love the rain

Now that I have a garden I love the rain because I know it is so good for the plants and it makes the colors richer. It is more effort to get Samuel out for a walk though. I love my stone steps. I love the ones I chose, I love how I placed them with a little wander in the pathway and the right distance from each other without being rigid. I love the mixing of media - how these are different from the square ones I have under the deck. 

Soon the handymen will bring and place the long stone to put under the table and chairs under the deck. If I can keep the mosquitoes under control it will be a lovely place to hang out. 

My tree does NOT come tomorrow. Brant is worried that it will be cold tomorrow night so he'll bring it Friday. 

Ukraine has ~36 sophisticated drones, Turkish-made, called TB-2 killer drones (boys named all of these). But, our favorite squad, Aerozvidka, the volunteer drone squad, uses commercial off-the-shelf helicopter drones and they drop bombs. The armed drones are filling in for the Ukrainian air force. The squad posts some of their own video footage. Obviously the bombs that a little drone can drop aren't as big as the ones a 1,400 pound drone can fire, and the little ones have to get a lot closer (75 miles not hundreds of miles), but it is enough to damage a Russian armored vehicle and knock it out of the fight. Plus, they are much cheaper than $10k drones, esp with the volunteers 3-D producing their own. 

The Neptune, the Ukrainian-made missiles that sunk Russia's flagship battleship, are designed to attack warships up to 190 miles offshore. They can launch them from trucks 16 miles from shore, which makes them easier to hide from enemy planes. The truck can stop, launch in 15 minutes, and then drive to another location, and each truck can carry four. The Neptune flies low, about 10-30 feet above the ocean surface, so it is hard for radar to see it. It is unclear if the Moskva even saw it coming. 

When I was a little girl my mother had me memorize my phone number and hide a dime for a payphone, just in case. In Ukraine a mother wrote her name and contact on her daughter's back. The daughter thought it was fun art and everyone who saw it on Instagram wept. Both mother and daughter are safe in France now. 

The S&P says Russia has defaulted on its foreign debt. Russia says it didn't because it paid, but in rubles. The West has been trying to force Russia to default. Russia is planning to go to court and is arguing it has the dollars, it just isn't being allowed to access them. But this trashes Russia's ability to borrow money. 

If we can trash their ability to buy things, maybe we can force their economy to a halt, and they won't be able to maintain the war other than by throwing rocks.