Flowering

I thought I'd share some of the flora of Bloomington and surrounding areas with all of you who're living with fire season already. Hopefully Mt. Sentinel is no longer in flames, and it will be awhile before anything else goes up in smoke. I'll be posting a variety of flowering things in several posts. If anyone can identify any of the ones that aren't labeled, let me know. I'm seeing some crazy flowering things here that I've never seen before.

We'll start with the wild, or at least not cultivated, plants this time. Next time I'll post some flowering trees.

Purpley flowers growing wild in the curb near my apartment

Okay, not a flower - more fossils from Dishman Quarry

Not a flower, either - these are ferns growing near the trail at Dishman Quarry

Flowering lichen (?) near Dishman Quarry

Orange flowers (?) near Empire Quarry

Week 1

1. I have survived the first week of class.
2. It has stopped raining so much that my apartment is back to its gentle leaking (in the form of spreading water stains), and not the dripping from the ceiling, running down the walls leaking of Tuesday night.
3. I think I will like all my classes, some more than others. None as much as the kids' class last semester.
4. I think I will like the new job, especially once it picks up a bit more and I figure out what it is I'm supposed to be doing.
5. I am still working three jobs (2 regularly and 1 sporadically).
6. My bursar bill has been unraveled, so my financial state is now better than it's been for months. That began working itself out Monday, and I have seen concrete results today. (yippee)
7. As a result of the concrete financial results, I can now see out from under my bangs. Why is it that a haircut can make me so happy?
8. Now that I have some money, I can get my books and do my reading for next week.

Some Observations

These are some random observations from the day, in no particular order.

1. It's slightly after 8pm, and the temperature is 61 degrees. It's supposed to be in the 60s and 50s most of the week.
2. When you cook and freeze black beans, and then use them later in black bean soup, the texture is perfect. The cooking/freezing procedure would not work so well for other things, I think.
3. Bloomington is much nicer (ie quieter) during break, when all the students are gone. This makes me look forward to the summer.
4. My current apartment has been rented for next school year already. This is in spite of the fact that the roof leaks, the neighborhood is loud, it has no real insulation and only single pane windows, it's heated with cheap (read inefficient) wall-mounted electric heat. The new guy was quite happy, as this was larger and nicer than most things he'd looked at.
5. This says much about the state of the rental market in town and the lack of all but really basic code requirements. It's like a third world country right here in the US, and makes Montana look reasonable and quite humane. I am not looking forward to trying to find something for only half the year. (Most leases are from August to August, and are not flexible, which would be why my apartment will be with the new guy and not me.)
6. Classes start tomorrow, and I am generally looking forward to the semester.
7. I'm hoping that since the woman who has my tuition remission destiny in the palm of her hand will be back in her office tomorrow that the whole bursar bill/financial fiasco will be unraveled by the end of the week.