Angry Birds

Streletzias always look pretty abstract on their own, but I added a few touches to make them look a little more like a painting. They always look slightly slightly angry to me, but these look like they are charging some unseen enemy, bayonets drawn.

My memorable quote comes from our local congressman in response to the poor state of the roads around here. Sonoma County roads scored 50 out of a hundred* on their general condition in 2020. Millions of dollars have been spent on half baked fixes, which last winter's heavy rains have mostly washed away. The cost of fixing them rises with each year both because construction costs go up, and as the rods deteriorate they cost more to repair. There is a road which connects Sonoma County to Marin County which was built as a sort of two lane causeway across marshland at the top of San Francisco Bay. It is choked with traffic and will need to be elevated as it is already frequently flooded as a result of climate change. The proposal is to widen it now (relatively speaking, considering the amount of time this takes) at a cost of $600 million and a few years down the road (so to speak) to elevate it at a cost of $5 billion. The quote from the congressman :
If you kick the can down the road on paving, it falls into a pothole.
That literal interpretation could be applied figuratively to almost every government project that is proposed and shelved (or my favorite) 'studied'.

I think widening roads just creates a vacuum which will be filled as soon as the many years of construction are finished. I've seen it happen.More public transportation would cost less and help to get/keep cars off the road.

I spent the morning in the garden discovering new things...a really unusual iris growing under the bird feeders and behind a pot on the deck so that I never knew it was there. It's called an iris foetidissima or 'stinking iris'.  I didn't pick it or even lean over to smell it, so I can't attest to its odor. It is native to Britain and we have no idea how one wound up in our garden. We saw an oriole at the hummingbird feeder. Sightings of them are fleeting. I saw my first butterfly of the season. It had the coloration of a monarch, but seemed a bit small, so it might have been some sort of tortoise shell.  A pair of colorful birds we think are spotted towhees  spent quite a bit of time at the feeders right behind my head.

We've been holed up in the house for too long....

*No idea who is keeping track of this other than every motorist who has. to drive on these roads every day....