It's 'Blooming'!

Not much of  a bloom on this plant which is either an agave or a yucca. We have a yucca that is blooming beautifully  right now* and this weird bloom looks more like the agaves, sometimes called century plants because they don't bloom very often and then die. They put so much energy to developing a towering seed producing stalk that there isn't enough energy left to sustain the plant. They don't have any kind of flower to speak of, and when this plant started blooming, the stalk it put out was slightly obscene. Now it's just bizarre....

Despite a dreadful night, John still tested negative this morning and gathered enough energy for his weekly beer with Dan. If he turned down a beer I would worry that he was on his deathbed. It's just a nasty cold.

Spike and I hiked up to the top garden to check out progress on the fortress house* next door. There hasn't been a lot, but most of the work has been on the garage part of the house on the left. It's perched right at the edge of  a rocky cliff and when I walked past this morning with Spike one poor guy was precariously perched on a tall ladder nailing up heavy pieces of plywood with what looked like a very heavy nail gun. 

The orange machine in the second extra is making a delivery of plywood to put on top of the floor joists. A couple of guys were wandering around on top of them today with what looked like a measuring tape, but was probably a level of some sort. I continue to believe that it is an almost unbuildable site and despite all the building codes designed to protect the residents of the house, there don't seem to be many to protect the builders.

The house on the other side is finished on the outside and they are working on the inside. An electrician has been working there for a long time and it looks like they are 'closing up' the walls on the inside. A big load of wallboard was delivered to the second story yesterday by a crane-like machine. It's fascinating to see all the specialty machinery they have to build a house. We've seen the full array right here on our street....

*extras