Polio in New York

 This news item caught my eye because New York state is my childhood home and polio is a distinct memory.  TPP had just started school in the mid-50s when it was announced that they had a vaccine for polio.  My parents couldn't get us to the doctor soon enough to get the vaccination because polio scared people.  Evey year there would be an outbreak somewhere and we all had classmates who wore leg or arm braces, and everyone knew someone who had died of polio.   But it seems that people have forgotten or even with a million deaths, and covid just isn't scary enough.  Science was a little too eager to pronounce polio's demise.  It's back! And aided and abetted by anti-vaxxers polio will surely make a come back.  TPP has yet to hear an anti-vax position that was convincing.  Herd immunity makes sense biologically, but if the anti-vaxxers screw it up TPP hopes they get their much-deserved infection.  Take away their passports and don't let these fools travel to places that still harbor diseases like polio (No idea if this case came from overseas or not).

Friday Fabulous Flower - Bottle brush

 This ia an aptly named plant, it does look like a bottle brush and even better is grows in the shade and flowers in midsummer.   Actually this shrub looks good enough that the flowering is almost a bonus.

 This is the bottle brush buckeye, Aesculus parviflora.  It just now is flowering, and some of ours is growing in pretty deep shade.  The only problem is that in bad Japanese beetle years the flowers can be totally eaten.   

Rules of gardening & FFF

 OK TPP was the victim of a very busy week.  What a relief to get that overwith.  And it rained after two long weeks of hot dry weather.  My rain gauge recorded 3.5"  and every bit of it was needed.

Here is a  Friday Fabulous Flower, but it is a violation of a TPP gardening rule.  This is a very pretty plant, but one of our gardening rules, based on sad experience, is never plant a loosestrife.  Every violation of this rule has ended badly.  This is Lysimachia clethroides, the gooseneck loosestrife.

It flowers in July a plus, and it does OK in shade,  but you can never control it. So says TPP.