Beautiful?

Well... in Russian eyes.  We're speaking of this:

We got a significant amount of rain last evening (like all freakin' night, to be exact) and the overnight result is what you see above, to wit: HUGE numbers of bright yellow dandelions visible everywhere within the confines of Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park.  

This is a sight that would drive me to tears in my previous lives... speaking of those times when we lived in various suburban enclaves in this fine, fine country of ours.  Which was where the sight of a single dandelion with the temerity to raise it's bright yellow head in untold acres of verdant green Kentucky Blue Grass or similar would be cause for much gnashing and thrashing... if not within YOU, then most certainly among your neighbors who feared airborne contamination of their green space from the seed that would follow.  We simply did NOT tolerate dandelions and went to great lengths to eradicate them, with quite a bit of success too, not to mention expense.  And labor.

So... I carried that mindset to the former Evil Empire when I went there on bid'niz in the Spring of 1995 or thereabouts (actual dates fail me).  I was amazed at the carpets of dandelions seemingly everywhere... in the parks, in lawns in front of buildings modest and grand, apartment buildings, everywhere... Moscow was overrun with the damned things.   My Russian hosts laughed at my shock and said "Aren't they beautiful?  The dandelions announce the arrival of Spring, and we LOVE them!"

Well, OK.  It's hard to accept diversity sometimes, in even the smallest of things.  We struggle with the concept of dandelions even today.

―:☺:―

I'd go on about last night's hockey games but I'm just not in the mood.  My Beloved Wings did NOT show up last night in Phoenix and lost... 3 - 2 ... a game that they should have won.  To say Detroit's penalty kill was abysmal is understating things in an otherworldly way, as all three Feral Desert Dog goals came on the power play and that is disgraceful.  NOT a good beginning.

But I am not alone in my misery today.  The Senators beat down the Flightless Birds (a GOOD thing and oh-so-gratifying to watch), the Devils lost to the "we barely made the playoffs and squeaked in on the last day with only 88 miserable points" Flyers, and the Avs embarrassed the Number One seed in the West, winning with but 46 ticks left in regulation.  So there's plenty of misery among certain classes of puckheads today.  But.  It IS early and we've only just begun.  There's much more agony and ecstasy ahead.