strange galls on landlord's kinnikinnick

[piranha]

turn the leaves into unrecognizable red lumps. they're caused by manzanita leafgall aphids, tamalia coweni. i know very little about plant diseases, but i can google with the best of them.

thinking of diseases brings me to harper, a gall on the body politic.

harper is less smart than i thought. his lashing out against the "separatists" in the coalition will likely set him back in quebec in the long run. i don't understand what he's thinking; maybe his ego is really that large? he miscalculated, first with calling an election, and then with pushing the opposition to the tipping point by adding insult to injury in threatening their funding on top of the usual blackmail he's served them up by making every vote a vote of confidence. i would have thought once they called his bluff was a good time for some conciliation, and actual statesmanship in governing, but no, he's barrelling right along as if he had a huge mandate.

what hybris. 37.6% is no mandate. it means you need to consider the opposition in your lawmaking, because that's what the people have decided.

Comments

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Oo, did you open them and look? I went to lunch with lj-eub a few weeks back, and he opened some cottonwood galls and there were aphids in them!

[eub.livejournal.com]

I would be curious to hear about opening -- the ones I saw were right by the trail in Rainier and I didn't want to meddle with them.

galls

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i shall endeavour to cut one open.

[liv]

Kinnikinnick is my new favourite plant name! I'm impressed you were able to get enough information from looking at those strange leaf galls to have any search terms to google with, mind you. That is an amazingly alien-looking plant photo!

[papersky.livejournal.com]

He's lost a lot of respect in this bit of Quebec. I never liked him, but I didn't despise him the way I do now.

Also, with the Bloc finally playing down the stupid separatism thing it's a terrible idea to push them on it, unless he *wants* them to separate. It's kind of a legacy issue. Duceppe doesn't even want another referrendum. But they can't put it right down yet because there are a lot of their supporters who care, and they have a lot of history invested in it. People who want a united Canada should just shut up about seperatism and let the Bloc get over it as a new generation who don't have that as a major issue gets old enough to vote. Harper is risking seriously damaging the country with that.

[mayaknife.livejournal.com]

I can't believe that the Bloq would ever seriously want separation. The PQ, yes, because then they'd be the biggest fish in a smaller pond, but the Bloq would simply lose their cushy jobs.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I love those Arctostaphylos galls! So festive.

And yeah, I love how easy it can be these days to find the plausible gall-making agent for any weird thing you find on a plant.

The BBC had on some guy talking about how the Canadian people are very angry that they just voted in this government and now the opposition wants to undo that. He sounded exactly like a Canadian right-wing talk radio guy; he had that Zippy-like CAPITALIZATION of every THIRD WORD or so that rightist talk-radio guys do.