{"id":93503,"date":"2026-01-31T05:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T12:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/?p=93503"},"modified":"2026-02-01T10:48:35","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T17:48:35","slug":"january-in-california-its-goin-to-be-87-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/?p=93503","title":{"rendered":"January In California, It’s Going To Be 87 Today!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Oh my, the weatherman indicates it will be in the high 80s today!\u00a0 That’s great news for my garden and terrible news for my will to do literally anything else.\u00a0 I guessit’ss time to wrestle with the weeds like they owe me money and try to remember which plants are flowers and which ones are just really enthusiastic dandelions.<\/p>\n

I’ll be in the garden finishing it off like it’s a triathlon, except instead of a medal at the end, I’ll just be covered in dirt and sweat, looking like a confused potato.\u00a0 And all this effort to plant in late February.<\/p>\n

But hey, on the bright side, at least the sun will be my cheerleader, blaring “Eye of the Tiger” at full blast while I try to stay hydrated\u2014because nothing says”I’m an adult” quite like sipping on lukewarm lemonade.<\/p>\n

So, off to work I go!\u00a0 I had my puncture-proof gloves on and a battery-operated power shear ready to go, to make big pieces into small pieces.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Happy gardener!\u00a0 Hat on, clothes off, I terrorized the garden<\/p><\/div>\n

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Carlos came about 11:00 am with three helpers, and they gave our two rather large ficus trees a severe haircut, more like a scalping.\u00a0 The picture below shows what they looked like last time, and the tree recovered just fine!\u00a0 The ficus trees will be going strong by midsummer.<\/p>\n

While he was here, I had him help me reposition three large planters to the west wall.\u00a0 I put several transplanted Blueberries into two of the planters, and then we planted two new blueberries into the last one.<\/p>\n

I conducted a thorough audit of the drip line to ensure the sprinklers were working.\u00a0 Spoiler: the only thing wetter than the soil was my sense of humor after I got soaked!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Carlos gave the trees a haircut!<\/p><\/div>\n

The plum needed to be topped because if it was not, a lot of fruit would be a) unreachable to me and b) certainly visible and reachable by the nasty birds!<\/p>\n

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Carlos also trimmed the plum tree.<\/p><\/div>\n

The afternoon heat killed three of the blueberry plants this year, so I moved them to the west wall to shield them from the afternoon sun.<\/p>\n

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I moved three blueberry plants to their new locations adjacent to Mary’s roses.<\/p><\/div>\n

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It was beginning to get dark as I came back in the house, clothes in hand, and dropped the dirty apparel into the washing machine!\u00a0 We watched TV for a while, finishing off the series Ted Lasso.\u00a0 I had to leave twice because for some assnione reason they had to throw in a lesbian scene, soon followed by two guys kissing.\u00a0 I jumped up and headed to the office.\u00a0 It seems like the new series has to have a car chase, but since there are no cars involved, they throw in gay\/lesbian scenes to check a box\u2014no wonder our kids are growing up weird.<\/p>\n

When Lasso was over, I switched to “The Family Plan,” a two-hour respite from the weird, which dealt with secret assassins, revenge, and funny humor.<\/p>\n

This statement is a quote from FoxNews entitled:\u00a0 \u00a0 Hollywood keeps making movies families won’t watch<\/strong><\/p>\n

“One of the more curious and baffling habits of Hollywood is studios\u2019 stubbornness and reluctance to produce more movies that appeal to families. Instead, they insist on making films that offend our moral sensibilities, despite evidence suggesting cleaner and more wholesome fare would perform better than the trash they\u2019re creating. We\u2019re bombarded with dark storylines littered with unnecessary profanity and gratuitous doses of sexuality and violence. Instead of goodness we get garbage.<\/em>”<\/p>\n

We turned off the TV around 11:00 pm, and I ventured outside to snap a few photos of our Valentine’s Day lighting because nothing says “romantic ambiance” like the glow of a red house glowing in the dead of night!\u00a0 Valentine’s Day is only two weeks away, and if I don’t document this endless sea of pink and red, how else will I prove to future generations that I was the reigning champion of holiday decorations?\u00a0 I mean, who needs sleep when you can show off Cupid’s glow-up at 11 pm?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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We declare the house ready!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Old Glory was singing….,” the rocket’s red glare” until I mentioned it was not time for the National Anthem.<\/p><\/div>\n

“The rocket’s red glare” is a famous phrase from the first stanza of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the U.S. national anthem written by Francis Scott Key in 1814.\u00a0 It describes the British Congreve rockets fired at Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, providing proof that the American flag was still flying.<\/div>\n
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The downside is that we had two fire trucks show up with hoses at the ready!<\/p><\/div>\n

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Could this be called the red-light district?<\/p><\/div>\n

Good night, all!\u00a0 \u00a0We heard the Sandman calling our names!\u00a0 “Hey Mary, Hey You… come to bed!”<\/p>\n

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Oh my, the weatherman indicates it will be in the high 80s today!\u00a0 That’s great news for my garden and terrible news for my will to do literally anything else.\u00a0 I guessit’ss time to wrestle with the weeds like they … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,184,233,230],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardening","category-just-us","category-vegetable-garden","category-working-around-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93503"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93542,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93503\/revisions\/93542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lilesnet.com\/dailydiary\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}