Garden pix and more COVID memes (Weekend Coffee Share #31)

Good morning and happy Friday! It’s supposed to be 91F today here at Camp WTF, and it’s still March.

W.T.F.

The worst part? In 2 months, I’ll be ready to kill for a day when it’s only 91.

OK, I’ll stop whining. Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! Grab a drink, pull up a seat, and let’s get to it.

What’s New

Nothing. Zip. Nada.

We didn’t go anywhere or do anything exciting, so all I can offer you are a few garden pictures:

Last year we planted a dwarf orange tree and harvested all of 2 oranges. This year, it’s *covered* in blossoms. If they all become oranges, the poor tree is going to collapse.

Orange blossoms–the promise of delicious oranges in, oh, 10 months or so.

Long-Suffering Husband’s current project: disguising the extremely ugly but useful storage shed in our backyard:

Imagine those trellises covered in jasmine.

Imagine me spending this weekend planting jasmine.

Then imagine me with my heating pad and ibuprofen.

Last weekend I did something I almost never do: a) bought a bunch of plants, and b) planted them right away instead of letting them sit around and dry out and get sad-looking. Go me!

Tomatoes and basil–yum! Now I just have to keep them alive through the inferno that is May and June, till monsoon season starts.

And here’s my other raised bed, filled with carrots, shallots, beets, parsley, sage, peppers, green onions (started by planting the bottoms of supermarket green onions), and I’itoi onions. Fun fact: I’itoi onions were brought to the desert Southwest by Jesuit priests in the 1600s and given to the Tohono O’odham. Learn more here.

After next weekend, I should have some travel pictures, since I’m driving up to Flagstaff for a writing class and a reunion with some of the folks from my very first writing group.

For now, though, you’ll have to content yourself with:

2020 Covid Memes, Episode 3: The Pandemic in Pop Culture

Two weeks ago, I celebrated 2 years of the coronazoic era with a batch of my favorite memes from early in the pandemic. Last week, we revisited the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020. After 2 weeks, you probably thought you were safe from Covid memes.

Wrong-O!

Today’s Covid meme theme is: pop culture. Strap into the Wayback Machine, folks. This is gonna be fun.

Music

Kurt Cobain was 100% correct. So was whoever came up with this gem:

Seriously. That should have been the moment when the whole country locked down voluntarily. And speaking of lockdown:

And of course, my favorite band:

You failed us, Toby. You failed us.

So did quite a few other musicians:

A few musicians were actually helpful:

Movies and TV

Post-Apocalptic Fun

This one’s for my husband:

And this one’s for me:

Change the pink sweats to grey, sub in Def Leppard for Hello, Kitty, and replace the bag + dog with a heavily-worn black leather purse, and it’s totally me.

2020 gave Mad Max and crew a new mission:

Horror

Not into the post-apocalyptic stuff? Here’s another wardrobe option:

True story: my husband once took me out to dinner and a movie on Friday the 13th… dressed as Jason.

Yeah, that checks out.

Star Wars

I used that Star Wars reference in one of my early-in-the-pandemic posts.

That was totally us during the early days of the pandemic. We lived in the country outside of Flagstaff and went for walks in the forest a lot. Whenever we’d see another human, we’d casually head off in a different direction. The other human would, too.

And my favorite:

Star Trek

Woe betide the poor redshirts.

Harry Potter

I ate a lot of chocolate.

Age tests

Do you know where these last two are from? If so, go schedule your colonoscopy.

That’s it for me this week. Rock those sweatpants, stay healthy, and leave the tiki idols alone. Oh, and tell me about your weekend plans, because my weekend will probably be just as noneventful as the last one.

27 Comments

  • Bobbiem91

    As I sit here in maroon sweats, drinking coffee, I saw that meme of what you wish and what it is. I had to clean off my computer. Thanks for the laugh today.

    • Janet Alcorn

      LOL. I’ve upgraded to olive drab capris and my 2019 NaNoWriMo winner shirt. I’m such a fashionista.

  • rawsonjl

    Holy cow is that hot for March! We were happy it was in the 50’s today. We won’t see weather in the 90’s until mid summer easily. So those last two…. jaws and Brady Bunch?! Right… I never watched Jaws but I LOVED the Brady Bunch.

    • Janet Alcorn

      Yup, you got ’em! The 2-part (or was it 3-part?) Brady Bunch episode with the tiki idol was my favorite.

      It’s supposed to be 94 here today. We turned on the A/C for the first time yesterday. *sigh*

  • Natalie

    Great gardening job you’ve done and how nice to have orange blossoms in your own yard. Have fun in Flagstaff! Thank you for your #weekendcoffeeshare.

    • Janet Alcorn

      Thanks! The last time I went on the job market, one of my requirements was to move to a place where citrus would grow. Goal achieved! Our lemon, lime, and kumquat trees are also blooming, and the whole neighborhood smells like citrus blossoms. I love this time of year.

  • trentpmcd

    Some pretty funny ones this week. Really odd – I posted a covid parody of Yesterday almost exactly 2 years ago and it has laid dormant for the last year and a half until yesterday when it received 5 YouTube hits. Is everyone dragging back early covid memories? Maybe you started a new trend…

    • Janet Alcorn

      I’m only a good fan of a few things–Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Def Leppard, not in that order. Oh, and Outlander. And Lucifer. And… OK, never mind.

  • Writing Sparkle

    Janet, I have garden envy. It snowed here last night! That is all I am going to say before I go cry into my coffee cup. Great coffee post, thanks for sharing.

    • Janet Alcorn

      My condolences. I lived in Flagstaff for over six years, so I understand. We didn’t dare plant out warm-season veggies till June, and even then sometimes we’d get frost mid-month. And the average first frost date in fall was September 15. Drove me bonkers. I whine a lot about the heat down here in Satan’s Anus, but I do love the growing season. We had fresh basil till Christmas.

    • Janet Alcorn

      Thanks! I live in Arizona, so enjoying summer is highly unlikely. Survival is the goal.

    • Janet Alcorn

      Thanks! You probably shouldn’t encourage me, or else this whole blog will be all gardening, all the time 🙂

  • leannelc

    That’s an amazing number of pop culture references Janet – and shows how huge the impact of covid has been on our world in general. Loved all your plantings and the shed will look so much better once the jasmine starts creeping up.

    • Janet Alcorn

      Exactly. We’re living through a watershed moment in history. Now I understand more fully why, “May you live in interesting times,” is a curse.

  • Rowena

    Thanks for all those photos of your gardening efforts and I hope the jasmine does its thing with the ugly but useful shed. I am thinking of planting Sweet Peas soon as we head into Autumn during this never-ending season of rain. I loved all the covid memes and had a good laugh.
    BTW I can really relate to the nothing happening business. Our son called from the Young Endeavour tonight. They had a few cases of Covid onboard and they’ve been sent home and those remaining onboard are in isolation as close contacts. I am vulnerable which makes it tricky trying to get home home, but I’m blowed if I’m going to miss his arrival when I had to miss seeing him off in Geelong because his sister had a dance audition back home. I’m even looking at trying to track the boat down tomorrow on Sydney Harbour. It will be the first time I’ve been on a train in two years and rather risky but I’ve been cooped up too long and I’d love to see it under sail, especially with him onboard. It will be a real adventure…ship spotting. However, I am going to check the weather report. If it’s really bad I might stay home.
    Hope you have a great week.
    Best wishes,
    Rowena