He's become a real cuddle goat, except those horns kinda get in the way.

My tummy feels like it's going to burst!

What do you mean I still need to drink another 8 ounces? :blobfoxdead:

WOW! I've never seen air quality this bad before, and I lived in LA during the 80s.

Don't want regular Independence Day? Now you can try...

Find the cats

Red clover (Trifolium pratense. Family Fabaceae, the legumes)

This is a fairly rare red clover with white flowers. It's easily mistaken for the true white clover (T. repens), but the red clover plants are taller with larger leaves, and the inflorescences are bigger and more densely packed.

Most species of Trifolium make excellent forage and are highly palatable to all classes of livestock. Caution should be used as bloat is a risk when grazing on lush clover. T. pratense and T. repens are both excellent honey plants.

All species of clover are nitrogen fixers, and while some people consider them a weed, they'll add valuable nutrients to your lawn.

#BloomScrolling

My late husband had some slides from Sea World and Marine World-Africa USA. They appear to be from 1973, so they're as old as I am.

The color seems to have faded over the years; in particular the blues are completely gone and I doubt there's any way to restore the proper colors.

I also don't have a proper way to reproduce these slides. I just used a bright flashlight shining through a thin piece of white cardstock to create a makeshift light table.

Here is the amazing pink dolphin show from Sea World, 53 years ago!

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca. Family Apocynaceae, the dogbane family)

Milkweed flowers are wonderfully fragrant and can be smelled for quite a distance downwind.

The flowers can be harvested and used to make a delicious syrup that mixes well with white wine or lemonade, or added to sparkling water to make a floral soda. It can also be used to make a jelly that can be paired with cheese or light fish.

If you leave the flowers alone, they will turn into small, lumpy green pods that can be picked while they are still immature (less than 2 inches long and fully white inside), then dredged in flour and fried like okra.

While the young shoots, buds, flowers, and seed pods are safe to eat, the mature leaves and stems are a Class III (mildly toxic) cardiac poison.

#BloomScrolling

There is apparently a road that bisects the airport runway in Gibraltar, and people are allowed to walk on it.

"For external use only. Do not apply on skin. Keep away from eyes."

Uhh... If it's for external use, but not the skin or eyes, that doesn't leave a lot else you can use it on. Hair, maybe? Or fingernails, but it comes in a spray bottle which would be hard to use on your nails.

Great mullein (Aaron's rod, Jacob's staff, cowboy toilet paper, flannel leaf, feltwort, velvetplant, and many other "fuzzy" names; the binomial is Verbascum thapsus. Family Scrophulariaceae, the figwort family)

A tea made from the leaves was used as a sedative, and it was smoked to treat various pulmonary diseases. It was recommended by Dioscorides and in Culpepper's The English Physitian.

Despite the soft appearance, the hairs can be irritating, so its use as toilet paper is probably a bad idea.

The plant is not terribly noticeable until it begins to send up a flower stalk, which grows very rapidly and can exceed 2 meters!

It's a fairly common weed around here, but rarely causes problems. It cannot compete with established plants and it does not tolerate tilling. Mechanical control is the best option, as the hairs act as a barrier against most herbicides unless a surfactant is used.

The seeds can remain viable for over 100 years, and a single plant can produce up to 240,000 seeds!

#BloomScrolling

Wait, what?

I wonder if the power company will be reimbursing the farmers for their damaged and destroyed crops.

Unlike most of the US, OPPD is a public utility owned by the state.

🎵 Just let yourself go floppy, for now this is your chance
🎵 Pretend you have no bones and do the Rubber Chicken Dance!

Excuse me, sir, what do you think you are doing?

I am not a delicious goat treat.

Eastern red cedar (Juniperus virginiana. Family Cupressaceae, the cypress family)

Despite the common name this tree is actually a type of juniper, and only related to the cedars (Cedrus sp., Family Pinaceae) at the Class taxonomic level (Pinopsida).

Farmers have a love-hate relationship with this tree, because it grows so quickly. This allows a shelterbelt to be established in just a few years, but the tree can also quickly overrun a pasture if not controlled. The young trees are highly flammable.

The tree is also one of the hosts for the fungal disease cedar-apple rust, which can devastate apple orchards.

The wood is fragrant and repels moths and is often used to make "cedar" chests. Because the wood is very resistant to decay Native Americans used the reddish wood as stakes for tribal land markers; Baton Rouge is French for "red stick".

The "berries" are actually female seed cones. They're an important food source for birds, and a particular favorite of the cedar waxwing.

#BloomScrolling

Despite their similar appearance, mulberries are only related to blackberries and raspberries at the Order taxonomic level. Mulberries are in the genus Morus, of the Family Moraceae, while blackberries and raspberries are in the genus Rubus, of the Family Rosaceae, the rose family. Both families are in the Order Rosales.

I didn't even know minks needed to be oiled.

Pygmy goats are the cutest goats, and Spot is the cutest pygmy goat.

There's actually a funny story behind that $5 casino token. My future spouse and I would occasionally go to one of the Native American casinos around San Diego, usually Viejas, Sycuan, or Barona. We mainly went for the lunch buffet, but we'd spend like $20 playing the penny slots, which could easily take an hour or two.

One time at Viejas we hit our allotted $20 and were about to leave, but right at the main entrance was a large slot machine that required $5 to play. And I had a single $5 bill in my wallet! So I stuck it in the machine, pulled the giant handle, and DING DING DING! I won $50! Now I'm playing with the casino's money!

I put aside my original $25, dropped one of the $5 tokens into the machine, and pulled the handle. DING DING DING! Another $25!

A bunch of little old Japanese women came over and wanted to touch me for good luck. :blobfoxlaughsweat:

I didn't win anything after that. I cashed out the $25 that I'd set aside and saved two of the giant coins for myself and gave one to my SO.