90, I just don't want to last that long.

I have to meet with the librarians from the correctional facilities this afternoon. They suffer and whine a lot. There are 8 of them. My department is funded a lot ($40,000) to provide interlibrary loan service to them. We figured out that, using the national standard figures for the costs of lending and borrowing, we provide them with $82,000 worth of service. Stick that in your handcuffs, people. I'm just sick of filling requests for inmates who want everything, are never guilty of the crimes they've been convicted of, and steal or rip apart the books we borrow for them. Bitter old lady librarian. Just put a bunch of crap in front of me to catalog today, that would be your best bet.