cheerfulmonk.com

Justo and Franco

Translation:

I eat a lot of fast food. I suppose that explains why they say “Haste makes waist.”

Garfield en Español

Garfield

Garfield en Español

Garfield

Garfield en Español

Garfield

March 16, 2026

Click on the image for higher resolution.

National Weather Service

Notice the prediction is for five days starting Thursday.

This weekend is different. Andy will stay down here today because of the wind — gusts of up to 50 mph are predicted. And we’re also having our first red flag warning for fire.

The meteorological calendar is correct — winter is already over!

March 15, 2026

First an Update on the Plants and Balloon:

The bean plants haven’t changed much, except for one spindly branch growing on the right.

I’ll probably toss the plants out in the near future. I planted a couple of garbanzo beans and will see if they start to grow.

The balloon is still slowly losing helium.

12 weeks old

The sweet potato is growing, but I don’t like the looks of it. No green leaves.

I’ll watch it for a while longer, but then I’ll toss it out.

I haven’t talked about my pothos — I had some growing in three 4-inch pots, but they started getting overgrown. Instead of moving them to bigger pots, I started propagating new plants from cuttings. (All my pothos started from one cutting a friend gave me about 35 years ago.)

That wasn’t the big change. They’ve been working on our building, changing some posts, adding metal clading to the cross pieces, and painting the posts and stucco lighter colors. So there has been a lot of activity on our porch:

The building looks a lot different.

September 24, 2025

March 13, 2026

They’re almost done with our building, except for painting the doors a lighter color next Monday. Doing this to 10 buildings is a lot of work!

March 14, 2026

This past winter was glorious — a lot of sunshine. We’re going to pay for it with the fire danger, of course. There’s already a fire watch for this weekend because of the wind — Andy says he may stay down here if it’s too strong.

Next weekend the National Weather Service is predicting,

An unseasonably strong high pressure system will begin to build over the southwest US toward the middle of next week with weaker winds and record and near record high temperatures reaching 15-25 degrees above 1991-2020 averages as early as Wednesday. This ridge of high pressure looks to become powerfully strong next weekend with an increasing likelihood of a historic and hazardous early season heatwave that could far surpass daily record high temperature records across much of northern and central New Mexico.

AccuWeather agrees about the warm spell– click on image for higher resolution:

Nope, way too warm for spring. I like winter better. (Yes, I know it will be a lot worse elsewhere, but it’s supposed to be an extra-hot summer, my least favorite season.)

March 13, 2026

Click on the picture for the video.

March 11, 2026

Bound and Gagged

March tends to be windy here. We’ve had some winds so far, but they haven’t been as bad as the time Andy stayed down here rather than risk them.

He did stay down here last Saturday, but for a different reason. He started to get up around 8 or so but he was cold, so he climbed back under the covers and slept for a couple more hours.

When I mentioned that to Kaitlin she wrote,

Brrr! I wouldn’t get up either. But he does get all the blankets in winter (his time is almost up for the year!).

Huh? Oh, yeah. When she was young she and Andy had a running joke. They shared the blankets — equitably. He got them in winter, and she got them in summer. What could be more fair than that?

I still laugh when I think of it. Hurray for family jokes and happy memories.

March 11, 2026

Click on the image for higher resolution.

Ben

I know pups and kitties like that. They remind me to make time for naps. 🙂

March 10, 2025

In answer to yesterday’s question: Sigh, Pixie was right, the bananas sold at the store are sterile so they can’t propagate. If you’re curious about how to grow a banana tree, click here.

For a non-AI video, here’s one about the new puppy at North Yuki Husky.

Good Lord! What a bundle of energy. 🙂

March 9, 2026

In her comment to yesterday’s post, Sandra Czosek mentioned this Facebook video showing how to grow a banana tree from a banana. (Click on the picture to see the video.)

Do you think it would work?

March 8, 2026

The bean plants and the balloon haven’t changed much since last week.

Bean plants:

(The two little blossoms that were on the plant on the left dropped off, no attempt to produce a pod.)

Notice the snow outside! The picture was taken yesterday morning when we had a brief snow shower. Then the sun came out and the snow melted.

Balloon:

The roots of the sweet potato are growing, and the top is starting to spout.

I was thinking about a fun way to work on my dynamic balance and thought of dancing. So I asked Claude AI. It said,

Even 20–30 minutes of dancing 2–3 times per week can produce meaningful improvements in balance within 6–8 weeks. The best part: it rarely feels like exercise.

That sounds good to me, so I started looking on YouTube for dance videos that are safe and fun to try. I found a few that fit the bill. I’m streaming them to my TV set using the Roku YouTube channel, so it’s easy to watch as I do them.

In the process I found this video, which I’ve saved and will try.

The big change, of course, is tonight those of us in the U.S. have to switch our clocks for Daylight Saving Time. If that doesn’t signal that winter is over, I don’t know what does.

March 7, 2026