Trees, Grapes and Stopping the Hate

I'm a bit nervous today as my next door neighbor is having a tree removed.

It's a huge tree with big branches, branches big enough to be trees unto themselves. One of these branches comes out over my property, over my wrought iron fence, over my Japanese cherry tree.

Way up in a bucket with a chain saw. Yikes!



In fact, I had talked with my neighbor a couple of years ago about removing just that limb in order to allow more sunlight to reach the cherry tree, but we never moved on that. But now the cherry tree will be happier, I am sure.

Anyway, about 8 or so years ago a man fell asleep while driving in this direction on my street and swerved across the street and into the fence, after bouncing off another tree (that the city wants to take down). The man was not seriously injured, and neither was the fence. So maybe all will go well with this project.

And in the house I have this grape vine that needs to be planted because it has started growing while still in its package. I guess it likes the warmth. I read up a little on grapes and learned that the first growing season you don't do anything. No pruning, no staking. Then in winter you start deciding which branches to keep, etc. That gives me time to build the structure that my grapes (yes, there will be more than one vine) will grow on.

Stopping the Hate

As a result of a huge effort by the Human Rights Campaign the anti-gay hate group American Family Association has been stopped from showing their hate film infomercial "Speechless: Silencing Christians" in Michigan.

The TV station's general manager said this:

"Our station is being bombarded with calls and messages, and we find ourselves
in the middle of someone else's fight. Ours was a fair offer and we are removing
ourselves from this matter."

HRC President Joe Solmonese said this:

"I am so proud of our members who answered the lies and distortions of the
AFA and stopped this campaign of hate and deception. Our community stood up
and would not let those lies stand.

"This should be our wake up call. We are poised to make real progress, for the first time, for millions of LGBT Americans. We know it and so do our opponents. We must stand guard and not allow them to stop these overdue, basic protections by rolling out the same, tired script albeit in new packaging. Today's action proves we have the voices and the power to demand a fair fight and a fair debate."

The fight goes on.