again.

We have a new guy. 17, no drivers license. And the dynamic I have seen endless times. He gets the penis bonus. He gets more opportunities to drive machines, higher acceptance for mistakes and failure, more teaching. I have seen it endless times. And as a result I will get squeezed out. Been there done that. Endless times. Penis bonus is real.

Obviously I can't control for standardized picture angle and thus measurement will not be accurately documented .

Anyway.

My two coworkers often call each other “wanker,” “arsehole,” or “jerk.” But the meaning depends entirely on the context.

For example, last Friday, when we had some downtime, both of them sat there playing on their phones for quite a while. At some point, one of them looked at the other and said, “Go fuck yourself.” The other replied, “Wanker, you go fuck yourself.” And that was it. No argument, no reaction — they just continued playing on their phones.

I said, “You know, guys, in my head I have an app for simultaneous interpreting. So what I hear is: ‘I love you’ and ‘I love you too.’”

Both of them agreed that the translation wasn’t exactly wrong — although it was definitely missing some depth and nuance.

So on Friday, when we were allowed to leave, I said, “Have a nice weekend, you wankers.” Since I normally don't talk to them in that way, and because we had talked about this some hours earlier, both of their heads immediately turned toward me. Their looks were hilarious — and then their expressions changed into smiles.

Just now.

Still looking nice from a distance. From close hold the story is another. Late summer exhaustion, yellow leaves, spent flowers.

If I was only gardening for beauty I would remove spent sunflowers even if the plant still has the potential to open new, smaller flower heads. I grow branched sunflowers, loads of buds even if the plant already os yellow and looking ugly.

The cucumber now really grows so fast. And it seems to feel that it is in a prime location for sunlight and now all cucumber attempts seem to stick and not wither away. Very soon she outgrew the space I allocated to her and I will have to make a decision if I will let her invade tomato light.

Do I want cucumbers or tomatos.

Tomatos have been not making many tomatos so far. And the few they made were as tiny as large blueberries.

I don't know why. I have flowers, weather is ok to fly in, they had the numbers... but nope.

Huge decline in these guys:

Only occasional individuals.

Catastrophe, parasites, nest raiding, neighbors destroying the nest if it was on their property (I never find the actual nest but I also don't go combing through the tall grass and wild corners of my garden)... loads of possibilities. And I wouldn't put it past my neighbors or actually people in general to discover a bumblebee nest in late summer when they have the most individuals and traffic because thats when people notice. And then just spray them. Because they can. Because of "the kids" or whatever bullshit they come up with. Or without any reason at all.

Bumblebees dont defend their nests as yellow jackets.

I have lost the B. terrestris-lucorum and earlier this summer I lost B. Lapidarius. What's left is B. Pascuorum.

Looking very good. Looks like all of them will turn into cucumbers.

And the 2 largest new shoots:

Some background.

In early spring at work in the industrial park that we service one random day there was a French car abandoned and parked in the most asinine way. Janitor made some phonecalls and the explanation was that police actually stopped and handcuffed the driver and left the car to rot. Somebody then parked the car on an actual parking space and put police tape around. And ever since it stands in the same spot as the police tape fades in the sun.

We are responsible for weed growing from gaps in between pavers and we usually torch it off with a gas flame. But we can't do that under and beside a permanently parked car so it starts to be quite green where that car is parked.

And when picking garbage and seeing the weed sprouting around the car I saw WHAT KIND OF WEED was growing.

Do you recognize the plant?

And the finest specimen of the group? Under the car.

Lemme know if you are as amazed as I was.

(And yes, I double checked with an app to make sure it's not just a wild nightshade that I just didn't know before. But it did come back as what I thought it was. )

They DO develop fast. Remember in june when I wasn't sure if late sowing would result in flowers before onset of frost?

Well.

That's the first open flower. Good news for the bumblebee community that I sowed this for. I may no longer have an abundance of flowers in a few weeks but I will have something. Something is better than nothing. I have to make a note for my future self that late sowing should be tried also for phacelia and others.

Love in a mist also came through. In some pots its close to flowering.

I learned that love in a mist does better with a richer substrate. I have some pots with very poor substrate because the main inhabitant thrives on that. I sowed love in a mist beside and its not doing well. May flower later but never with more than one single flower. Whereas in this richer nutrient pot with clay garden soil mixed in?

1 plant = 5 flower buds almost ready to open shop.

I can't afford it but I really want that book.

I miss the Scandinavian library system.

1) you could suggest books to buy and it wasn't just an appeasement strategy but real. They don't buy every suggestion. But they evaluate every suggestion.

2) you had access to the catalog of Danish, Swedish and norwegian libraries combined. If the book you wanted was available anywhere they ship it for you to your local library.

You could put yourself on a waiting list and they notify you when the book is free to be checked out/ordered by you.

And it was all 100% free.

That way I had access to so many books I never could have bought. I don't understand why other countries don't adopt that system.

While I put new yellow sticky traps they started to attach. Fine. So you DO exist in abundance, still. I ordered more SF nematodes.

Darn, I forgot the nematodes in the fridge. Long expired by now. Maybe those gnats are the reason?